I'm like, yeah, Sweden used to own Finland... but after a couple of short centuries it wasn't that bad, really. Especially compared to Russian reign. Phew, now *that* was some shit.
@@yesterdaysrose5446 No, the russian years were the golden years. That's when all the best finnish writers, musicians, artists etc existed. Only like the last 20 years of russian rule sucked, when they tried lessening our autonomy.
@@Mr.Truxton Then again, the Grand Dutchy lasted for ~100 years. If 20 of those years sucked, and led to literally an assassination of a governor, I'd consider that particular period shaky at best. The fact that several prominent Finnish luminaries were present at the time, bolstering Finnish national identity in their own ways, was just a proof of the fact that the nationalist movement existed at the time and had up to that moment just been biding its time... and this was obviously not a proof that the Russians were particularly happy about that at the tiume. You know, because we know how that whole period ended. By contrast, considering Sweden decided to rule Finland since, around, like, 1200s, and had several governors who are still liked to this day ("at the time of the Count", anyone?) maybe that is still a significant point. How WOULD the Finnish history branched off if, before at some point in the 1700s-1800s, Finns would have told Swedes to kthxbye?
I, as a Finn, am actually quite pleased that we used to be a part of Sweden, as it in the end gave us a much more healthier model of government and of civil society than what we ever got from the goddamn Russians 🤮 Yeah, but please don't say "we owned you", since that would get even my blood boiling. 😀
Yeah, Swedish is still mandatory. Most of us still don't speak it though, either due to poor teaching, lack of interest or a mix of both. A commonly overlooked fact is that the Swedish-speaking finns have to learn Finnish in turn.
Not all of them do, which is the weird thing. In Åland (and I believe some of the primarily Swedish-speaking municipalities along the coast but don't quote me on that) Finnish has to be available as an elective from grade 5 onward, but isn't mandatory. A quirk of legislation that means learning Swedish is required of a larger percentage of Finns than learning Finnish.
@@akaittou Also I have never heard of any majority Swedish speaking municipality where the Fenno-Swedes don't HAVE TO learn Finnish. It definitely is mandatory (except ofc on Åland)
@@akaittou no we cannot choose if we want to study finnish. However I am sick and tired of this debate that we should make it optional (for both languages) we only get benefits from knowing another language.
No, they can go to a swedish speaking school. And in case they do, good. As finnish citisens they should as it's the 1st and by far the most widely smoken language here.
I don't agree with you on the English skills. Older generations can't speak English for sure, but most people can and they even have great pronunciation.
In my experience Finns (younger generations especially) can read and usually even write English really well. Finns often have a very strong accent when speaking though, that makes them pretty hard to understand for native English speakers, even if their grammar and vocabulary is usually quite good.
@@francoisdaureville323 He just generalized the whole country based on couple of Finnish-Swedish friends he has, which was very inaccurate and also quite insulting. I base my opinion on living in Finland all my life and actually talking with people here in English as well.
Yeah, many young (-30) Finnish people speak english with almost an American accent, probably due to the early age they start learning, english media, and the prevalence of international schools. Source: American who has lived in Joensuu, currently living in Helsinki
Finnish people are good at english, I understand everything 100% and I've seen english and american people with worse grammar, the thing is we can't just pronounce it correctly.
I'm a Finn living in Stockholm and I've met multiple Swedes who like you think that Finland being bilingual is a thing of the past. I have no idea how that has happened, Finland hasn't ever even been close to abandoning the official status of Swedish as the country's second language 🤷♂ ...then again, I've also met a lot of Swedes who don't know Finland isn't (yet) in NATO, uses Euro as the currency (been used since 1999), one didn't even know Finland is in the EU. I think in general many Swedes just don't know or care much about Finland - also I'm a little bit worried about the school system here 😅
Most Finns have a hard time speaking Swedish even though everyone must learn it at school. This is mostly due to a lack of interest in the subject. Most Finns are much better at English even though they are nervous/apprehensive about using it.
Yeah, mandatory classes. Doesn't mean you have to learn it, of course. :V Always kinda thought when I was at school, that if someone in Finland wants to speak to me, and they don't understand either Finnish or English, they're probably not even worth communicating with. In retrospect, it would have probably been a good idea to try to learn it anyway, even if I didn't use it. Oh well, too late now.
I learnd swedish between years 7-9 in primary school and all i can say is numbers. From my small group of friends i was best at swedish and worst at english😆.
Funnily enough after years of work at supposed Finnish only companies, I've ran numerous instances where I wish I did indeed learn some Swedish. Luckily a lot of swedes and Norwegians talk English too I suppose.
You might have a bit outdated or scewed idea of the speaking English thing. Almost all people I know (from age 40 and younger) speak at least decent English. Swedish on the other hand is pretty rare outside most Southern and Western Finland as we don't really have to use it at all in the East and North. Or even in the middle parts. We actually study more English than we do Swedish. English starts at third grade and Swedish starts in seventh grade. Some people have awful accents for sure (Rally English), and they might be a bit shy to speak English, but it's perfectly understandable for a native English speaker. At least that's what people from US and UK have told me. Can't remember if anyone from Australia has spoken to me about that
oh come on we understand English well but the problem comes from the pronunciation since English has so many sounds that Finnish doesn't have, we don't know how to move our mouth and tongue to make the sounds :D Btw the ones who speak good Swedish are called Finnishswedes or something like that in English, basically Finns but their mother tongue is Swedish and half of them don't know how to speak good Finnish, they live on the coast of Finland. The true like Finnish Finnish people don't understand Swedish at all because there is not much use for it in pretty much rest of the country even tho its still mandatory language in school.
@@coyotelong4349 Finns start learning English before Swedish, and only a tiny minority of the people who have to learn Swedish reach a level where it's anywhere close to being useful.
@@Cronin_ Well, kinda makes sense, since you live in Finland.... I really don't understand your point. Swedish is a second language here, finnish the first. Fenno-Swedes should have no issue with learning finnish, if you don't like it, move over to Sweden proper.
Your opinion about Finns' English language skills is just that: your opinion. I have my opinion about Swedes' skills. I was a Finn working in UK in an American international company. In one meeting there was some visitors from Göteborg (Gothenburg). I was amazed how bad their English was! I always thought Swedish can speak good English. And then, when there was a break, they started speaking Swedish and had a lot of negative opinions about their hosts. They didn't even realize that I understood everything they said! So our opinions are always reflecting our experiences and are not necessarily facts. Just sayin' :)
I had a Finnish professor in Ohio (graduate level for art education). I adored her, and her English was every bit as good as yours. She said she was surprised to meet me and find out I was a woman. Apparently, "Lauri" is a male name in Finland.
@@squidcaps4308 I am well aware, especially since my mother and grandmother were named Laura. However, here in the US we also have "Laurie" which is female. I have since found out that "Laurie" is a nickname for "Lawrence" in England, so the US is a little off. I have never in met life met a male "Laurie," but it is a common variant of "Laurel," also female. "Lauri" is extremely uncommon here.
During the Ahvenanmaa part his Swedish Ego was haemorrhaging. edit: It was all the time. Why the subtle inferiority complex? From the Vikings to the Empire into a paradise of integration and post-modernity.
That's kinda a low blow in my opinion too. But gotta get them views somehow I guess 🙄 (I'm saying this as I use the Finnish Countryball with a bottle of booze and a knife as my Avatar) 🤣 But to be serious, this IS kinda the reason why many Finns have the opinion of Swedes being arrogant. An opinion that from what I've learned over the internet is not that uncommon among the Nordics 🤷
The thing about finnish and english languages is that lot of (at least younger generation) people actually understand english perfectly well - but because the pronunciation of words between the two languages are so different, you can definitely recognize an english speaking Finn almost immediately. For someone who is a native Finn, I speak more english during the course of a week due to having friends all across the world - the finnish accent still seeps in and is very hard to get rid off. So yes, I agree - we're horrible at that.
