The Sweden-Finns are a bigger group than you might think – recent figures put the number of first, second and third generation Finns in Sweden to over 719.000, which means more than 7 percent or one in every 14 people in Sweden. The Sweden-Finns even have their own flag and a national holiday on the 24th of February.
Sweden-Finns are also very well represented in the Swedish music industry, so our resident music-fan and Sweden-Finn Nina Uddin decided to put together a playlist of some amazing Swedish artists with some form of Finnish roots, most often a Finnish mom. Some of the Sweden-Finnish artists included on our playlist are Miriam Bryant, Ana Diaz, Icona Pop (both Aino and Caroline), Lisa Miskovsky, Anna Järvinen, Frida Hyvönen and the now retired Kent (two of the members).
You can even hear Cherrie singing in Finnish on the first track (she lived in Finland as a child and still speaks Finnish, so she can qualify as an honorary Sweden-Finn).
Judge for yourself if you notice any traces of the Finnish melancholy tendencies – you see the Finns love the minor scale in music, while the Swedes tend to veer more towards the major scale.
