The purpose of this study was to investigate the view of Finnish dialects and identity of first, second and third generation of Sweden Finns students in 7th, 8th and 9th graders, in two Sweden Finn schools. The questions at issue for the essay were: How do Swedes of Finnish extraction think of the Finnish dialects? Is there a correlation between identifying as Finnish and knowledge and usage of the Finnish dialects, as opposed to Finns living in Finland? To which extent do the Finnish students have knowledge regarding the Finnish dialects? To answer the questions a quantitative method was used and a questionnaire was answered by over 100 students. The results of the study showed that the Finnish dialects did not exert any influence on the students? life nor their sense of identity.

Finnish-born writer Susanna Alakoski?s novel Svinalängorna became a big success after being published in Sweden in April 2006. Though the novel has many themes in common with earlier literature written by and about Finnish immigrants in Sweden, little attention has been brought to this fact by reviewers and journalists. This essay examines connections between Alakoski?s novel and Finnish migrant literature in Sweden, mainly from the 1970s, and how these connections have been recognised by reviewers in Sweden and Finland.

Finnish-born writer Susanna Alakoski?s novel Svinalängorna became a big success after being published in Sweden in April 2006. Though the novel has many themes in common with earlier literature written by and about Finnish immigrants in Sweden, little attention has been brought to this fact by reviewers and journalists. This essay examines connections between Alakoski?s novel and Finnish migrant literature in Sweden, mainly from the 1970s, and how these connections have been recognised by reviewers in Sweden and Finland.

This study investigates Swedish and Finnish official perception of Russia following the Cold War. This is aimed at categorizing changes in perception of Russia over time and assessing the impact of perception on defense policy. The study uses a comparative method where the contents of three foreign policy reports of Sweden and Finland respectively are analyzed according to dimensions based in image theory. Results show that Swedish and Finnish perceptions of Russia are overall similar between the reports being compared, except for Finnish perception of Russian relative power being significantly greater. Changes in Swedish and Finnish official perception do not clearly correlate with changes in defense policy.

The aim of this study is to show how some persons with one of the Swedish national minority languages as mother tongue use a library with regard to their mother tongue and culture. The research questions are: How do Sami-speaking, Finnish-speaking and Meänkieli-speaking (Tornedalen Finnish-speaking) persons use a library with regard to their mother tongue and their culture? What aspects do they find important in this use? As a theoretical frame I have used Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model of the functions of the local library and Will Kymlicka?s theory of the value of maintenance of minority cultures. The study is a qualitative user study. Deep interviews have been conducted with 9 persons with Finnish, Meänkieli or Sami as mother tongue.The results show that the main use of the library is as a cultural centre and the most frequently used service is borrowing of literature.

A decision has been made that the Swedish and the Finnish Navy will expand their cooperation by creating the ?Swedish-Finnish Naval Task Group? (SFNTG).Based on Michael Codner?s theory of interoperability, this essay?s aim is to investigate if the Swedish and the Finnish currently are interoperable with each other, due to their military strategic concepts.According to Codner, similarities between the cooperating nation?s military strategic concepts are required in order to reach a high degree of interoperability. This essay will analyze and compare Sweden and Finland?s military strategic concepts, based on three categories; Global Projection, Territorial Defence and Combat Capability.The conclusion is that there are differences between the Swedish and the Finnish military strategic concepts in every category, of varying degrees. By looking at the results of this investigation, it is clear in what direction the two nations have to adapt their concepts to enable a high degree of interoperability for the future of the SFNTG..

This Master?s thesis examines different retrieval strategies used in cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). The aim was to investigate if there were any differences between baseline queries and translated queries in retrieval effectiveness; how the retrieval effectiveness was affected by query structuring and if the results differed between different languages. The languages used in this study were Swedish, English and Finnish. 30 topics from the TrecUta collection were translated into Swedish and Finnish.

 This paper is made on behalf of Statistics and Research Åland, ÅSUB. The aim is to explain the turnover for companies in Åland, with appropriate variables. The main study variables are variables that consist of the Swedish and Finnish activity indices. The study variables also include variables which consist of tourists from Sweden and Finland and the introduction of the Euro in Finland. The data used is from the period January 1996 to June 2008.Different regression models for the turnover are tried and explanatory variables are selected by use of stepwise regression, backward elemination and forward selection. The final model includes activity indices for Sweden and Finland, the introduction of the Euro, tourists from Finland and an autoregressive component of order one .

The main purpose of this essay is to examine if it is possible to identify farms of ?forest Finnish? people in Sweden, by means of an archaeological analysis, comparing the forest Finnish settlement with known none-forest Finnish settlements. This study is based on material excavated from the farms of Grannäs, and Råsjö, in the Swedish provinces of Jämtland and Medelpad. Both farms are dated to the 17th and 18th century. The study itself is divided into three parts, firstly a general study to get an overview of the material, secondly a study of ceramics as an attempt to discern social status and lastly a study of the animal bone material for analyzing the forest Finns? livestock and possible hunting habits.