I feel this far too much. I've been fluent in English by Finnish standards since grade 4 and have been working on my pronunciation actively ever since (some two decades) and I still sound off. I've avoided having a tankero-accent, but instead my English sounds like I'm drunk all the time.
The northern part never spoke swedish. Get your facts straight. And we speak really fluent English compared to many European countries. Your reaction just seems like a another danish who thinks he knows things but really hasn't traveled much
I don't like how he is acting like "omniscient". We still have a mandatory Swedish. Also Norway couldn't give us a Halti's peak. If you don't know anything about the subject, please refer it as such. That is how Putin started a war... Don't be a "simple".
Currently the Finnish passport is ranked 3rd tied with Italy Luxembourg and Spain with 189 visa free countries Swedish passport is on rank number 4 with Denmark having 188 vise free countries. The best passport currently is the Japanese passport witch has 192 visa free countries. Though the Finnish passport had 193 at the time Geography now made his video.
you used to own finland. what happened? well russia attacked and you lost to them and had to give up half of your land to russia. then we fought them and won and that's how we became independent ..
@@mixlllllll Yes, we did. That war lasted 1918-20. The peace treaty between Finland and soviet russia was signed in Tartu on 14th October 1920 - after 5 months of negotiations.
English Proficiency Index: 5. Sweden, 6. Finland (+almost even scores). Proficiency Band: "Very High Proficiency". I'm surprised a teacher didn't know it.
Also, Paul got it a little wrong with the war. Thousands of Swedes came to fight with us and we got military equipment from Sweden. You guys were obviously on our side.
Swedish being mandatory for everybody in Finland is a relatively modern thing (and a huge waste of time and resources, which could be used more usefully for studying more important languages). It only came with the new "peruskoulu" ("grundskola") during the 1970's. Before that most Finns never studied Swedish.
Actually Swedish is mandatory. Only difference is that it's not mandatory test at the end of high school. And it's more to do with Swedish being second official language than Sweden forcing us to study it. At least not after separation in 1809.
Just wanted to say that he showed 2 pictures of the same castle: olavinlinna and savonlinna. The official name of that castle is Olavinlinna and the city around it is called Savonlinna.
"Finland" (Österland) was an original and integral part of Sweden, right from the beginning. Turku (Åbo) was the 2. largest/important city in Sweden. Without Finland and the Finns there wouldn't have been any Sweden - and definitely not any Swedish "Empire". Many prominent "Swedes" were actually either ethnic Finns or born and raised in Finland. Many ignorant Swedes still make the mistake of believing, that the modern little Sweden is the same as the pre-1809 big Sweden ("Sweden" + "Finland") - and that the history and legacy of that big Sweden belong only for the modern little Swedes.
Currently the main differences between the visa requirements of Finnish and Swedish passports are Mongolia and Russia, with Finnish passport holders having a much easier time (they can obtain a visa on arrival to Mongolia and just fill an online form as a matter of course for Russia) while Swedish passport holders have to go through the entire bureaucratic process before even booking their tickets. That said, there have been times when a Finnish passport mean you didn't need any kind of visa to enter Russia, though I'm pretty sure that was a good while before the video here was made. It definitely was before Putin went noticeably mad with power, lol. Am I bitter that it's harder and harder to visit my grandmother's childhood home on the Karelian Isthmus because of one madman with too much power? YES. Absolutely.
It still is mandatory. There is even few citys in Finland where the majority of people has swedish as mother tongue. In the city where I live there are more swedish schools than finnish schools for example. There are people that never even learn finnish and live their whole life only speaking swedish in finland.
There are no "cities" in Finland with the Swedish-speaking majority - at least not by the official EU or historical/modern British criteria. They are mere towns.
@@timoterava7108 yeah, you are right. City and Town just is called the same in Finland so hence the confusion. Town is the right definision I was after in orginal post. 👍🏻
I have to remind that when Barby talked about castles in Finland, Savonlinna is not castle itself, its city but castle at Savonlinna is called "Olavinlinna"
Jag bor I Finland.. men jag tror inte att jag kan prata i svenska.. jag har glömt allt. However, I can hold a conversation in fluent English because I use it every day =)
There's about a 5% minority of Swedish-speaking Finns. They speak Swedish as their mother tongue. In the Helsinki area you may also bump into people who talk adequate 'school Swedish', but if you travel about 50 km north, you'll be lucky to find any. Despite the fact that we do still have the mandatory (or compulsory, as many Finns like to say) Swedish in our schedule. However, if you happen to meet me when you come to Finland, I'll be really happy to practice my school Swedish with you! :D Although I'm pretty sure, that after 3 minutes you'd rather change into English.
Sadly we never got the peak because it would have been against Norwegian constitution to give away sovereign land or something like that. We still appreciate the thought
Haha, when it comes to english skills, you’ve just met the wrong people. But our accent is kinda hard to get rid off as finnish is finnougrig language family and totally different from english. Aaaanyways, I would say that most finns speak okayish english but as any language, you will only master it if you actually use it more often.
The funny thing is, that the Most UNILINGUAL towns/municipalities in Finland are SWEDISH language municipalities. Sottunga (in Åland islands) is the MOST unilingual. The most unilingual in the mainland is Larsmo (Österbotten/Ostrobothnia). Of course there are several municipalities in eastern Finland that have no native Swedish speaker residents. But all of those mucipalities have native speakers of OTHER, foreign languages, this makes them less unilingual.
Santa Claus (Joulupukki) lives in Finland yes. We still say he lives in Korvatunturi (tunturi is a small mountain or something. Not sure how to say it in english) but it is not a good place for tourists to travel, so Santa works in Rovaniemi these days. :)
Swedish language in Finland was not introduced or upheld by force. We´ve had immigrants from Sweden since the 1200s, resulting in many western and southern coastal populations being partly or entirely swedish speaking. This can be seen even today. Going back further, there has been some mixing of populations here since the ice-age ended, between germanic and baltic-finnish tribes. Throughout there has been trade between Finland, Sweden and Estonia (none of which existed as nations during the neolithic, but you get the point). Absolutely no surprise there are germanic/fennic bilingual people in Finland. Though from time to time there has been politics involved as well, but it has not made a huge difference in how many people speak what languages. It´s quite organic.
It's still mandatory to tach Swedish, it's Finland's second official language and there's a minority of around 5% that speak Swedish as their mother tongue. Every government official papers need to be available in Swedish, and we have the right to be served in Swedish in government-backed and funded places like hospitals and schools etc. I for example did my whole primary school (grund skolan) in Swedish and my sister is doing university in Swedish as well. Swedish in Finland is a remnant of the 600 years Finland was a part of Sweden.
Great video! I partially agree on the english skills of Finnish people. I recently moved to Finland and most people are rather hesitant to speak English. They do know how to speak, but I think the Finns are affraid to mispronounce the English words, so they rather not speak English.
Yep. I would say like half of us has some kind of trauma from english classes. When i was in school nothing and i mean nothing was more important than british pronounciation. You would get constantly interrupted and corrected between sentences. Some got over it by not trying to pronounce anything anymore only learning vocab and grammar.
In my anecdotal experience, everyone in Finland knows English to be able to hold a conversation, but can't save their lives to converse in Swedish. But it might be an artifact of living in eastern Finland? ...or just coincidental anecdotal evidence.
It's funny that the "wife-carrying competition" is often mentioned in RUclips videos about Finland. I have lived in Finland for more than 50 years, and I have never seen that competition live. It's a curiosity, like swamp soccer and a cell phone throwing competition. Actually, the most popular sports in Finland are ice hockey and formula 1. In addition, we have a national game called pesäpallo, which is little bit similar to American baseball.
