Åland's culture: a Swedish-language rule written into Finnish law

Why every school on Åland teaches in Swedish

The first of the six guarantees that Finland and Sweden agreed in June 1921, and that the Council of the League of Nations annexed to its decision of 27 June that year, was about schools. The municipalities of Åland were freed from any duty to support a school whose language of instruction was anything other than Swedish, and Finnish could be taught only with the consent of the municipality concerned. The Finnish Parliament wrote the guarantees into a Guarantee Act in August 1922, and the present act still carries the school rule. How the islands came to be settled by the League at all is the subject of Åland's history.

The present act, in force since 1 January 1993, carries the rule in section 40: the language of education in schools maintained or subsidised by public funds is Swedish, unless an Act of Åland provides otherwise. Section 36 makes Swedish the official language of public administration at every level on the islands, and applies the same rule to officials of the Evangelical Lutheran Church unless the Church Code says otherwise. Section 37 makes one exception: a Finnish citizen may use Finnish in his own matter before a court or with other state officials in Åland. Section 43 obliges the Council of State to see that product and service information reaches consumers on Åland in Swedish where possible, and that the regulations to be followed there are available in Swedish.

The effect is a monolingual region inside a bilingual state. Finland's constitution recognises Finnish and Swedish as national languages, and on the mainland bilingual municipalities provide schooling in both. On Åland, Finnish is an optional subject. Statistics and Research Åland, known as ÅSUB, found that 68.9% of ninth-year pupils took Finnish as an optional language in 2004 and 55.8% in the autumn of 2013. It had traditionally been compulsory in upper secondary school, and a proposal to remove that requirement was made in 2006.

Section 41 handles the consequence. A graduate of a school on Åland may be admitted to a state-maintained or state-subsidised Swedish or bilingual institution on the mainland, and graduate from it, without the proficiency in Finnish such an institution would otherwise require.

The rule has been questioned in international terms. When Finland ratified the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education of 1960, the debate turned on whether the school guarantee restricted the rights of Finnish-speaking pupils and of other language groups on Åland. The World Autonomies survey records the question as one raised from time to time, especially when Finland ratifies an international convention, and section 40 remains in the act.

Who speaks Swedish on Åland now

ÅSUB counted 30,836 inhabitants on 31 December 2025. The number registered with Swedish as their mother tongue fell by almost 100 during that year, which the office noted because the group usually grows. Over the whole period since 2000 Swedish speakers have increased by more than 1,800 people, and their share of the population has still fallen from 94% to 84%, because speakers of other languages grew by 3,200 over the same years.

Earlier registers show the same curve. In 2000 there were 24,169 Swedish speakers, 93.8% of 25,776 residents, and 1,238 Finnish speakers, 4.8%. By 2011 the Swedish figure was 25,361, or 89.4%, and the Finnish figure 1,371, still 4.8%. In 2017 Swedish stood at 87.2% and Finnish at 4.7%, and speakers of every other first language made up 8.1%. The Finnish-speaking share has barely moved in a quarter of a century, so the change came from speakers of other languages.

At the end of 2025 ÅSUB recorded 82 languages, 110 countries of birth and 92 countries of citizenship among the islands' residents. Romanian and Latvian had each grown by around 500 speakers since 2000 and have begun to shrink in the last few years; Finnish also slipped slightly in 2025, as did Estonian and Thai. The growth that year came from Ukrainian, up 220, largely because Ukrainians already living on the islands were given a home municipality and so entered the statistics of the resident population. Russian rose by 26, and ÅSUB attributes that rise to Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

Place of birth moves with language. Of the 30,836 residents at the end of 2025, 18,700 were born on Åland, about as many as 25 years earlier, so the whole growth of more than 5,000 people since 2000 came from those born elsewhere.

Residents born in Sweden grew by 1,900 between 2000 and 2025, to 3,300. About 4,000 people, 13% of the population, held a foreign citizenship at the end of 2025, close to 1,700 of them Swedish or other Nordic citizens, and more than 3,300 Finnish citizens held a second citizenship as well, 2,200 of them Swedish. A Finnish citizen who moves to the islands can apply for the right of domicile after five years' residence if satisfactorily proficient in Swedish, which ties the language rule to the franchise described in Åland's politics.

How Ålanders describe their own identity

The surveys that asked are old, and the thesis that gathered them in 2015 says so. In a study by Häggblom published in 1999, more than 800 respondents were asked which group they felt closest to, from a list of Ålander, Nordic, Finlander, Finland-Swede, Swede and Finn, with more than one answer allowed. "Ålander" drew over 68%, "Nordic" followed, and "Swede" and "Finn" came last. The respondents named the Swedish language and the right of domicile, along with the natural environment and self-government, as the things their identity rested on, and the Swedish language mattered most to those who identified most strongly as Ålanders.

