Sweden
The official language of Sweden is Swedish, a North Germanic language, related and very similar to Danish and Norwegian, but differing in pronunciation and orthography. Norwegians have little difficulty understanding Swedish, and Danes can also understand it, with slightly more difficulty than Norwegians. The same goes for standard Swedish speakers, who find it far easier to understand Norwegian than Danish. The dialects spoken in Scania, the southernmost part of the country, are influenced by Danish because the region traditionally was a part of Denmark and is nowadays situated closely to it. Sweden Finns are Sweden's largest linguistic minority, comprising about 5% of Sweden's population, and Finnish is recognised as a minority language. Owing to a recent influx of native speakers of Arabic in latter years, the use of Arabic is likely more widespread in the country than that of Finnish. However, no official statistics are kept on language use.
Mandatory Swedish
The status of Swedish as a national language in Finland is defined by the Finnish constitution. There was migration of Swedish-speaking peasants to some Finnish coastal areas during the Middle Ages. During this period, when Finland was ruled by Sweden, Swedish language became part of the culture in the coastal areas. Swedish was also the language of the ruling class. The Finnish language was forbidden an official status alongside Swedish until the period of Russian rule (1809–1917), in 1860. The autonomous Åland Islands (pop. 26,000, 95% Swedish, 5% Finnish) has only one official language, Swedish, and the speaking of Finnish between employees is forbidden in some public services.