Mandatory Swedish teaching: It's a relic from the centuries, when Finland was a part of Sweden. Back then Swedish was, obviously, a language of the state, and it remains so to this day.
I wish that Murmansk Karelia Leningrad Saint Petersburg Novgorod Tver Arkhangelsk Vologda and Komi belongs to Finland. This version of Finland would be called Greater Finland. Finland area: 786,978 sq miles Population: 280,000,000 3.59% Demographics 99.98% white Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 186,600,000 20-84 36% 100,800,000 85 and older 4% 11,200,000 Estonia area: 38,905 sq miles Population 62,000,000 0.79% 0-19 60% 37,200,000 20-84 35% 21,700,000 85 and older 5% 3,100,000 Sweden has all of Norway Sweden area: 322,589 sq miles Population 281,000,000 3.59% of the world population 0-19 60% 186,600,000 20-84 35% 98,350,000 85 and older 5% 14,050,000 Norway would be a very large island and have a large population Norway area: 339,000 sq miles Population 281,000,000 3.59% of the world population Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 186,600,000 20-84 36% 101,160,000 85 and older 4% 11,240,000 Latvia Population 30,000,000 0.38% of the world population Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 18,000,000 20-84 36% 10,800,000 85 and older 4% 1,200,000 Lithuania population 29,000,000 0.37% of the world Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 17,400,000 20-84 38% 11,200,000 85 2% 580,000 Iceland population 80,000,000 1.04% of the world population 0-19 60% 48,000,000 20-84 36% 28,800,000 85 and older 4% 3,200,000 Denmark population 6,000,000 0.08% of the world population Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 3,600,000 20-84 35% 2,100,000 85 and older 5% 300,000 0-19 684,000,000 65.21% 20-84 374,910,000 30.59% 85 and older 44,870,000 4.20% Total population 1,0490,000,000 they would be 13.43% of the world population Canada population 385,000,000 5.00% of the world population Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 231,000,000 20-84 36% 138,600,000 85 and older 4% 15,400,000 Greenland population 230,000,000 3.00% of the world population Age Pyramid 0-19 60% 138,000,000 20-84 35% 80,500,000 85 and older 5% 11,500,000 These two countries will be one country with Vikings These eight countries with Canada and Greenland will be one country with Vikings. Vikings population 1,664,000,000 Total Population 18.49% Demographics Non-Hispanic White 98% Native American 1.50% Asian 0.25% Racial mixed 0.10% Black 0.10% Pacific Islander 0.05% Religion Christianity 97% Jews 1% Native American faiths 1% Paganism 0.50% Atheist agnostic and irreligion 0.40% Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Sikhism 0.08% Satanism 0.01% Islam and Druzism 0.01% Total age pyramid 0-19 1,053,000,000 63.87% Demographics 99.50% white 20-84 594,010,000 35.7% Demographics 98.00% white 85 and older 71,770,000 0.43% Demographics 99.50% white Languages Old Norse English Sami Languages Afrikaans German French Gaelic Native American Languages Russian Chinese Japanese Korean Thai Vietnamese Hebrew and Arabic. I wish this was real life not fantasy Vikings education will be like Finland students celebrate graduation for 31 days for every grade School schedule Students go to school 4 days of the week Winter Break 31 days Homework is only ten minutes long Super big fat tests are only at the end of the year. Summer vacation is 4 months In school children and staff alike celebrate their birthday at school during lunch before or after lunch or both or at field trips. Students can enjoy school activities like playing outside play pool watch tv play video games do sports in class breaks for 30 minutes if students get work done early they can enjoy the whole day off doing school activities or go on field trips the whole day. If you do summer school students can enjoy longer class breaks. After school clubs and activities are 4 hours School hours 8:00-1:00 After school hours 1:00-5:00 Taxes will be the same as in the United Arab Emirates. I wish this was real life not fantasy Old Norse still exist on the earth.
We don't teach swedish because of Sweden. Its a part of the history yes, but it has nothing to do with the Scandinavian countries and communication. (The Finnish land was swedish before becoming Russian, that's why swedish is a part of us) So a long time ago a pig part of Finnish elite, spoke Swedish. I'm a Swedish speaking Finn. (Or I'm bilingual by birth) my mother could only speak swedish when she was young. (Born and raised in Finland) We have two official languages. Finnish and Swedish.
I am a Finn and I can say my English is excellent, but that is because I've had one major advantage: when I was 11-12 my family lived in the United States for a year and that was the best intensive course in English language I could ever hope to get. I went to a school where no one spoke Finnish, all my friends there only spoke English, all the TV shows, movies etc were in English. I learned so much in just one year, after that it was literally the easiest subject in school for me. I did not need to put any effort to get good grades. Plus of course decades of playing games, reading, writing etc in English has honed my language skills.
He didn't say anything about the english being good in finland or anything. He just stated that finns can speak english and keep up te conversation. Your random outburst is true, but it didn't have a single point. What were you trying to counter argument?
as im finnish, we were taught swedish because its our second language.. however i always refused to learn it because it sounds so stupid and annoying :DDD (peace to swedish people:D) and nowadays most i can say in "swedish is hej, jag heter homo peter" XD
There is not a huge difference between Scandinavia and Finland. My friends from foreign countries visited all the Nordic countries and told the only difference is the language. Actually everybody speaks english in Finland and very well. By the way Finland was NEVER a part of Soviet union. Finland was fighting against Soviet and retained it's independence and freedom. Finland has not post Soviet buildings. They are from Russian Empire of tsar area and not many of them.
You speak very good English. In a matter of fact better English than 99% of Swedish, and also Finnish to be honest. But you don't represent whole Sweden or oppose whole Finland. What he meant is that you can generally ask anyone in Finland something in English and he at least understands the question and can guide or give an answer. I believe that the best English as their not native language speaking country in the world is Netherlands.
in Vaasa, they speak Swedish parts of Espoo and in Kauniainen they speak Swedish. My Grandmother was a war child in Sweden, so her Swedish was great. In some schools they still require Swedish then you can choose another one, and most do English.
Finland's alcohol consumption has gone drastically down in 20 years. Watch the statistics in the video " Country alcohol consumption comparison." In Europe Finland's alcohol consumption is in the middle. In Europe the highest alcohol consumption countries are: The 1st Moldova. The 2nd Lithuania. The 3rd Chechia and the 4th Germany. For instance Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Switzerland Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Andorra, Serbia, Poland, Belarus etc. are ahead of Finland.
Great video! And honestly your English is pretty good! If you want, there's another channel like this called Geofocus. It's not as in-depth as Geography Now, but it's still pretty interesting, and some videos are more up to date. I think watching them in combination with Geography Now would give a lot more info. But hey, you do you!
Finn here. I have heard that foreigners have a hard time learning Finnish as Finns will switch to English so easily once they learn that the other person isn't that good at Finnish. There are ~6 million Finnish speaking people worldwide, so our language is rather rare. Because of this, mostly all dubbed shows/movies are the ones made for kids. We are surrounded by English from young age on. Even Clash of Clans, a Finnish mobile game, didn't have Finnish language as an option for years.