A questionnaire answered by 257 pupils in the ninth year and the second year of upper secondary school in 1998 and 1999, published by Allardt Ljunggren in 2008, found that 81% agreed fully that they belonged with Åland and 20% felt a strong sense of belonging with Finland. Asked to name the four languages most important in their lives, 97% named English and 94% Swedish, and just over two thirds included Finnish. The same pupils read newspapers from Sweden more often than Finland-Swedish ones.

Home language shows the same pattern. An analysis of the 2009 PISA results found that 70% of Åland pupils spoke only Swedish with family and friends, and 79% spoke only Swedish with both parents. Among pupils at Swedish-language schools on the mainland the figures were 29% and 48%.

The islands' dialects sit on a continuum of Swedish varieties running along both coasts of the Baltic. The dialect is often described as closer to the Uppland dialects of eastern Sweden than to mainland Finland Swedish, though that classification is disputed. Swedish television, radio and newspapers are part of daily life for many Ålanders, and Storå wrote in 1988 that the eastern archipelago has closer ties to the Åboland archipelago and mainland Finland, so that the pull towards Sweden is not uniform across the islands.

What Åland's newspapers argued about Finnish

The islands have two local newspapers. Ålandstidningen was first published in 1891 and appears six days a week. Nya Åland first appeared in 1981, publishes five days a week and had a controlled circulation of 7,285 copies a day in 2007. Both are recorded as independent of political parties.

A master's thesis submitted at the University of Jyväskylä in 2015 by Krista Keturi went through both papers for everything published on the Finnish language and Åland identity between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2012. She found 140 articles and analysed 64 of them: 29 editorials, 30 letters from readers and 5 columns and other pieces, written by editors, politicians and ordinary residents. The years with the most were 2008, with 15, and 2012, with 16.

She sorted the arguments into four groups. Where writers spoke about their own lives, attitudes to Finnish were mostly positive, and the language was described as useful for finding work. In the communicative, national and legal arguments, attitudes were mostly negative: using Finnish was said to erode the Ålanders' right to live in one language, and writers appealed repeatedly to the Autonomy Act's statement that the region is monolingually Swedish. Some writers thought the whole debate exaggerated. A Nya Åland editorial of 2009 put the balance in one line: "I den åländska språkdebatten balanserar vi hela tiden mellan hoten och möjligheterna."

The identity analysis found two versions. One, which Keturi called an old linguistic identity, insisted on monolingualism, treated bilingualism in particular as a threat and saw close ties to Sweden and the possibility of living entirely in Swedish as what kept it strong. The other questioned whether the islands were monolingual at all, since other languages were plainly spoken there, and treated bilingualism and multilingualism as resources that did not dilute what was distinctive about Åland.

ÅSUB's own surveys put figures on the practical side. A questionnaire to about 800 residents, reported in 2009, found that just over two thirds knew some Finnish, largely because of people who had moved from the mainland; almost 90% had not experienced gaps in service in Swedish, and around half said they needed Finnish at work. Interviews with 65 companies and organisations, reported in 2008, found that employers often valued Finnish as highly as English when recruiting, or higher.

Where young Ålanders go to study

Schooling on the islands runs through 22 comprehensive schools, which had 3,130 pupils in 2025, 2,057 at the junior level and 1,073 at the senior level. Comprehensive schooling is a municipal responsibility; upper secondary and tertiary education belong to the Government of Åland. Upper secondary and other education had 1,131 students in 2025: 465 at Ålands lyceum, the academic upper secondary school, 632 at Ålands yrkesgymnasium, the vocational school, and 34 at the folk high school. 1,082 of the 1,131 came from Åland.

There is no university on Åland. Åland University of Applied Sciences had 486 students in the autumn of 2025, 334 of them from Åland, 96 from Finland and 44 from Sweden, spread across business and administration, information technology, technology, health and welfare and services. Maritime education is coordinated through the Alandica Shipping Academy.

ÅSUB counted 1,328 Ålanders studying outside the islands in 2025: 740 in Sweden, 539 in Finland, 17 in other Nordic countries and 32 elsewhere. 1,073 of them were at universities, including universities of applied sciences. The pattern is older than the current figures: in 2012 nearly 1,300 studied away, 880 in Sweden and 340 in Finland. With no university at home and schooling entirely in Swedish, the thesis of 2015 notes, many young Ålanders go on to study in Sweden or at Swedish-language institutions on the Finnish mainland.

How the maypole and the anthem mark Åland's summer

Midsummer Eve falls on the Friday between 19 and 25 June, and on Åland it is the day of the maypole. Visit Åland, the islands' tourist organisation, describes a pole raised in almost every village and in every municipality, each with its own customs. The poles are 10 to 25 metres tall. Those on the smaller islands usually carry simple spars and those on the main island more often crossed ones. Some are hung with coloured crowns, related to the straw crowns made at Christmas and prepared by villagers or small local societies over several months; others are entirely green, with leaf wreaths and juniper.

