Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language spoken natively by 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden, and in parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to some extent with Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is largely dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Written Norwegian and Danish are usually more easily understood by Swedish speakers than the spoken languages, due to the differences in tone, accent and intonation. Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It has the most speakers of the North Germanic languages. While being strongly related to its southern neighbour language German in vocabulary, the word order, grammatic system and pronunciation are vastly different.
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also referred to as the "Nordic languages", a direct translation of the most common term used among Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish scholars and laypeople.
Finland Swedish
Finland Swedish or Fenno-Swedish is a general term for the variety of Standard Swedish and a closely related group of Swedish dialects spoken in Finland by the Swedish-speaking population as their first language. Swedish in both its native and Finnish form are North Germanic, although pronunciations vary greatly from other Germanic languages due to the influence of Finnish phonology. As a result, while it shares almost full mutual intelligibility in the written language with Danish and Norwegian, the spoken Swedish language in Finland is further apart from the Scandinavian neighbours than the forms and dialects spoken in Sweden.
Swedish-speaking population of Finland
The Swedish-speaking population of Finland is a linguistic minority in Finland. They maintain a strong identity and are seen either as a separate ethnic group, while still being Finns, or as a distinct nationality. They speak Finland Swedish, which encompasses both a standard language and distinct dialects that are mutually intelligible with the dialects spoken in Sweden and, to a lesser extent, other Scandinavian languages.
Viking (barque)
Viking is a four-masted steel barque, built in 1906 by Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is reported to be the biggest sailing ship ever built in Scandinavia. In the 21st century her sailing days have drawn to a close, and she is moored as botel in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Anni Blomqvist
Anni Viktoria Karlsson was a Finland-Swedish novelist.
Ulla-Lena Lundberg
Ulla-Lena Lundberg is a Finland-Swedish author living in Porvoo, Finland. Her Swedish language books have been translated into several languages, including Finnish, Danish, German, Russian and Dutch.
Finnish language
Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. Finnish, along with Swedish, is an official language of Finland; Finnish is also an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both Standard Finnish and Meänkieli, its own language or a dialect of Finnish, are spoken. The Kven language, a dialect of Finnish or even a distinct language, is spoken in Northern Norway by a minority group of Finnish descent. The status of Kven and Meänkieli are debated.
Åland Islands
The Åland Islands or Åland is an archipelago province at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea belonging to Finland. It is autonomous, demilitarised and is the only monolingually Swedish-speaking region in Finland. It is the smallest region of Finland, constituting 0.49% of its land area and 0.50% of its population.
Norrland dialects
Norrland dialects is one of the six major dialect groupings of the Swedish language. It comprises the dialects in most of Norrland, except those of Gästrikland and southern Hälsingland, where Svealand Swedish is spoken. Local dialects from Härjedalen and northwest Jämtland, which traditionally are counted as variants of the Norwegian dialect of Trøndersk, are also excluded, while Jämtland dialects and other dialects of the region are considered to be true Norrland dialects.