The whole Nordic vs Scandinavian debate perplexes me. I totally get why Finland would be excluded, but other exclusionary arguments make no sense. I see it through three possible definitions for "Scandinavian": 1. Geography - the Scandinavian Peninsula, a peninsula on a peninsula that includes two countries Norway and Sweden. 2. Language & Culture - the Scandinavian cultures united in a shared history and linguistic origin that includes Norway, Sweden, Denmark as well as their former and current colonies Iceland and the Faroe Islands with Greenland having a loose connection. 3. Heritage - Those of Norse/Scandinavian heritage which includes Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders, as well as those living in England (Danish heritage from previous occupation), and in the Normandy region of France (Norwegian heritage from previous occupation). It's weird to me how Iceland is not included despite their language being directly from the original common language of Scandinavia Old Norse with most indigenous Icelanders being of direct Norwegian heritage. If you do a DNA test there is no distinction between Iceland and Norway. It's all Norwegian. Same with Faroe Islanders who are still under Danish occupation. Culturally speaking Scandinavian should be a term applied to ethnic Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Icelanders, and Faroe Islanders. Finns are of a separate culture closer to Baltic cultures than to Scandinavians or Russians which would also include the Saami people of Northern Norway. They too are closer to Finns than they are to Scandinavians despite living in a Scandinavian region.
Thanks Michael for nice video. Swedish was mandatory and is taught in "grundskola" 7-9 grades in my time, but nowadays it is from grade 6 to 9, so there is more swedish now than in 90's. Swedish is our second official language. Sweden influences more to Finland than Finland to Sweden. Your Kings and Queens are a bit ours aswell, we look up to swedish in social skills, marketing, customer relations and pop culture. We are eastern brothers of Nordics and only other we see is Sweden, rest are quite far away. Of course we joke and fight with each others like brothers do, but at the end of the day, we are good together.
The real Santa Clause (Saint Nicholas of Myrna) is from modern day Turkey. But in Finland there is one place where it is often told that Santa Claus lives. To my knowledge Swedish is still taught in Finnish School (though I‘m not from finland, so I‘m not 100% sure). And I would love to see a reaction to Geography Now Switzerland some day.
Actually santa Claus and the „Nikolaus“ as we Call it in germany are Different people (I’m not 100% sure but it would make sense since we have different festivities for them)
@@finnxd3270 Nowadays they have differences, but Santa Claus, Nikolaus, Samichlaus, Sinterklaas etc. are all based on Saint Nicholas of Myrna. Originally they are all the same, just for some reason the originally american Santa Claus became a part of christmas instead of having his own day on december 6th. I mean it would also be a pretty big and weird coincidence if they had nothing to do with one another. They have almost the same name (all the names translate to something like Saint Nicholas or Saint Claus), are dressed pretty similar, they bring gifts and their celebrations take place in the same month.
@@robertbretschneider765 I checked again. I couldn‘t find something about Nicholas of Smyrna, but I noticed I made a little mistake: It‘s Nicholas of Myra, not Myrna.
I don't know many people that speak Swedish fluently here in Lapland but most people speak pretty good English tbf. Don't know how it is in southern Finland. We rely so much on tourism that if you don't speak good English, it's hard to find work here. Swedish doesn't matter nearly as much, even Russian is considered more useful.
At the age of 22, what ive seen and heard through my life i would say that we finns speak english better than we do speak swedish. Yes this is only based on the thousands of finnish people ive yet met either irl or online, but i think that the few finns that learned good enough swedish in school to hold conversations were either pressured by their parents to learn it or they had an interest to actually learn the language themselves, which i can say doesnt happen too much. P.S, its the middle aged finns or older that cant speak english that well. Talk to anyone between their 20s-30s and you can have a solid conversation in english 95% of the time. my english is not perfect pls dont hate me for it lol
You are one lucky Swede... Because I was occupied during the video and couldn't angrily respond to your comments on our English skills. You saved yourself at the end by pointing out you weren't completely serious about it.
There are other areas that are Finnish-Swedish... Half of my friends speak Swedish and most know enough to not get in trouble. But.. all of my friends are quite fluent in English, but to be fair my friends maybe are not average in that sense. The west coast has Swedish speakers from Turku to Kokkola (Ostrobothnia, in the other side of the ditch is Swedens Västerbotten).
Liked just because for the Nordic, not Scandinavian part. So important! And yeah, we have to learn Swedish, it is and official language in Finland still. Even though vast majority of us never use it in daily life.
I totally agree on the finglish. Everybody says: "Oh yeah, us Finns speak better english than most Americans". OH REALLY? Then why won't you watch this 2 minute video that has no subtitles in it...
Finns are not drunk ppl Watch the statistics in The video " Country alcohol consumption comparison." In Europe the highest alcohol consumption countries are: The 1st Moldova, the 2 nd Lithuania, the 3rd Chechia and the 4th Germany. Finland is in the middle even under. Forinstance Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, UK, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal, Belarus, Cypros, Serbia etc. are ahead of Finland. Finland's alcohol consumption has dropped drasticly down in 10 years.
![Teacher Reacts To "Geography Now - Japan" [WEIRD COUNTRY]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sSlwo5DFII4/mqdefault.jpg)
![Teacher Reacts To "Geography Now - Japan" [WEIRD COUNTRY]](/img/tr.png)
First he dares to insult our English skills and then he misspells sauna...
A little advice: As a Swede, never say to a Finn "we used to own you", it's a sure way to get rid of your front teeth. Just saying..
yeah if i ever see this guy he will need a surgery.
I'm like, yeah, Sweden used to own Finland... but after a couple of short centuries it wasn't that bad, really. Especially compared to Russian reign. Phew, now *that* was some shit.
@@yesterdaysrose5446 No, the russian years were the golden years. That's when all the best finnish writers, musicians, artists etc existed. Only like the last 20 years of russian rule sucked, when they tried lessening our autonomy.
@@Mr.Truxton Then again, the Grand Dutchy lasted for ~100 years. If 20 of those years sucked, and led to literally an assassination of a governor, I'd consider that particular period shaky at best.
The fact that several prominent Finnish luminaries were present at the time, bolstering Finnish national identity in their own ways, was just a proof of the fact that the nationalist movement existed at the time and had up to that moment just been biding its time... and this was obviously not a proof that the Russians were particularly happy about that at the tiume. You know, because we know how that whole period ended.
By contrast, considering Sweden decided to rule Finland since, around, like, 1200s, and had several governors who are still liked to this day ("at the time of the Count", anyone?) maybe that is still a significant point.
How WOULD the Finnish history branched off if, before at some point in the 1700s-1800s, Finns would have told Swedes to kthxbye?
I, as a Finn, am actually quite pleased that we used to be a part of Sweden, as it in the end gave us a much more healthier model of government and of civil society than what we ever got from the goddamn Russians 🤮
Yeah, but please don't say "we owned you", since that would get even my blood boiling. 😀
There's a saying in Finland when it comes to ice hockey ''doesn't matter who wins as long as Sweden loses''
suomi perkele
Yeah, Swedish is still mandatory. Most of us still don't speak it though, either due to poor teaching, lack of interest or a mix of both.
A commonly overlooked fact is that the Swedish-speaking finns have to learn Finnish in turn.
Not all of them do, which is the weird thing. In Åland (and I believe some of the primarily Swedish-speaking municipalities along the coast but don't quote me on that) Finnish has to be available as an elective from grade 5 onward, but isn't mandatory. A quirk of legislation that means learning Swedish is required of a larger percentage of Finns than learning Finnish.
@@akaittou Me living in Österbotten/Pohjanmaa had to start learning Finnish from 1st grade. I hated it.
@@akaittou Also I have never heard of any majority Swedish speaking municipality where the Fenno-Swedes don't HAVE TO learn Finnish. It definitely is mandatory (except ofc on Åland)
@@akaittou no we cannot choose if we want to study finnish. However I am sick and tired of this debate that we should make it optional (for both languages) we only get benefits from knowing another language.
No, they can go to a swedish speaking school. And in case they do, good. As finnish citisens they should as it's the 1st and by far the most widely smoken language here.
I don't agree with you on the English skills. Older generations can't speak English for sure, but most people can and they even have great pronunciation.
