Vår tid - Vårt land or Our time - Our land is a single recorded by some Finnish Swedish speaking artists under name Artister för tolerans och öppenhet (Artists for tolerance and openness) including Paradise Oskar, Geir Rönning, Elin Blom, Nina Lassander, Ville Pusa - all known from Eurovision or Euroviisut, Swedish Idol or MGP Nordic along with Fredrik Furu, Andre Linman, Redrama, Frida Andersson and Krista Siegfrieds. I don't know what's the purpose of this affair? Is it pro-Swedish language, that some feel is threatened in Finland after True Finns election thriumph? As you may know Finland is a bilingual but the talk of making Swedish voluntary instead of obligatory in the school goes on since forever, and the chance this happening is maybe bigger than ever now (yet very far becoming a reality, me thinks).
Finland has had several songs in Swedish in the national Eurovision finals over the years but only once a song in Swedish has won (Fri? in 1990) which surely wasn't the strongest of them all. On the other hand many Swedish speaking singers have won from Ami and Monica Aspelund to Riki Sorsa, Carita Holmström, Ann-Christine, Marion Rung and Edea's Monika Krook.
There are some 290.000 Swedish speaking Finns (less than 5,5% of the population) and some 60.000 more living in Sweden. The Finlandssvenskar live mostly in the south and west coast and in autonomic Ålands Islands.
Comments