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Finland External Migration
Demographic movement in Finland did not end with the
appearance of immigrants from Sweden in the Middle Ages.
Finns
who left to work in Swedish mines in the sixteenth century
began
a national tradition, which continued up through the
1970s, of
settling in their neighboring country. During the period
of
tsarist rule, some 100,000 Finns went to Russia, mainly to
the
St. Petersburg area. Emigration on a large scale began in
the
second half of the nineteenth century when Finns, along
with
millions of other Europeans, set out for the United States
and
Canada. By 1980 Finland had lost an estimated 400,000 of
its
citizens to these two countries.
A great number of Finns emigrated to Sweden after World
War
II, drawn by that country's prosperity and proximity.
Emigration
began slowly, but, during the 1960s and the second half of
the
1970s, tens of thousands left each year for their western
neighbor. The peak emigration year was 1970, when 41,000
Finns
settled in Sweden, which caused Finland's population
actually to
fall that year. Because many of the migrants later
returned to
Finland, definite figures cannot be calculated, but all
told, an
estimated 250,000 to 300,000 Finns became permanent
residents of
Sweden in the postwar period. The overall youthfulness of
these
emigrants meant that the quality of the work force
available to
Finnish employers was diminished and that the national
birth rate
slowed. At one point, every eighth Finnish child was born
in
Sweden. Finland's Swedish-speaking minority was hard hit
by this
westward migration; its numbers dropped from 350,000 to
about
300,000 between 1950 and 1980. By the 1980s, a strong
Finnish
economy had brought an end to large-scale migration to
Sweden. In
fact, the overall population flow was reversed because
each year
several thousand more Finns returned from Sweden than left
for
it.
Data as of December 1988
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