I think your group of friends doesnt represent a whole country where is thr proof of that?? Do you know most finnish people?? I doubt it
In my experience Finns (younger generations especially) can read and usually even write English really well. Finns often have a very strong accent when speaking though, that makes them pretty hard to understand for native English speakers, even if their grammar and vocabulary is usually quite good.
Some just have this strong accent. Few had said that I sound like Hydraulic Press Channel guy :)
@@francoisdaureville323 He just generalized the whole country based on couple of Finnish-Swedish friends he has, which was very inaccurate and also quite insulting. I base my opinion on living in Finland all my life and actually talking with people here in English as well.
Yeah, many young (-30) Finnish people speak english with almost an American accent, probably due to the early age they start learning, english media, and the prevalence of international schools. Source: American who has lived in Joensuu, currently living in Helsinki
Finnish people are good at english, I understand everything 100% and I've seen english and american people with worse grammar, the thing is we can't just pronounce it correctly.
If you speak rally-english, that is correct.
But if youve learnt english well enough, english pronounciations arent an issue.
In Estonia we tell our children that Santa lives in Finland/Lapland
based
He does
You would even if no one else believes it! Estonia is our biggest cheerleader 😘
well, thats how the story goes. good job eesti
love yall
This dude sounds so condescending as if Sweden is superior lol
I'm a Finn living in Stockholm and I've met multiple Swedes who like you think that Finland being bilingual is a thing of the past.
I have no idea how that has happened, Finland hasn't ever even been close to abandoning the official status of Swedish as the country's second language 🤷♂
...then again, I've also met a lot of Swedes who don't know Finland isn't (yet) in NATO, uses Euro as the currency (been used since 1999), one didn't even know Finland is in the EU. I think in general many Swedes just don't know or care much about Finland - also I'm a little bit worried about the school system here 😅
Vi måste tala, prata, mera på svenska.
Most Finns have a hard time speaking Swedish even though everyone must learn it at school. This is mostly due to a lack of interest in the subject. Most Finns are much better at English even though they are nervous/apprehensive about using it.
Yeah swedish is mandatory. And because of it, I can understand when a swedish-speaking finn speaks to me, but not swedes, danish, norwegians etc
I never leared swedish at all
Yeah, mandatory classes.
Doesn't mean you have to learn it, of course. :V
Always kinda thought when I was at school, that if someone in Finland wants to speak to me, and they don't understand either Finnish or English, they're probably not even worth communicating with.
In retrospect, it would have probably been a good idea to try to learn it anyway, even if I didn't use it. Oh well, too late now.
I tried to learn. But just could not. And thats funny because now days i understand Japanese better than Swedish😅😂
I learnd swedish between years 7-9 in primary school and all i can say is numbers. From my small group of friends i was best at swedish and worst at english😆.
Funnily enough after years of work at supposed Finnish only companies, I've ran numerous instances where I wish I did indeed learn some Swedish. Luckily a lot of swedes and Norwegians talk English too I suppose.
You might have a bit outdated or scewed idea of the speaking English thing. Almost all people I know (from age 40 and younger) speak at least decent English. Swedish on the other hand is pretty rare outside most Southern and Western Finland as we don't really have to use it at all in the East and North. Or even in the middle parts. We actually study more English than we do Swedish. English starts at third grade and Swedish starts in seventh grade. Some people have awful accents for sure (Rally English), and they might be a bit shy to speak English, but it's perfectly understandable for a native English speaker. At least that's what people from US and UK have told me. Can't remember if anyone from Australia has spoken to me about that
oh come on we understand English well but the problem comes from the pronunciation since English has so many sounds that Finnish doesn't have, we don't know how to move our mouth and tongue to make the sounds :D
Btw the ones who speak good Swedish are called Finnishswedes or something like that in English, basically Finns but their mother tongue is Swedish and half of them don't know how to speak good Finnish, they live on the coast of Finland. The true like Finnish Finnish people don't understand Swedish at all because there is not much use for it in pretty much rest of the country even tho its still mandatory language in school.
Yeah it doesn’t help that English and Finnish are such different languages
That said, so many Finns knowing Swedish should help with learning English
@@coyotelong4349 i wouldnt also say that many Finns know Swedish 😂 way more speak better English
@@coyotelong4349 Finns start learning English before Swedish, and only a tiny minority of the people who have to learn Swedish reach a level where it's anywhere close to being useful.
@@Cronin_ Well, kinda makes sense, since you live in Finland.... I really don't understand your point. Swedish is a second language here, finnish the first. Fenno-Swedes should have no issue with learning finnish, if you don't like it, move over to Sweden proper.
im a swedish speaking fin. and still i speak rallyenglish
Your opinion about Finns' English language skills is just that: your opinion. I have my opinion about Swedes' skills. I was a Finn working in UK in an American international company. In one meeting there was some visitors from Göteborg (Gothenburg). I was amazed how bad their English was! I always thought Swedish can speak good English. And then, when there was a break, they started speaking Swedish and had a lot of negative opinions about their hosts. They didn't even realize that I understood everything they said! So our opinions are always reflecting our experiences and are not necessarily facts. Just sayin' :)
Norway didn't give us the peak due to their constitution to make such a move. Nice thought nevertheless.
"We used to own you then something happened i don't remember" and you call yourself a teacher lmao
he's not an history teacher
@@mixlllllll Obviously...
no one in europe tells their children santa is from north pole thats an american thing. europeans know hes from finland.
When did we even decide this? Because historically our "santa" is some kind of goat person. The guy in red/St Nikolaus is a southern tradition.
I had a Finnish professor in Ohio (graduate level for art education). I adored her, and her English was every bit as good as yours. She said she was surprised to meet me and find out I was a woman. Apparently, "Lauri" is a male name in Finland.
The creator of the Hydraulic Press Channel here on RUclips is called Lauri.
Lauri is male, Laura is female.....
@@squidcaps4308 I am well aware, especially since my mother and grandmother were named Laura. However, here in the US we also have "Laurie" which is female. I have since found out that "Laurie" is a nickname for "Lawrence" in England, so the US is a little off. I have never in met life met a male "Laurie," but it is a common variant of "Laurel," also female. "Lauri" is extremely uncommon here.
NO, i'd say the opposite, finnish people under 30 are mostly fluent in english, but most cant even think of a sentence in swedish
Finnic/(sh) tribes ruled most of sweden before Sweden was a thing, too. So we owned you first.
During the Ahvenanmaa part his Swedish Ego was haemorrhaging. edit: It was all the time. Why the subtle inferiority complex? From the Vikings to the Empire into a paradise of integration and post-modernity.
Drunk people? Really? And you're a teacher..? Stay classy Sweden
+1
That's kinda a low blow in my opinion too. But gotta get them views somehow I guess 🙄
(I'm saying this as I use the Finnish Countryball with a bottle of booze and a knife as my Avatar) 🤣
But to be serious, this IS kinda the reason why many Finns have the opinion of Swedes being arrogant. An opinion that from what I've learned over the internet is not that uncommon among the Nordics 🤷
The Sweden Finland relationship sounds a lot like the New Zealand Australia relationship 🤣🤣 (I'm a New Zealander)
The thing about finnish and english languages is that lot of (at least younger generation) people actually understand english perfectly well - but because the pronunciation of words between the two languages are so different, you can definitely recognize an english speaking Finn almost immediately.
For someone who is a native Finn, I speak more english during the course of a week due to having friends all across the world - the finnish accent still seeps in and is very hard to get rid off.
So yes, I agree - we're horrible at that.
I feel this far too much. I've been fluent in English by Finnish standards since grade 4 and have been working on my pronunciation actively ever since (some two decades) and I still sound off. I've avoided having a tankero-accent, but instead my English sounds like I'm drunk all the time.
