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Swedish people
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Swedes are people from Sweden or of Swedish decent. Unlike the United States, United Kingdom, and Australian Censuses, Statistics Sweden does not classify the Swedish population by race or ethnicity. Other than self-identification there is thus no generally agreed upon definition of Swedes as an ethnic group. Nevertheless, it has been presented by Tore Modeen that the Swedish ethnic group is comprised of Swedes of mainland Sweden, Swedes in mainland Finland and Åland islander with self-goverment under the protectorate of Finland.
Until the 9th century, the Scandinavian people lived in small Germanic kingdoms and chiefdoms known as petty kingdoms. The Germanic tribe of the Swedes (; Old Norse: svíar) lived in Svealand, bordering the Geats to the south.
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Encyclopedia
Swedes are people from Sweden or of Swedish decent. Unlike the United States, United Kingdom, and Australian Censuses, Statistics Sweden does not classify the Swedish population by race or ethnicity. Other than self-identification there is thus no generally agreed upon definition of Swedes as an ethnic group. Nevertheless, it has been presented by Tore Modeen that the Swedish ethnic group is comprised of Swedes of mainland Sweden, Swedes in mainland Finland and Åland islander with self-goverment under the protectorate of Finland.
Until the 9th century, the Scandinavian people lived in small Germanic kingdoms and chiefdoms known as petty kingdoms. The Germanic tribe of the Swedes (; Old Norse: svíar) lived in Svealand, bordering the Geats to the south. The consolidation of Sweden was a long process, and later, as Sweden's borders fluctuated over the centuries, so did the use of the Swedish language as well as Swedish self-identification.
The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland trace back to the many centuries when Finland was an integral part of Sweden. Other groups have acquired Swedish identity; until 1658, when Scania became a possession of the Swedish Crown, the Scanians were a people of the Eastern Province of Denmark speaking a dialect belonging to the East-Danish dialect group. Similarly, groups like the Wallons settled in Sweden already in the 17th century, followed by many other groups in later periods. There are also several million people with (partly) Swedish ancestry in the United States following the large-scale emigration of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Geography
The largest area inhabited by Swedes, as well as the earliest known original area inhabited by their linguistic ancestors, is in the country of Sweden, situated on the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the islands adjacent to it, situated west of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. The Swedish-speaking people living in near-coastal areas on the north-eastern and eastern side of the Baltic Sea also have a long history of continuous settlement, which in some of these areas possibly started about a millennium ago. These people include the Swedish-speakers in mainland Finland - speaking Swedish dialect commonly referred as Finland Swedish (finlandssvenska which is part of East-Swedish dialect group) and the almost exclusively Swedish-speaking population of the Åland Islands speaking in a manner closer to the adjacent dialects in Sweden than to adjacent dialects of Finland Swedish. Smaller groups of historical descendants of 18th-20th century Swedish emigrants who still retain varying aspects of Swedish identity to this day can be found in the Americas (especially Minnesota and Wisconsin, see Swedish Americans) and in Ukraine.
Historically, the Kingdom of Sweden has been much larger than nowadays, especially during the "The Era of Great Power" (Swedish Empire) in 1611 - 1718. Finland belonged to Sweden until 1809. Since there was no separate Finnish nationality at those times, it is not unusual that sources predating 1809 refer both to Swedes and Finns as "Swedes". This is particularly the case with New Sweden, where some of the "Swedish" settlers were actually of Finnish origin.
Origin
The ancient Germanic tribe of the Suiones, sometimes called Svear in academic works, were at the roots of Swedish statehood and contemporary with the Geats and the Daner in Scandinavia. The roman bureaucrat and historian, Jordanes mentions in his work "Scandza" that these tribes are "the tallest of all men". He later mentions other Scandinavian tribes as being of the same highth. He also mentions that the Swedes outmatched the others in class: "Suetidi, cogniti in hac gente reliquis corpore eminentiores". Notably, in modern Scandinavian languages, with the exception of Icelandic, there is a distinction between svenskar and svear (as between danskar and Daner), since the latter term does not include the Geats and the Gotlanders and whose descendants became a part of the Swedish ethnicity.
According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms showed a noticeable genetic affinity between Swedes and central Europeans, especially Germans (conclusions also valid for Norwegians). For the global genetic make-up of the Swedish people and other peoples (see also and ). Another detailed nuclear genetic study has also implied that Swedes largely share genetics with Finns.
