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People
Sweden's population is composed principally of Scandinavians of
Germanic descent and a relatively small number of ethnic Finns.
About 17,000 Saami live mainly in the northern part of the country.
Sweden's immigrant population is increasing rapidly, with approximately
500,000 aliens living in Sweden in the early 1990s.
These included Finns, people from the former Yugoslavia, Iranians,
Norwegians, Danes, Turks, Chileans, and others. Many came to Sweden
as guest workers. Recently, increased numbers have entered Sweden
to escape the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Sweden is second only
to Germany in the number of refugees from that region.
Language
Swedish Language, language of Sweden and of Swedish settlers in
other parts of the world, notably in Finland. Swedish belongs to
the northern or Scandinavian branch of the Germanic languages, a
subfamily of Indo-European languages.
It is an eastern development of the language known as Dφnsk tunga
("Danish tongue"), spoken not only in Denmark but in all of Scandinavia
even before the early Middle Ages.
The Swedish branch of this common tongue developed into a separate
language during the period 900-1500 and is called Old Swedish. Until
after 1200 the only records of the language are runic inscriptions,
cut primarily on tombstones and memorial stones.
The Latin alphabet was introduced in the 13th century; periods of
further differentiation followed, and some approximation to Danish
occurred.
The written language, based on two of the most widely spoken dialects,
was made uniform throughout all of Sweden in the 14th century.
Aside from differences in vocabulary, Swedish now differs from Danish
especially in its retention, after a vowel, of the old voiceless
consonants k, t, and p, which in Danish changed to g, d, and b,
and in its retention of the vowels a and o in unstressed syllables,
whereas Danish has e or no vowel.
Religion
About 94 percent of the Swedish people are Lutheran, adherents of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the state church of Sweden.
Children acquire membership in this church at birth, but active
participation is not required. Since 1952, withdrawal from the church
without further religious obligation has been permitted.
The largest other Protestant denominations in Sweden are the Pentecostal
Movement, the Mission Covenant Church, the Salvation Army, Φrebro
Missionary Society, the Baptist Union of Sweden, Swedish Alliance
Missionary Society, and Holiness Mission.
Members of the Roman Catholic Church numbered about 155,000 in the
late 1990s, and many of Sweden's recent immigrants maintained adherence
to the Orthodox Christian churches of their countries of origin.
There were about 200,000 Muslims and 12,000 Jews in the country
in the late 1990s.
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