The Handbook of Informal Language Learning

21Sweden and Informal Language Learning

PIA SUNDQVIST

Introduction

Sweden: A small multilingual country

Sweden is a small country in the northern part of Europe. In 1900, the population was 5.1 million (Statistics Sweden 2018a) and the great majority spoke Swedish, with minority groups living in the north speaking Sami or Finnish. For a long period before and after the turn of the century, times were difficult politically, economically, and religiously. Living conditions were particularly harsh in rural areas after repeated crop failures, and as a consequence about a third of the population ended up emigrating to the US (see e.g. Runblom and Norman 1976). A century later, Sweden reached more than 10 million inhabitants (in 2017, see Statistics Sweden 2018a). Despite so many leaving the country, the population had doubled in a little more than a century. In fact, from the 1930s onwards, immigrants have outnumbered emigrants and, with that, the number of languages spoken and learned in both formal and informal settings has increased greatly.

It is relevant to sum up parts of Swedish history after the Second World War, as during this period the number of languages spoken in the country increased, as did the opportunities for informal language learning. Although Swedish industry and economy flourished in the middle of the twentieth century, the workforce was not large enough. For this reason, people from other countries started emigrating to Sweden. During the 1960s, immigrants ...