The Magma Academy has been set up with the help of two major Swedish-language cultural foundations, the Svenska kulturfonden and Konstsamfundet.

“Apparently knowledge of Finnish history and awareness of why our country is bilingual is simply too thin”, says Martina Harms-Aalto, the programme chief of the academy.

Supporting the academy is a consultative committee with influential figures from different sectors.

“I am grateful that I can speak my own mother tongue, which is Finnish, and this is the result to some extent of the Swedish-speaking elite which started speaking Finnish in the early 19th century, and to support the Finnish language. Consequently, I might be able to do something now to support the Swedish language, because Finland would be much more boring if it were not here,” says journalist Tuomas Enbuske.

Critics: Less Pressure on Higher Education

Critics feel that Finland cannot afford to grant any more privileges to the Swedish-speaking minority. One good example of this involves education: Swedish-speakers have proportionally more slots available in higher education in their own mother tongue than Finnish-speakers do.

“A larger proportion of Swedish-speakers have managed to get a place to study than Finnish-speakers. we don’t have so very much Swedish-language training, but there is less pressure on applicants than on the Finnish-language side,” says Minister of Education Henna Virkkunen.

In spite of the critical points of view, nobody has detailed figures available on the expenses stemming from privileges accorded to the Swedish-language minority. Any valid comparison would have to take other minorities into consideration, and calculate who all benefit from Swedish-language services. For example, about a quarter of students at Swedish-language institutions of higher education have Finnish as their mother tongue.