Famous Swedes
Swedes of international renown include Dag Hammarskjöld and Anders Nygren, film directors Ingmar Bergman and Victor Sjöström, actors Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Erland Josephson and Max von Sydow, entrepreneurs Gustaf Dalén, Lars Magnus Ericsson, Bertil Hult, Gustav de Laval, Ingvar Kamprad, Ivar Kreuger, Anders Winroth, Alfred Nobel, Erling Persson, Ruben Rausing, Axel Wenner-Gren and Niklas Zennström, musicians In Flames, Hammerfall, Pelle Almqvist, Benny Andersson, Jussi Björling, Birgit Nilsson, Neneh Cherry, Per Gessle, Jenny Lind and Nina Persson, scientists Hannes Alfvén, Arvid Carlsson, Carolus Linnaeus, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Kai Siegbahn and Anders Jonas Ångström, sportspeople Peter Forsberg, Björn Borg, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Jesper Parnevik, Lennart Skoglund, Ingemar Stenmark, Mats Sundin, Annika Sörenstam, Sven Tumba, Jan-Ove Waldner and Mats Wilander, and writers Selma Lagerlöf, Vilhelm Moberg, August Strindberg and Hjalmar Söderberg.
Ethnic Swedes and Swedish speakers outside of Sweden
In Finland
The Swedish-speaking Finns or Finland-Swedes form a minority group in Finland. The characteristic of this minority is debated: while some see it as an ethnic group of its own some view it purely as a linguistic minority of about 265,000, comprising 5.10% of the population of mainland Finland, or 5.50 % if the 26,000 inhabitants of Åland are included (there are also about 60,000 Swedish-speaking Finns currently resident in Sweden). However, members of this do not always self-identify themselves as ethnic Swedes. Moreover, it has been the presented that the ethnic group can also perceived as distinct Swedish-speaking nationality in Finland There are also 9,000 Swedish citizens living in Finland.
In Estonia and Ukraine
The presence of Swedish speaking permanent residents in what is now Estonia (Estonia-Swedes) was first documented in the 14th century, and possibly dates back to the Viking Age. There were an estimated 12,000 Swedes resident in Estonia in 1563 . Estonia was under Swedish rule 1558–1710, after which the territory was ceded to Russia in the 1721 Treaty of Nystad. In 1781, 1,300 Estonia-Swedes of the island of Hiiumaa (Dagö) were forced to move to New Russia (today Ukraine) by Catherine II of Russia, where they formed Gammalsvenskby (Old Swedish Village). According to the 1934 census there were 7,641 Estonia-Swedes (Swedish speaking, 0.7% of the population in Estonia), making Swedes the third largest national minority in Estonia, after Russians and Germans. During World War II almost the entire community of Estonia-Swedes fled to Sweden. Today there are, at most, a few hundred Estonia-Swedes living in Estonia and a few hundred in Ukraine, with the estimates varying widely depending on who identifies, or can be identified, as a Swede. Many of them are living in northwestern mainland Estonia and on adjacent islands and on the island of Ruhnu (Runö) in the Gulf of Riga.
The majority of the 'Estonia-Swedes' who reside in Estonia and most 'Ukraine-Swedes' do not speak Swedish any more, but may be considered ethnic Swedes. In a nationalist context, the ethnic Swedes living outside Sweden are sometimes called 'East-Swedes' (in Swedish: östsvenskar), to distinguish them from the ethnic Swedes living in Sweden proper, called rikssvenskar or västsvenskar ('Western-Swedes'), reflecting irredentist sentiments.
Other
The Varangians, Vikings mostly from Sweden, were instrumental in the formation of the first Russian state. These vikings called "Rus" (because of their origin from Roslagen) were described by the arabic traveller Ibn Fadlan: "I have seen the Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy".
Swedish soldiers taken prisoner during the Great Northern War were sent in considerable numbers to Siberia. They numbered perhaps 25 % of the population of Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia, and some settled permanently.
There are numerous ethnic Swedes in places like the US and Canada (i.e. Swedish Americans and Swedish Canadians), descendants of 19th and 20th century immigrants, including some who still speak Swedish. There are also Swedes located in St Petersburg, Russia and in Siberia.
See also
External links
- (humorous article, with some gross stereotypes and inaccuracies, but also some truths)
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- - Sweden's official website for tourism and travel information
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