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Swedification refers to the spread and/or imposition of the Swedish language, people and culture or policies which introduced these changes. In the context of Swedish expansion within Scandinavia, Swedification can refer to both the integration of Scania, Jemtland and Bohuslen in the 1600s and governmental policies regarding Sámi, Tornedalians and Finns during the 1800s and 1900s.
As part of the Treaty of Roskilde at the end of the Second Northern War, all areas in the historical region of Skåneland were ceded by Denmark-Norway to the Swedish Empire in early 1658. For the Swedish Empire, it was important to integrate these new subjects and to make the Scanians feel Swedish, rather than Danish. On 16 April 1658, representatives of Scania, Blekinge and Halland's nobility, citizens, clergy and peasants gathered in Malmö to swear fealty to Charles X Gustav. The king was not present but was represented by an empty chair surrounded by Swedish soldiers. [1]
In 1662, Sweden aligned taxes and regulations in Scania with other parts of Sweden. Some of the new rules were very different from previous Danish practice; for example, the lilla tullen ("the small customs"), which charged a tax for all goods brought into cities. Other changes required each city council to have least two Swedish-born members. At the same time, inhabitants of Scania received representation in the Riksdag, unlike other areas that had been conquered by the Swedish Empire. [2]
When Charles X Gustav landed in Helsingborg in 1658, he met Bishop Peder Winstrup from Lund on the pier, who became a driving force for the establishment of the University of Lund as a Swedish counterweight to the University of Copenhagen. In 1666, the former was established under the name "Regia Academia Carolina", and its official opening ceremony took place in January 1668.
About two decades after the Treaty of Roskilde, Sweden sought to more fully implement Scania, including enforcing changes to the church and local language. [3] In 1681, local priests aligned with the Church of Sweden and court documents and ecclesiastical correspondence increasingly adopted more standard Swedish grammatical features. [3]
During the Scanian War in the late 1670s, pro-Danish Snapphane fighters aided the Danish invasion. This led to a campaign to capture, torture and execute those who would not swear allegiance to the Swedish king. The policy was effective and by 1709 when Denmark again moved to invade Scania after the Battle of Poltava local militias resisted the effort. [4]
When the Scanian War began in 1675, some 180,000 people lived in Scania. By 1718, only 132,800 were left. Some snapphane fled to Denmark; some 30,000 Scanian boys were sent to the Swedish army, many of whom were relocated to the Baltics. At the same time, Swedes were encouraged to take over Scanian farms and marry Scanian women. [5]
Beginning in 1846, Sweden adopted policies designed to define and control its northern region, and to integrate its Sámi, Finnish and Tornedalian (often simply called Finns in older sources) populations with the Swedish nation. Although censuses began delineating among Sámi, Finns, and Swedes as early as 1805, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, these definitions changed based on language, occupation, religion, paternal line, and name. [6]
For Sámi, different groups were segregated into reindeer herders, who continued a more nomadic life and were considered less developed, and farmers who were deemed by the government to be Swedes and not Sámi. This Lapp skall vara Lapp (lit. 'Lapp shall be Lapp') policy forced different schooling on settled children versus nomadic children. [7] By the late 1800s, Swedish became the sole language of instruction in the Torne Valley, which was populated largely by Meänkieli speakers. [8] In the 1930s, boarding schools were set up for Tornedalian and Sámi children, where they were barred from speaking their native languages and encouraged to adopt "civilized" norms. [9] [10]
These Swedification policies ended in the late 1970s as Sweden officially recognized Sámi as an indigenous people of Sweden. In 2009, the Riksdag passed the Language Law ("Språklag" SFS 2009:600), which recognized Sámi languages and Meänkieli as official minority languages of Sweden, ensuring the right to use these languages in education and administrative proceedings. [11]
In 2020, Sweden funded the establishment of an independent truth commission to examine and document past abuse of Sámi by the Swedish state. [12] A parallel commission to examine past treatment of Tornedalians was also established. [13]
The demography of Sweden is monitored by the Statistiska centralbyrån. Sweden's population was 10,555,448, making it the 15th-most populous country in Europe after Czech Republic, the 10th-most populous member state of the European Union, and the 87th-most populous country in the world. The total fertility rate was rated at 1.66 in 2020, which is far below the replacement rate of 2.1.
The Sámi are the traditionally Sámi-speaking Indigenous peoples inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The region of Sápmi was formerly known as Lapland, and the Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders, but these terms are regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer their own endonym, e.g. Northern Sámi Sápmi. Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages, which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.
Östra Göinge Municipality is a municipality in Scania County in southern Sweden. Its seat is located in Broby.
Norrbotten County is the northernmost county or län of Sweden. It is also the largest county by land area, almost a quarter of Sweden's total area. It shares borders with Västerbotten County to the southwest, the Gulf of Bothnia to the southeast, the counties of Nordland and Troms in Norway to the northwest, and Lapland Province in Finland to the northeast.
Skåneland or Skånelandene (Danish) is a region on the southern Scandinavian peninsula. It includes the Swedish provinces of Blekinge, Halland, and Scania. The Danish island of Bornholm is traditionally also included. Skåneland has no official recognition or function and the term is not in common usage. Equivalent terms in English and Latin are "the Scanian Provinces" and "Terrae Scaniae" respectively. The term is mostly used in historical contexts and not in daily speech. In Danish, Skånelandene is used more often. The terms have no political implications as the region is not a political entity but a cultural region, without officially established administrative borders.