The purpose of this two years master thesis is to examine the potential benefits of using bibliotherapy on elderly Finnish immigrants residing in Sweden and living in geriatric care. The basis of the study is a four week long bibliotherapeutic project implemented at a nursing home for Finnish-speaking people in Stockholm County.Participants were men and women spanning in age from 70 to 90 years old. Common for all the participants was that they had lived their entire adult life in Sweden, their only language was Finnish, and they had the diagnosis of dementia. The study examines the bibliotherapeutic model of Arleen McCarty Hynes and Mary Hynes-Berry, as well as Inger Eriksson?s approach for the use of bibliotherapy in nursing homes and hospices.The empirical analysis is based on field notes from the bibliotherapeutic sessions and from interviews with librarians and nurses involved in the project.

There have been debates on the big differences in mathematics knowledge concerning pupils in Sweden and Finland. Especially, one common issue in the discussions of education is the Pisa test results, which take up in the media. In the Pisa research the Finnish pupils get through well year after year. Because of the discussions about the distinct school systems in Sweden and Finland, I found it interesting to investigate the divergence of the curriculums in these two countries. The main research questions asked were, what are the main differences and similarities in the Swedish and Finnish curriculums in primary school? Such as, is the assignment of primary school similar in Sweden and Finland?In my study I analyzed and compared by means of the curriculum especially mathe-matics teaching in primary schools in grade three in Sweden and in grade two Fin-land.

There have been debates on the big differences in mathematics knowledge concerning pupils in Sweden and Finland. Especially, one common issue in the discussions of education is the Pisa test results, which take up in the media. In the Pisa research the Finnish pupils get through well year after year. Because of the discussions about the distinct school systems in Sweden and Finland, I found it interesting to investigate the divergence of the curriculums in these two countries. The main research questions asked were, what are the main differences and similarities in the Swedish and Finnish curriculums in primary school? Such as, is the assignment of primary school similar in Sweden and Finland?In my study I analyzed and compared by means of the curriculum especially mathe-matics teaching in primary schools in grade three in Sweden and in grade two Fin-land.

AbstractAn extensive migration from Finland to Sweden took place in the 1960?sand 1970?s.The Finnish immigrant children were brought up with twodifferent sets of values and attitudes; one at the home domain and a differentone at school. Being caught between two different cultures affected thechildren in different ways.The aim of this study is to investigate how the Finnish second generationperceive and identify themselves.Keywords: Finnish background, identity, ethnicity, migrationAbstraktDen omfattande emigrationen från Finland till Sverige under 1960- och1970-talet medförde att många finska barn anlände till Sverige. De finskainvandrarbarnen uppfostrades med två olika kulturer; en hemma och enannan i skolan och detta kom att påverka barnen på olika sätt.Syftet med denna uppsats är att belysa vilken etnisk identitet finskaandragenerationsinvandrare uppger att de har. Vidare undersöks omkunskaperna i det finska språket är en betydande faktor för bevarandet avden finska identiteten.Nyckelord: finska invandrare, identitet, etnicitet, emigration.

This study examines how upper secondary school teachers in Västerbotten and Österbotten plan to teach about the Finnish War 1808-09. The study includes written interviews with nine teachers in Västerbotten and eight teachers in Österbotten, who have answered questions concerning school policy documents, content and didactic methods. The purpose has been to examine whether there is a difference in historical culture in how the war is treated in the two regions. Historical culture is here meant within the prospective history lesson, where the pupils encounter history within certain boundaries.The result of the interview study shows that there are differences in structure concerning the school policy documents, but that these differences on the whole are compensated by the widespread interest in the Finnish War by the teachers in both regions. The differences in historical culture can be found within the construction of the content when it comes to the aftermaths of the war as well as the purpose of the teaching.

The aim of this paper was to investigate how 40 typical speakerswith Finnish accent, aged 65-84 years, performed in speech assessmentthrough Dysartribedömningen, a Swedish dysarthria assessment instrument.Their results were compared with results of a matched Swedish nativespeaking reference group. Both groups were assessed in areas offunction/structure, prosody/intelligibility and through a survey oncommunication. Results indicated that the performances of the Finnishparticipant group were estimated as more deviant than the Swedish,considering all areas. The Finnish participants were deviant in articulationand they had a significantly lower speech rate in reading. They also hadsignificantly lower scores in intelligibility compared to the reference group.The results of the survey of communication showed that the Finnishparticipants estimated their levels of activity and participation to besignificantly more limited compared to the reference group.