Background
Swedish is an Indo-European language of the North Germanic Group. Swedish is the official language of Sweden, but has also been spoken by Swedish-speaking Finns in Finland since over a thousand years ago. Finland belonged to Sweden for several hundred years between the 13th century and 1809, when Russia conquered the country. In 1863 a law gave the Finnish-speaking Finns the same rights as the Swedish-speaking population. After Finland had gained its independence, the constitution of 1919 states that Finnish and Swedish are the national languages of the Republic.
There are slightly less than 300,000 Swedish-speakers in Finland, 6 per cent of the population. The Swedish-speaking Finns inhabit the coastal areas of western, southwestern and southern Finland, as well as on the Åland Islands, where it is the only official language.
Swedish is an official language of the state of Finland and is regulated by the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland. Official Swedish is not supposed to be different from Swedish as found in Sweden.
Bilingualism of municipalities is regulated by the Language Act of 2003.[1] Finnish and Swedish are defined as national languages. If the minority has increased into at least 3,000 persons or 8% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become bilingual. If the minority has fallen below 3,000 persons or 6% of inhabitants, then the municipality must become monolingual, unless it decides to keep its bilingual status. (At present, only one such municipality has done so, namely Lohja (Lojo in Swedish).) The status is reviewed once in a decade, and enacted by a government decree issued by the Finnish Council of State.