Countries Change

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The Sámi people became Swedish when the Swedes occupied their home region, centuries ago.
(Similarly, other Sami became Norweign, Finnish, or Russian.)

Countries are born, they live, they change status & borders, & they die. Example:
   • 1600s: Sweden occupied Scania (Skåne), Halland, Bohuslän, Blekinge, Jämtland, & Härjedalen (from Denmark-Norway).
   • Poland's borders have been moved several times (by powerful countries).
   • 1700s - 1800s: Independence in the Americas. The Ottoman Empire (Osmanska riket) disintegrated.
   • 1940s - 1970s: African & Asian countries independent. Iceland too.
   • 1970s →: Pakistan (1971), Yugoslavia (1991→), The Soviet Union (1991) & Sudan (2011) disintegrated.
                     (A citizen of the Soviet Union was in a space station. When he came back to earth, his country had ceased to exist!)

• 2014: Scotland will vote on independence.
(If they vote yes, Great Britain won't be so great.)

â–º How did some Sámi become Swedish?

â–º Why do people in the Swedish province of Jämtland
    speak a Swedish which sounds a lot like Norwegian?
    And why are many people in Scania nearly as hard to
    understand (for many from Stockholm) as the Danes are?

â–º How can you move to a new country without moving?

Hint →

At the end of WWII, a refugee was interviewed:*
-In what country were you born?
-Austria.
-Where did you go to school?
-Czechoslovakia.
-Where did you start working?
-Hungry.
-Where have you lived recently?
-In the Soviet Union.
-And where do you live now?
-In the Ukraine.
-You must have moved around a lot!
-Nonsense. I've never left my hometown.

People in Sweden

19   • 1.5 million first & second generation immigrants live in Sweden.
                  (About the same proportion as in the USA.)
   • Immigration changes music, film, & other expressions of culture.
   • Immigration influences culture in general (language, food, habits, etc.).
   • Globally, 200 million people now alive have moved to a new country, for many different reasons.
   • From war in Afghanistan to neighbouring Pakistan. From war in Syria. From Somalia.
   • Since the 1700s, the USA & Canada have accepted many immigrants. The USA accepted a million Swedish immigrants (at the end of the 19th century to the 1920s), when Sweden was poor.
   • World Migration - Map

â–º How does immigration change a country's culture?

â–º About how many people moved from Sweden to the USA?

More info: * The refugee in the dialogue is from Mukatjeve, a town which first was in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, then 1919 Czechosovakia, 1938 Hungry, 1945 The Soviet Union, 1991 Ukraine. (Source: Ingmar Karlsson: Det lilla Europa)