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.
Scandinavia
The name Scandinavia originally referred to the former Danish, now Swedish, region of Scania. "Scandinavia" and "Scandinavian" entered usage in the late 18th century, being introduced by the early linguistic and cultural Scandinavist movement. The majority of the population of Scandinavia are descended from several North Germanic tribes who originally inhabited the southern part of Scandinavia and spoke a Germanic language that evolved into Old Norse. Icelanders and the Faroese are to a significant extent descended from the Norse and are therefore often seen as Scandinavian. Finland is mainly populated by Finns, with a minority of approximately 5% of Swedish speakers. A small minority of Sami people live in the extreme north of Scandinavia. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish languages form a dialect continuum and are known as the Scandinavian languages—all of which are considered mutually intelligible with one another. Faroese and Icelandic, sometimes referred to as insular Scandinavian languages, are intelligible in continental Scandinavian languages only to a limited extent. Finnish and Meänkieli are closely related to each other and more distantly to the Sami languages, but are entirely unrelated to the Scandinavian languages. Apart from these, German, Yiddish and Romani are recognized minority languages in parts of Scandinavia.