Talk:Ethnic Swedes

message: This part should be revised by some with English as their native language. I don't agree with this, especially distingusihing between the inhabitants of Åland and the Finland-Swedes in Mainland Finland. In Sweden both the inhabitants of Åland and the Swedish speaking minority in Mainland Finland are considered Finland-Swedes.
: In the 1920s the tone from Stockholm was quite another. At that time you went to the League of Nations to demand the Åland islands (that you had occupied for a few weeks in 1918) back from Finland. At that time you did what you could to emphasize Åland's closeness to Sweden - contrary to Nyland, Åbolands skärgård and Österbotten. Have you realized your wrongdoing, or has you appetite grown? /Tuomas 07:23, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Out of courtesy rather than out of conviction. Many Ålänningar tend to become berserks if you call them Finns or Finland-Swedes. But among the younger ones, "Finns" and occasionally "Swedish speaking Finns" get more and more common. /Tuomas 07:23, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: English language context

message: This article contains significant overlap with Swedes and I'm not convinced regarding the merit of an indepth and separate article for Ethnic Swedes. In one sense it seems to up hold a distinction of the Ethnic Swedes from the New Swedes as the reason for its existence. The relevant issues handled in the article could well be dealt within a single article covering the Swedes. The same need of separating Finns and Ethinic Finns, does not really exist for Swedes. Ethnic Swedes is still a relevant term but it should be merged and developed with the Swedes article. -- Mic 20:54, May 18, 2004 (UTC)
: I agree, and I can't see the point in promoting this nominal distinction between people in Sweden and in diaspora that is apparently made in Swedish into article names in the English Wikipedia. The article Swedes should list and describe everything. --Shallot 22:08, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I think I've to carry the responsibility for giving the advice to write an article on Ethnic Swedes. I'm not sure if that was so much of an mistake, as you hold it to be, but if so, I offer my sincerest apologies. /Tuomas 06:52, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I still think that Ethnic Swedes is relevant term and substantially it would compose the bulk of the Swedes article. In this sense it seems a bit ridiculous to develop it as a separate article. It would be somewhat similar to developing an extensive and indepth article on Proper Swedish (Rikssvenska) only to keep it separate from a poorly developed article on the Swedish language. In some sense it is about structure, but it is also creating an environment able to reach a more exhaustive perspective. -- Mic 10:28, May 20, 2004 (UTC)
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Just as a note.  I know nothing at all about Swedes, but
I've written a lot about Chinese identity on Taiwan, and its nice
to know that things are just a complex and messy in 
another part of the world.
My advice is this
* Focus your article on explaining why people are screaming at each other.  One thing that I've learned is that identity disputes are very heated among people involved in them, but they are totally often incomprehesible to outsiders.
* Explain naming and categorization controversies.  Why does group A hate to be called B or lumped in with group C?
* Quantify things, what are the sizes of the groups?  What is the approximate support for the views.  Do most people in group A think B?  Some people?  Only the extremists?
* Don't assume that outsiders know what you know.  There are things about these disputes that "everyone knows" that outsiders don't.
* Explain the history.
* Focus on the unexpected and the complex.  For example, there is a tendency to try to classify people into distinct groups, but I've found that this tends to far oversimplify a situation.
* Try to avoid going into nitpick mode (i.e by the Treaty of X signed in 1685, shows clearly that Ebonian land was originally occupied by Batislavans).  The trouble with these arguments is that you aren't going to convince insiders, and they are totally imcomprehenisble to outsiders.
One thing that I found is that I learned a lot about issues of Taiwanese identity by studying the Hungarians and the Romanians scream at each other.  The main thing that I learned was how silly these disputes sometimes look to someone who isn't emotionally involved in them.
Roadrunner 07:07, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with Swedes