I speak English fluently, but with accent. I don`t even want to get rid of it. As long as it`s not "rally-English", I`m okay.
The younger people are the better is the accent.
It's because huge immmersion influence of youtube.
The northern part never spoke swedish. Get your facts straight. And we speak really fluent English compared to many European countries. Your reaction just seems like a another danish who thinks he knows things but really hasn't traveled much
I don't like how he is acting like "omniscient". We still have a mandatory Swedish. Also Norway couldn't give us a Halti's peak. If you don't know anything about the subject, please refer it as such. That is how Putin started a war... Don't be a "simple".
Currently the Finnish passport is ranked 3rd tied with Italy Luxembourg and Spain with 189 visa free countries Swedish passport is on rank number 4 with Denmark having 188 vise free countries. The best passport currently is the Japanese passport witch has 192 visa free countries. Though the Finnish passport had 193 at the time Geography now made his video.
you used to own finland. what happened? well russia attacked and you lost to them and had to give up half of your land to russia. then we fought them and won and that's how we became independent ..
Finland didn't fight Russia for independence...that's was almost twenty years later.
@@mixlllllll Yes, we did. That war lasted 1918-20. The peace treaty between Finland and soviet russia was signed in Tartu on 14th October 1920 - after 5 months of negotiations.
Most Finns can speak really good english, just the pronunciation is very literal to our language.
English Proficiency Index: 5. Sweden, 6. Finland (+almost even scores). Proficiency Band: "Very High Proficiency".
I'm surprised a teacher didn't know it.
Also, Paul got it a little wrong with the war. Thousands of Swedes came to fight with us and we got military equipment from Sweden. You guys were obviously on our side.
Swedish is still mandatory as it's our second official language
Swedish being mandatory for everybody in Finland is a relatively modern thing (and a huge waste of time and resources, which could be used more usefully for studying more important languages). It only came with the new "peruskoulu" ("grundskola") during the 1970's. Before that most Finns never studied Swedish.
Actually Swedish is mandatory. Only difference is that it's not mandatory test at the end of high school. And it's more to do with Swedish being second official language than Sweden forcing us to study it. At least not after separation in 1809.
Just wanted to say that he showed 2 pictures of the same castle: olavinlinna and savonlinna. The official name of that castle is Olavinlinna and the city around it is called Savonlinna.
It’s a cool castle btw
Norway did not give the mountain to finland due to 2 reasons
1. Legal reasons
2. Russia
"Finland" (Österland) was an original and integral part of Sweden, right from the beginning. Turku (Åbo) was the 2. largest/important city in Sweden. Without Finland and the Finns there wouldn't have been any Sweden - and definitely not any Swedish "Empire".
Many prominent "Swedes" were actually either ethnic Finns or born and raised in Finland.
Many ignorant Swedes still make the mistake of believing, that the modern little Sweden is the same as the pre-1809 big Sweden ("Sweden" + "Finland") - and that the history and legacy of that big Sweden belong only for the modern little Swedes.
Finnish speaks usually a good English.. But we just don't like talk with Swedish.. 😜😂
Oh dude, you teaching us something just seconds before the person in the vid mentions it is what I'm here for! Awesome channel
Learning Swedish is still mandatory in school here😄
Currently the main differences between the visa requirements of Finnish and Swedish passports are Mongolia and Russia, with Finnish passport holders having a much easier time (they can obtain a visa on arrival to Mongolia and just fill an online form as a matter of course for Russia) while Swedish passport holders have to go through the entire bureaucratic process before even booking their tickets. That said, there have been times when a Finnish passport mean you didn't need any kind of visa to enter Russia, though I'm pretty sure that was a good while before the video here was made. It definitely was before Putin went noticeably mad with power, lol.
Am I bitter that it's harder and harder to visit my grandmother's childhood home on the Karelian Isthmus because of one madman with too much power? YES. Absolutely.
It still is mandatory. There is even few citys in Finland where the majority of people has swedish as mother tongue. In the city where I live there are more swedish schools than finnish schools for example. There are people that never even learn finnish and live their whole life only speaking swedish in finland.
As for the last part that's basically me😅 I have tried to learn Finnish but I just can't
There are no "cities" in Finland with the Swedish-speaking majority - at least not by the official EU or historical/modern British criteria. They are mere towns.
@@timoterava7108 Parainen is classified as City, even tho it's more like a town. So atleast one "City" that has a majority Swedish speaking.
@@pallethecop Parainen is not a city but a town - unless you are an American.
@@timoterava7108 yeah, you are right. City and Town just is called the same in Finland so hence the confusion. Town is the right definision I was after in orginal post. 👍🏻
I have to remind that when Barby talked about castles in Finland, Savonlinna is not castle itself, its city but castle at Savonlinna is called "Olavinlinna"
In Finland its mandatory to learn swedish starting from the 6 grade
Jag bor I Finland.. men jag tror inte att jag kan prata i svenska.. jag har glömt allt. However, I can hold a conversation in fluent English because I use it every day =)
There's about a 5% minority of Swedish-speaking Finns. They speak Swedish as their mother tongue. In the Helsinki area you may also bump into people who talk adequate 'school Swedish', but if you travel about 50 km north, you'll be lucky to find any. Despite the fact that we do still have the mandatory (or compulsory, as many Finns like to say) Swedish in our schedule.
However, if you happen to meet me when you come to Finland, I'll be really happy to practice my school Swedish with you! :D Although I'm pretty sure, that after 3 minutes you'd rather change into English.
Riktigt intressant video, Michael! Tips: Kör en video om Finlandssvenskarna! #MuminSvenska
!
Sadly we never got the peak because it would have been against Norwegian constitution to give away sovereign land or something like that. We still appreciate the thought
Nordic countries all like each other except when it comes to sports!
Haha, when it comes to english skills, you’ve just met the wrong people. But our accent is kinda hard to get rid off as finnish is finnougrig language family and totally different from english. Aaaanyways, I would say that most finns speak okayish english but as any language, you will only master it if you actually use it more often.
The funny thing is, that the Most UNILINGUAL towns/municipalities in Finland are SWEDISH language municipalities. Sottunga (in Åland islands) is the MOST unilingual. The most unilingual in the mainland is Larsmo (Österbotten/Ostrobothnia).
Of course there are several municipalities in eastern Finland that have no native Swedish speaker residents. But all of those mucipalities have native speakers of OTHER, foreign languages, this makes them less unilingual.
Santa Claus (Joulupukki) lives in Finland yes. We still say he lives in Korvatunturi (tunturi is a small mountain or something. Not sure how to say it in english) but it is not a good place for tourists to travel, so Santa works in Rovaniemi these days. :)
Korvatunturi = Ear Fell/Arctic Hill
Swedish language in Finland was not introduced or upheld by force. We´ve had immigrants from Sweden since the 1200s, resulting in many western and southern coastal populations being partly or entirely swedish speaking. This can be seen even today. Going back further, there has been some mixing of populations here since the ice-age ended, between germanic and baltic-finnish tribes. Throughout there has been trade between Finland, Sweden and Estonia (none of which existed as nations during the neolithic, but you get the point). Absolutely no surprise there are germanic/fennic bilingual people in Finland. Though from time to time there has been politics involved as well, but it has not made a huge difference in how many people speak what languages. It´s quite organic.
It's still mandatory to tach Swedish, it's Finland's second official language and there's a minority of around 5% that speak Swedish as their mother tongue. Every government official papers need to be available in Swedish, and we have the right to be served in Swedish in government-backed and funded places like hospitals and schools etc. I for example did my whole primary school (grund skolan) in Swedish and my sister is doing university in Swedish as well. Swedish in Finland is a remnant of the 600 years Finland was a part of Sweden.
