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.
Languages of Sweden
Today there are about 470,000 Finnish-speakers in Sweden. Finnish, a Uralic language, has long been spoken in Sweden (the same holds true for Swedish in Finland, "see Finland-Swedes, Åland"), as Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom for centuries. Ethnic Finns (mainly first and second generation immigrants) constitute up to 5% of the population of Sweden. A high concentration of Finnish-speakers (some 16,000) resides in Norrbotten.