Every part of the pole has a reading attached to it. Leaf garlands stretched between the pole and its spars, in patterns of hourglasses or squares, stand for a good harvest. A carved wooden figure at the top waves its arms in the wind for diligence and work, with a pennant below it, often in blue, red and yellow. Some poles carry a sun, and small sailing boats circle the pole for the islands' shipping. Visit Åland notes that fewer islanders now work in the farming, fishing and seafaring the pole celebrates, and that the tradition strengthens community in the villages. There is also the plain wish to build a finer pole than the next village.

The final garlands and flowers go on the pole on the eve itself, and flower crowns are woven to wear. In many villages the pole is still raised by hand with wooden tongs, under the direction of a pole captain. When it stands, the crowd sings "Ålänningens sång", sometimes to an accordion, and then dances round the pole or goes on to a dance at the youth or village hall. The midsummer table in almost every Åland home, by the same account, carries dill-boiled new potatoes, pickled herring, smoked and cured fish, black archipelago bread and butter, followed by the first strawberries.

The anthem belongs to the same years as the autonomy. The thesis cites it to John Grandell in 1922, and its last verse opens "Högt skall det klinga, vårt svenska språk", a line Rask read in 2006 as naming the Swedish language as the thing that set the islanders apart from the rest of Finland. Rask counted the flag, the midsummer pole and the anthem among the islands' strongest markers of identity. The flag of Åland was adopted on 3 April 1954, and Åland has issued its own stamps since 1984.

Autonomy Day falls on 9 June, the date in 1922 on which the first Parliamentary Assembly of Åland met. A regional act of 1976 governs the day, the flag act of 1992 makes it an official flag day, and an Åland pancake is the customary dish. The centenary was marked on 9 June 2021 and followed by a year of celebrations.

How church membership on Åland has changed

The islands were Christianised by Swedish missionaries in the 12th century, and they have numerous medieval granite churches. St Olaf's Church in Jomala dates from the late 13th century, and the Church of St John the Baptist in Sund was built shortly after it. Baptists arrived from Sweden in the 1850s, and the first congregation was founded in Föglö in 1856.

Membership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church has fallen steadily. It stood at 92.8% of the population at the end of 2000, 83.3% in 2010, 70.5% in 2020 and 64.0% in 2025, while the share belonging to no religious community rose from 6.7% to 34.8% over the same years. Other communities held 1.2% in 2025.

Attendance at services fell by almost two thirds between 2000 and 2024, much faster than membership. The parishes merged from 13 to 8 over the same period. Church tax still appears as a line of its own in ÅSUB's tables of taxes.

What Åland's museums and writers keep

ÅSUB counted 67 books published in 2000, 54 in 2010 and 50 in 2025. Specialised literature fell from 62 titles to 33 over that period, while fiction rose from 5 to 10 and children's and youth books from none to 7. Library holdings stood at 267,000 items in 2025 and home loans at 359,000, down from 486,000 in 2000. That is 11.7 volumes per inhabitant in 2025 against 18.9 in 2000, and 70% of borrowers in 2025 were women.

Sally Salminen's novel Katrina of 1936 received international recognition, and Salminen, who lived from 1906 to 1976, was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Anni Blomqvist wrote the five-volume series Stormskärs Maja, and Ulla-Lena Lundberg has written about her native Kökar. The composer Pehr Henrik Nordgren, who lived from 1944 to 2008, also came from the islands. The film Devil's Bride of 2016, set in 17th-century Åland during the witch trials, won the Best Foreign Language Film award at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto in 2017.

Culture, sport, youth work and the archive, library and museum service fall to the Parliament of Åland under section 18, subparagraph 14 of the Autonomy Act. Ålands museum runs Kastelholm and its neighbours. Kastelholm, first mentioned in 1388, is the islands' one medieval castle and is now a restored ruin open in summer. Beside it the open-air museum Jan Karlsgården shows an Åland farm of the 1850s with its dwelling house, outbuildings and byres, and Vita Björn, the old crown jail, is a prison museum. In Mariehamn the Åland Maritime Museum and the museum ship Pommern keep the shipping town's record. Lönnqvist pointed out in 2001 that the islands' institutions tend to carry the name in their titles: Ålands museum, Ålands sjömansskola and the newspapers Åland and Nya Åland among them.

In sport Åland competes both as itself and inside Finland. Åland's own football team competes in the biennial Island Games, which Åland hosted in 1991 and 2009, and it hosted the Women's Nordic Football Championship in 1974 and 1977. At club level the islands play inside Finland: IFK Mariehamn's men play in the Veikkausliiga and Åland United fields a women's side, both at the Wiklöf Holding Arena in Mariehamn. Disc golf is widely played, and the Åland Stags keep rugby union going on the islands.