Hygge, Lagom and Sisu. That is what Nordic countries are made of.
A new upload :D I’m exited
Great video! I partially agree on the english skills of Finnish people. I recently moved to Finland and most people are rather hesitant to speak English. They do know how to speak, but I think the Finns are affraid to mispronounce the English words, so they rather not speak English.
Yep. I would say like half of us has some kind of trauma from english classes. When i was in school nothing and i mean nothing was more important than british pronounciation. You would get constantly interrupted and corrected between sentences. Some got over it by not trying to pronounce anything anymore only learning vocab and grammar.
Dont ya worry neighbour, Russia doesn't wanna mess with more countries. Sure they can threat all the want, but thats everyday stuff. :D
In my anecdotal experience, everyone in Finland knows English to be able to hold a conversation, but can't save their lives to converse in Swedish. But it might be an artifact of living in eastern Finland? ...or just coincidental anecdotal evidence.
It's funny that the "wife-carrying competition" is often mentioned in RUclips videos about Finland. I have lived in Finland for more than 50 years, and I have never seen that competition live. It's a curiosity, like swamp soccer and a cell phone throwing competition. Actually, the most popular sports in Finland are ice hockey and formula 1. In addition, we have a national game called pesäpallo, which is little bit similar to American baseball.
Mandatory Swedish teaching: It's a relic from the centuries, when Finland was a part of Sweden. Back then Swedish was, obviously, a language of the state, and it remains so to this day.
I wish that Murmansk Karelia Leningrad Saint Petersburg Novgorod Tver Arkhangelsk Vologda and Komi belongs to Finland. This version of Finland would be called Greater Finland.
Finland area: 786,978 sq miles
Population: 280,000,000 3.59%
Demographics 99.98% white
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 186,600,000
20-84 36% 100,800,000
85 and older 4% 11,200,000
Estonia area: 38,905 sq miles
Population 62,000,000 0.79%
0-19 60% 37,200,000
20-84 35% 21,700,000
85 and older 5% 3,100,000
Sweden has all of Norway
Sweden area: 322,589 sq miles
Population 281,000,000 3.59% of the world population
0-19 60% 186,600,000
20-84 35% 98,350,000
85 and older 5% 14,050,000
Norway would be a very large island and have a large population
Norway area: 339,000 sq miles
Population 281,000,000 3.59% of the world population
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 186,600,000
20-84 36% 101,160,000
85 and older 4% 11,240,000
Latvia Population 30,000,000 0.38% of the world population
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 18,000,000
20-84 36% 10,800,000
85 and older 4% 1,200,000
Lithuania population 29,000,000 0.37% of the world
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 17,400,000
20-84 38% 11,200,000
85 2% 580,000
Iceland population 80,000,000 1.04% of the world population
0-19 60% 48,000,000
20-84 36% 28,800,000
85 and older 4% 3,200,000
Denmark population 6,000,000 0.08% of the world population
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 3,600,000
20-84 35% 2,100,000
85 and older 5% 300,000
0-19 684,000,000 65.21%
20-84 374,910,000 30.59%
85 and older 44,870,000 4.20%
Total population 1,0490,000,000 they would be 13.43% of the world population
Canada population 385,000,000 5.00% of the world population
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 231,000,000
20-84 36% 138,600,000
85 and older 4% 15,400,000
Greenland population 230,000,000 3.00% of the world population
Age Pyramid
0-19 60% 138,000,000
20-84 35% 80,500,000
85 and older 5% 11,500,000
These two countries will be one country with Vikings
These eight countries with Canada and Greenland will be one country with Vikings.
Vikings population 1,664,000,000
Total Population 18.49%
Demographics
Non-Hispanic White 98%
Native American 1.50%
Asian 0.25%
Racial mixed 0.10%
Black 0.10%
Pacific Islander 0.05%
Religion
Christianity 97%
Jews 1%
Native American faiths 1%
Paganism 0.50%
Atheist agnostic and irreligion 0.40%
Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Sikhism 0.08%
Satanism 0.01%
Islam and Druzism 0.01%
Total age pyramid
0-19 1,053,000,000 63.87%
Demographics 99.50% white
20-84 594,010,000 35.7%
Demographics 98.00% white
85 and older 71,770,000 0.43%
Demographics 99.50% white
Languages Old Norse English Sami Languages Afrikaans German French Gaelic Native American Languages Russian Chinese Japanese Korean Thai Vietnamese Hebrew and Arabic.
I wish this was real life not fantasy Vikings education will be like Finland students celebrate graduation for 31 days for every grade
School schedule
Students go to school 4 days of the week
Winter Break 31 days
Homework is only ten minutes long
Super big fat tests are only at the end of the year.
Summer vacation is 4 months
In school children and staff alike celebrate their birthday at school during lunch before or after lunch or both or at field trips.
Students can enjoy school activities like playing outside play pool watch tv play video games do sports in class breaks for 30 minutes if students get work done early they can enjoy the whole day off doing school activities or go on field trips the whole day.
If you do summer school students can enjoy longer class breaks.
After school clubs and activities are 4 hours
School hours
8:00-1:00
After school hours
1:00-5:00
Taxes will be the same as in the United Arab Emirates.
I wish this was real life not fantasy Old Norse still exist on the earth.
We don't teach swedish because of Sweden. Its a part of the history yes, but it has nothing to do with the Scandinavian countries and communication. (The Finnish land was swedish before becoming Russian, that's why swedish is a part of us)
So a long time ago a pig part of Finnish elite, spoke Swedish.
I'm a Swedish speaking Finn. (Or I'm bilingual by birth) my mother could only speak swedish when she was young. (Born and raised in Finland)
We have two official languages. Finnish and Swedish.
@@kalma999 What does being a swedish teacher have to do with Finlands history?
No, I'm not a teacher of any kind
@@kalma999 what?
I am a Finn and I can say my English is excellent, but that is because I've had one major advantage: when I was 11-12 my family lived in the United States for a year and that was the best intensive course in English language I could ever hope to get. I went to a school where no one spoke Finnish, all my friends there only spoke English, all the TV shows, movies etc were in English. I learned so much in just one year, after that it was literally the easiest subject in school for me. I did not need to put any effort to get good grades. Plus of course decades of playing games, reading, writing etc in English has honed my language skills.
Not sure how interested you are in linguistics, but LangFocus just uploaded a video on Icelandic
He didn't say anything about the english being good in finland or anything. He just stated that finns can speak english and keep up te conversation. Your random outburst is true, but it didn't have a single point. What were you trying to counter argument?
as im finnish, we were taught swedish because its our second language.. however i always refused to learn it because it sounds so stupid and annoying :DDD (peace to swedish people:D) and nowadays most i can say in "swedish is hej, jag heter homo peter" XD
There is not a huge difference between Scandinavia and Finland.
My friends from foreign countries visited all the Nordic countries and told the only difference is the language. Actually everybody speaks english in Finland and very well. By the way Finland was NEVER a part of Soviet union. Finland was fighting against Soviet and retained it's independence and freedom.
Finland has not post Soviet buildings. They are from Russian Empire of tsar area and not many of them.
It is actually mandatory to learn Swedish in Finland.
In Finland everybody can speak english. We learn it at schools.
Also finns can speak a lot of other languages too.
Yes, we have mandatory swedish in finnish schools. I didn't need it because I'm swedish, even if I'm born and raised in Finland. My dad was swedish.
Many Finnish People use Rally english for fun, but younger People are good at English and their acsent is better than older People.
Technically the Scandinavian peninsula only compromises Sweden and Norway. At least geographically.
Partly Finland is located on the Scandinavian peninsula.
