Official minority languages of Sweden
Finnish has been spoken in Sweden ever since the (then provincial) borders were drawn in the 13th century. Sweden has always had a significant migration to and from Finland. As the two languages belong to different language families it is easy to distinguish them, unlike the neighbouring languages Norwegian and Danish. The number of Finnish speakers in Sweden today has been estimated to over 460,000. Even though many current Swedes are of full or mixed Finnish descent, Swedish is the main language in practice for many bilinguals.
Norsemen
On occasions Finland is also mentioned as a "Scandinavian country". The Finnish language is not Germanic or even Indo-European, but Finland was for around six centuries a part of Sweden (late 12th century to 1809), and around 6% of the Finnish population still use Swedish as their first language. In the Åland islands Swedish is by far the dominant language, seeing as how the population there are ethnic Swedes but belonging administratively to Finland since 1917. Elsewhere in Finland the share of Swedish-speaking people has been dropping ever since Finland gained independence in 1917, after the Russian Revolution. Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands are also geographically separate from the Scandinavian peninsula. The term "Nordic countries" is therefore used to encompass the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes and Finland.