the politics of finnish in swedish meankieli is arguably a term that has been introduced for political purposes to refer to finnish dialects spoken in northern sweden there has been considerable pressure on the swedish authorities to grant finnish an official status in view not only of the indigenous and historic finnish minority in the north of the country but also because of the existence of a more recent finnish immigrant community in southern and central sweden by classifying the northern finnish dialects as a separate language the swedish authorities have been able to meet their international treaty obligations towards established minority groups and circumvent the need to grant an official status to finnish a move that they have been relectant to make in view of the size of the finnish immigrant population and the repercussions it would have had on the status of other immigrant languages