You speak very good English. In a matter of fact better English than 99% of Swedish, and also Finnish to be honest. But you don't represent whole Sweden or oppose whole Finland. What he meant is that you can generally ask anyone in Finland something in English and he at least understands the question and can guide or give an answer. I believe that the best English as their not native language speaking country in the world is Netherlands.
in Vaasa, they speak Swedish parts of Espoo and in Kauniainen they speak Swedish. My Grandmother was a war child in Sweden, so her Swedish was great. In some schools they still require Swedish then you can choose another one, and most do English.
Grankulla is so swedish that even the rest of us swedish-speakers used to make fun of them.
Finland's alcohol consumption has gone drastically down in 20 years. Watch the statistics in the video " Country alcohol consumption comparison."
In Europe Finland's alcohol consumption is in the middle. In Europe the highest alcohol consumption countries are: The 1st Moldova. The 2nd Lithuania. The 3rd Chechia and the 4th Germany.
For instance Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Switzerland Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Andorra, Serbia, Poland, Belarus etc. are ahead of Finland.
Bro is the reason we joke about Swedes
Great video! And honestly your English is pretty good!
If you want, there's another channel like this called Geofocus. It's not as in-depth as Geography Now, but it's still pretty interesting, and some videos are more up to date. I think watching them in combination with Geography Now would give a lot more info. But hey, you do you!
Finn here. I have heard that foreigners have a hard time learning Finnish as Finns will switch to English so easily once they learn that the other person isn't that good at Finnish.
There are ~6 million Finnish speaking people worldwide, so our language is rather rare. Because of this, mostly all dubbed shows/movies are the ones made for kids. We are surrounded by English from young age on.
Even Clash of Clans, a Finnish mobile game, didn't have Finnish language as an option for years.
11:24
Its muikku, not miukku!
Well, Finland is about to be the newest member of NATO, so, if Russia is smart, nothing will happen.
nothing like swedish people finally admitting the slavery
The whole Nordic vs Scandinavian debate perplexes me. I totally get why Finland would be excluded, but other exclusionary arguments make no sense. I see it through three possible definitions for "Scandinavian":
1. Geography - the Scandinavian Peninsula, a peninsula on a peninsula that includes two countries Norway and Sweden.
2. Language & Culture - the Scandinavian cultures united in a shared history and linguistic origin that includes Norway, Sweden, Denmark as well as their former and current colonies Iceland and the Faroe Islands with Greenland having a loose connection.
3. Heritage - Those of Norse/Scandinavian heritage which includes Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Icelanders, Faroe Islanders, as well as those living in England (Danish heritage from previous occupation), and in the Normandy region of France (Norwegian heritage from previous occupation).
It's weird to me how Iceland is not included despite their language being directly from the original common language of Scandinavia Old Norse with most indigenous Icelanders being of direct Norwegian heritage. If you do a DNA test there is no distinction between Iceland and Norway. It's all Norwegian. Same with Faroe Islanders who are still under Danish occupation. Culturally speaking Scandinavian should be a term applied to ethnic Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Icelanders, and Faroe Islanders. Finns are of a separate culture closer to Baltic cultures than to Scandinavians or Russians which would also include the Saami people of Northern Norway. They too are closer to Finns than they are to Scandinavians despite living in a Scandinavian region.
Thanks Michael for nice video.
Swedish was mandatory and is taught in "grundskola" 7-9 grades in my time, but nowadays it is from grade 6 to 9, so there is more swedish now than in 90's. Swedish is our second official language.
Sweden influences more to Finland than Finland to Sweden. Your Kings and Queens are a bit ours aswell, we look up to swedish in social skills, marketing, customer relations and pop culture. We are eastern brothers of Nordics and only other we see is Sweden, rest are quite far away.
Of course we joke and fight with each others like brothers do, but at the end of the day, we are good together.
The real Santa Clause (Saint Nicholas of Myrna) is from modern day Turkey. But in Finland there is one place where it is often told that Santa Claus lives.
To my knowledge Swedish is still taught in Finnish School (though I‘m not from finland, so I‘m not 100% sure).
And I would love to see a reaction to Geography Now Switzerland some day.
Actually santa Claus and the „Nikolaus“ as we Call it in germany are Different people
(I’m not 100% sure but it would make sense since we have different festivities for them)
@@finnxd3270 Nowadays they have differences, but Santa Claus, Nikolaus, Samichlaus, Sinterklaas etc. are all based on Saint Nicholas of Myrna. Originally they are all the same, just for some reason the originally american Santa Claus became a part of christmas instead of having his own day on december 6th.
I mean it would also be a pretty big and weird coincidence if they had nothing to do with one another. They have almost the same name (all the names translate to something like Saint Nicholas or Saint Claus), are dressed pretty similar, they bring gifts and their celebrations take place in the same month.
@@nirutivan9811 True that! But was it really Myrna? I remember somethings the lines of Smyrna, but that might be another letter lost in translation.
@@robertbretschneider765 I checked again. I couldn‘t find something about Nicholas of Smyrna, but I noticed I made a little mistake: It‘s Nicholas of Myra, not Myrna.
@@nirutivan9811 Thanks!
As a Finnish teen I can say that the older generation doesn't know much English but the younger does and we still have to learn Swedish
As a finnish person, i love metal and they got that right.
As for actual friends, they forgot Japan from the video.
I don't know many people that speak Swedish fluently here in Lapland but most people speak pretty good English tbf. Don't know how it is in southern Finland. We rely so much on tourism that if you don't speak good English, it's hard to find work here. Swedish doesn't matter nearly as much, even Russian is considered more useful.
Most finns might have quite a thick accent but especially younger people have great vocabulary and can write perfect english.
Props to your grandfather 👍Lets hope that we will soon be brothers in arms again.
At the age of 22, what ive seen and heard through my life i would say that we finns speak english better than we do speak swedish. Yes this is only based on the thousands of finnish people ive yet met either irl or online, but i think that the few finns that learned good enough swedish in school to hold conversations were either pressured by their parents to learn it or they had an interest to actually learn the language themselves, which i can say doesnt happen too much.
P.S, its the middle aged finns or older that cant speak english that well. Talk to anyone between their 20s-30s and you can have a solid conversation in english 95% of the time.
my english is not perfect pls dont hate me for it lol
The school system in Finland is kind of the school the we used have in sweden...btw! ;)
You are one lucky Swede... Because I was occupied during the video and couldn't angrily respond to your comments on our English skills. You saved yourself at the end by pointing out you weren't completely serious about it.
He never mentioned salmiakki alcohol....
There are other areas that are Finnish-Swedish... Half of my friends speak Swedish and most know enough to not get in trouble. But.. all of my friends are quite fluent in English, but to be fair my friends maybe are not average in that sense. The west coast has Swedish speakers from Turku to Kokkola (Ostrobothnia, in the other side of the ditch is Swedens Västerbotten).
Liked just because for the Nordic, not Scandinavian part. So important! And yeah, we have to learn Swedish, it is and official language in Finland still. Even though vast majority of us never use it in daily life.
"Nobody likes Norway" as a finn i can confirm that's true. That's one of the things i agree with swedes on
Good to hear opinions from the western half of the Finnish Empire :)
I totally agree on the finglish. Everybody says: "Oh yeah, us Finns speak better english than most Americans". OH REALLY? Then why won't you watch this 2 minute video that has no subtitles in it...
Rally english :D
Finns are not drunk ppl
Watch the statistics in The video " Country alcohol consumption comparison."
In Europe the highest alcohol consumption countries are:
The 1st Moldova, the 2 nd Lithuania, the 3rd Chechia and the 4th Germany.
Finland is in the middle even under.
Forinstance Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, UK, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Luxemburg, Poland, Portugal, Belarus, Cypros, Serbia etc. are ahead of Finland.
Finland's alcohol consumption has dropped drasticly down in 10 years.