I’m sorry this post is a bit late. But I have a good excuse. I’ve been away. I went to Finland! Oh yes, I can just feel your excitement in the air like static electricity.
But wait a second now! There is a reason why I am writing about Finland here. You see, they also speak Swedish over there. In fact, it’s one of the country’s official languages, the other being Finnish, naturally. Finnish itself is a totally incomprehensible oddity and to me sounds like Klingon spoken backwards. Or, as my friend who lives in Finland says, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, it IS Klingon spoken backwards.”
Fortunately, quite a few people across the Bay of Bothnia do speak something more understandable as their mother tongue. Swedish! There are even several municipalities in Finland that are totally mono-lingual, where the inhabitants speak Swedish and nothing else. The most famous one is Hammarland on the Åland archipelago, and the other is just down a spit across the bay from me – Korsnäs. Korsnäs has the distinction of being the most Swedish municipality in the world, percentage-wise it has more Swedish speakers (around 98%) than any municipality in Sweden. If that’s not impressive then I don’t know what is.