Sweden Finns are a Finnish-speaking national minority in Sweden.
The Treaty of Roskilde was negotiated at Høje Taastrup Church and signed (NS) during the Second Northern War between Frederick III of Denmark–Norway and Karl X Gustav of Sweden in the Danish city of Roskilde. After a devastating defeat, Denmark–Norway was forced to give up a third of its territory to save the rest, the ceded lands comprising Blekinge, Bornholm, Bohuslän (Båhuslen), Scania (Skåne) and Trøndelag, as well as her claims to Halland.
For hundreds of years up until the 18th century, the history of the province of Scania was marked by the struggle between the two Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden over the hegemony in the Baltic area.
Meänkieli, or Tornedalian is a Finnic language or a group of distinct Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost part of Sweden along the valley of the Torne River. Meänkieli is recognized in Sweden as country's five minority languages and is treated as a distinct language from Finnish, however its status as an independent Finnic language is sometimes disputed due to its mutual intelligibility with Finnish. According to the National Association of Swedish Tornedalians, 70,000 individuals are able to understand Meänkieli, at least to some level.
Meänmaa, or sometimes Torne Valley or Torne River Valley lies at the border of Sweden and Finland. It is named after the Torne River flowing through the valley and into the Gulf of Bothnia. Geographically the townships and municipalities that make up the area are Haparanda, Övertorneå, Pajala and Kiruna in Sweden, and Tornio, Ylitornio, Pello, Kolari, Muonio and Enontekiö in Finland. Culturally the highland Swedish municipality Gällivare is sometimes also considered part of Meänmaa due to the large share of Meänkieli-speaking population in it. Torne Valley should not be confused with Torne Valley Sub-region.
Tornedalians are an ethnic minority native to the Torne Valley (Meänmaa) region in northern Sweden and Finland. Tornedalians are since year 2000 a recognized national minority in Sweden. Tornedalians generally divide themselves into three distinct groups: Tornedalians, Kvens, and Lantalaiset.
In 1999, the Minority Language Committee of Sweden formally declared five official minority languages: Finnish, Sámi languages, Romani, Yiddish, and Meänkieli.
The Scanian War was a part of the Northern Wars involving the union of Denmark–Norway, Brandenburg and Sweden. It was fought from 1675 to 1679 mainly on Scanian soil, in the former Danish–Norwegian provinces along the border with Sweden, and in Northern Germany. While the latter battles are regarded as a theater of the Scanian war in English, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish historiography, they are seen as a separate war in German historiography, called the Swedish-Brandenburgian War.
Swedish is the official language of Sweden and is spoken by the vast majority of the 10.23 million inhabitants of the country. It is a North Germanic language and quite similar to its sister Scandinavian languages, Danish and Norwegian, with which it maintains partial mutual intelligibility and forms a dialect continuum. A number of regional Swedish dialects are spoken across the country. In total, more than 200 languages are estimated to be spoken across the country, including regional languages, indigenous Sámi languages, and immigrant languages.
Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne, is the southernmost of the historical provinces of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skåne County, created in 1997. Like the other historical provinces of Sweden, Scania still features in colloquial speech and in cultural references, and can therefore not be regarded as an archaic concept. Within Scania there are 33 municipalities that are autonomous within the Skåne Regional Council. Scania's largest city, Malmö, is the third-largest city in Sweden, as well as the fifth-largest in Scandinavia.
The relations between Denmark and Sweden span a long history of interaction. The inhabitants of each speak related North Germanic languages, which have a degree of mutual intelligibility. Both countries formed part of the Kalmar Union between 1397 and 1523, but there exists an inherited cultural competition between Sweden and Denmark. From 1448 to 1790 the two kingdoms went to war against each other at nearly every opportunity; in more than one case a new king tried to prove his worth by waging war on the other country for little or no political reason. Several Dano-Swedish wars took place between 1521 and 1814.
Joachim Gersdorff was a Danish politician, from 1650 to 1660 Steward of the Danish Realm. It was Gersdorff who negotiated the Treaty of Roskilde on Denmark's part during the Second Northern War, a war he had himself been in favour of entering. Through this treaty, which was concluded in Roskilde on 8 March 1658 (NS), the eastern Danish provinces of Scania, Halland, Blekinge and Bornholm were ceded to Sweden.
Birgitte "Brita" Scheel (1638–1699), was a Danish noblewoman who married a Danish nobleman who became Swedish with the annexation of Denmark's eastern provinces. For that reason, Birgitte belongs both to Danish and Swedish history, and her family lives on in the now Swedish province of Scania (Skåne).
Jens Mikkelsen Ehrenborg was a Danish soldier and public servant who later became a Swedish nobleman. He was born in 1621 in Fredericia in southern Jutland in Denmark. His name was also spelled Jöns Michelsson, Jens Michelsen or Jöns Michaelson. Upon his ennoblement in 1687, he was given the surname Ehrenborg.
The Swedification of Scania refers to the process in which the former Danish province of Scania was culturally and linguistically integrated and made into a part of the Swedish Empire, in the context of 17th century Swedish expansion within Scandinavia. Today, more than 300 years later, Scania is the southernmost part of Sweden.