Swedish people
Svenskar
Bridget of Sweden • Anders Celsius • Carl Linnaeus • Alfred Nobel
Selma Lagerlöf • Dag Hammarskjöld • Greta Garbo • Astrid Lindgren
Tove Jansson • Ingmar Bergman • Björn Ulvaeus • Annika Sörenstam
Total population
Est 9.5 million

Also more than 4.8 million people of Swedish ancestry

Regions with significant populations
 Sweden:      7,500,000 (2009 est.)[1] Other significant population centers:

Swedish Citizens/Swedish Speakers

 Spain 65,000[2]
 United States 56,324[3]
 Norway 28 730[4]
 United Kingdom 22,525[5]
 Denmark 21,000[6]
 Germany 9,500[5]
 Finland
9,000
 Australia 8,170[7]
 Canada 7,000[8]
 Brazil 2000 (est.)
 Argentina 800[9]
 Estonia 300 (1989)[10]
Other regions 72,000[11]

Persons with Swedish Ancestry

 United States 4,325,000[12]
 Canada 334,765[13]
 Australia 30,375[14]
 New Zealand 1,257[15]

Swedish Speaking Finns/Finland-Swedes

 Finland ~280,000 [16]
Languages

Swedish
Related languages include Norwegian, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, and to a lesser extent, all Germanic languages

Religion

Historically Norse paganism, Christianity (Mainly Lutheranism) and more recently Secularism. Also see Religion in Sweden.

Related ethnic groups

Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese,English.
Other Germanic ethnic groups

Swedes (Swedish: svenskar) are a Scandinavian people, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.

Until the 9th century, the Scandinavian people lived in small Germanic kingdoms and chiefdoms known as petty kingdoms.[17] The Germanic tribe of the Swedes (Swedish: svear; Old Norse: svíar) lived in Svealand, bordering the Geats to the south. The consolidation of Sweden was a long process, and later, as Sweden's borders fluctuated over the centuries, so did the use of the Swedish language as well as Swedish self-identification.

The Swedish-speaking minority in Finland (finlandssvenskar) trace back to the many centuries when Finland was an integral part of Sweden. Their identity and relation towards Swedish and Finnish identities is a subject of discussion.[18][19][20] Other groups have acquired Swedish identity; until 1658, when Scania became a possession of the Swedish Crown, the Scanians were a people of the Eastern Province of Denmark speaking a dialect belonging to the East-Danish dialect group.[21] Similarly, groups like the Walloons settled in Sweden already in the 17th century, followed by many other groups in later periods. There are also several million people with Swedish ancestry in the United States and Canada following the large-scale emigration of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Geography

The largest area inhabited by Swedes, as well as the earliest known original area inhabited by their linguistic ancestors, is in the country of Sweden, situated on the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the islands adjacent to it, situated west of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe. The Swedish-speaking people living in near-coastal areas on the north-eastern and eastern side of the Baltic Sea also have a long history of continuous settlement, which in some of these areas possibly started about a millennium ago^{[citation needed]}. These people include the Swedish-speakers in mainland Finland - speaking Swedish dialect commonly referred as Finland Swedish (finlandssvenska which is part of East-Swedish dialect group) and the almost exclusively Swedish-speaking population of the Åland Islands speaking in a manner closer to the adjacent dialects in Sweden than to adjacent dialects of Finland Swedish. Estonia also had an important Swedish minority until the 20th century. Smaller groups of historical descendants of 18th-20th century Swedish emigrants who still retain varying aspects of Swedish identity to this day can be found in the Americas (especially Minnesota and Wisconsin, see Swedish Americans) and in Ukraine.

Currently, Swedes tend to emigrate mostly to the Nordic neighbour countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland), English speaking countries (USA, UK), Spain and Germany.[22]

Historically, the Kingdom of Sweden has been much larger than nowadays, especially during the "The Era of Great Power" (Swedish Empire) in 1611 - 1718. Finland belonged to Sweden until 1809. Since there was no separate Finnish nationality at those times, it is not unusual that sources predating 1809 refer both to Swedes and Finns as "Swedes". This is particularly the case with New Sweden, where some of the "Swedish" settlers were actually of Finnish origin.

Origin

The ancient Germanic tribe of the Suiones, sometimes called Svear in academic works, were at the roots of Swedish statehood and contemporary with the Geats and the Daner in Scandinavia. The roman bureaucrat and historian, Jordanes mentions in his work "Scandza" that these tribes are "the tallest of all men". He later mentions other Scandinavian tribes as being of the same height. He also mentions that the Swedes outmatched the others in class: "Suetidi, cogniti in hac gente reliquis corpore eminentiores". Notably, in modern Scandinavian languages, with the exception of Icelandic, there is a distinction between svenskar and svear (as between danskar and Daner), since the latter term does not include the Geats and the Gotlanders and whose descendants became a part of the Swedish ethnicity.

According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms showed a noticeable genetic affinity between Swedes and central Europeans, especially Germans (conclusions also valid for Norwegians).[23] For the global genetic make-up of the Swedish people and other peoples (see also [24] and [25]). Another detailed nuclear genetic study has also implied that Swedes largely share genetics with Finns.[26]

Famous Swedes

Swedes of international renown include Gustavus Adolphus, Dag Hammarskjöld and Carl Bildt, film directors Ingmar Bergman and Victor Sjöström, actors Greta Garbo, Stellan Skarsgård, Alexander Skarsgård, Maud Adams, Ingrid Bergman, Dolph Lundgren, Peter Stormare, Erland Josephson and Max von Sydow entrepreneurs Gustaf Dalén, Lars Magnus Ericsson, Bertil Hult, Gustav de Laval, Ingvar Kamprad, Ivar Kreuger, Anders Winroth, Alfred Nobel, Erling Persson, Ruben Rausing, Axel Wenner-Gren and Niklas Zennström, musicians Yngwie Malmsteen, In Flames, Hammerfall, Sabaton, Opeth, Pelle Almqvist, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, Agnetha Fältskog, Jussi Björling, Birgit Nilsson, Charlotte Perrelli, Neneh Cherry, Per Gessle, Jenny Lind and Nina Persson, scientists Hannes Alfvén, Arvid Carlsson, Carolus Linnaeus, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Kai Siegbahn and Anders Jonas Ångström, sportspeople Zlatan Ibrahimović, Peter Forsberg, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Henrik Zetterberg, Björn Borg, Jesper Parnevik, Fredrik Ljungberg, Lennart Skoglund, Ingemar Stenmark, Mats Sundin, Annika Sörenstam, Sven Tumba, Jan-Ove Waldner and Mats Wilander, and writers Selma Lagerlöf, Vilhelm Moberg, August Strindberg, Astrid Lindgren and Hjalmar Söderberg, and 1998 worlds strongest man winner Magnus Samuelsson.