The Swedish-Speaking World

Although Swedish has never gained prominence as an influential language in Europe, it certainly is a fascinating language to linguists and others due to it’s the influence it has had on its neighboring countries, and the people living on remote areas of border villages in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Here is a list of places where Swedish language is spoken:

Country Languages (%)
European Union Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish

note: only official languages are listed; German, the major language of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is the most widely spoken mother tongue - over 19% of the EU population; English is the most widely spoken language - about 49% of the EU population is conversant with it (2007)
Finland Finnish 91.2% (official), Swedish 5.5% (official), other 3.3% (small Sami- and Russian-speaking minorities) (2007)
Sweden Swedish, small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities

Source: CIA – The World Factbook