Swedish exclaves in Finland

Do you think that situation described in map below could have been born in any circumstances. Independent Finland, but Swedish-speaking regions belong to Sweden as exclaves. Åland could easily belong to Sweden, if history would have gone other way, but what about the other Swedish-speaking regions.

What do you think would have been the position of these Swedish exclaves in Winter and Continuation War.

sweden.JPG
 
I'd imagine you'd need a PoD back at the Swedish conquest of Finland, with some polity, Finnic or Slavic, emerging in the interior to arrest Sweish growth.

In 1809, when Sweden lost Finland, those linguistic enclaves didn't really exist. Every educated Finn spoke Swedish in all formal situations, every urban population was mostly Swedophone, and Finnish was everywhere a peasent language. They emerged during the Finnish national revival of the next century because they were areas with a lot of towns in close contact with Sweden-proper.

I think the Swedes last thought about taking Finland back durng the Crimean War, and then, with the national revival still in its infancy, they wanted it all. By WW1, when Germany tried to get Sweden to join the CP, I believe the plan was for Sweden to get Aland and for Finland to become a friendly state ruled by a branch of the Swedish royalty.

In short, either Sweden would only settle for the lot, or doesn't want any, with the cut off being somewhere in the 1860s and 70s.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Hmm, I don't see it happen. Not linguistically anyway. Most areas in Finland with Swedish speaking population has a much larger Finnish speaking population right next to them. (Excluding some small villages in Österbotten and the Åland Islands).

However Sweden keeping some insignificant coastal enclave could happen through a different war of 1808-09. But they wouldn't be linguistic, as I Blame Communist said, Swedish was the formal language at the time.
 
I think it would be very hard to get several small Swedish exclaves in Finland, like shown on the map. One major exclave, now, is in my opinion pretty easy. Lets say Sweden keeps Finland until circa 1910, due to skilled alliances, surprising, continued Russian weakness, ASBs, etc. In the meanwhile, Finnish nationalism has diverged a lot from its OTL course, as has Swedish nationalism.

Basically instead of, roughly, "one people speaking two languages" (a gross simplification, of course, but somewhat true IOTL) coming about in Finland, in the Eastern Provinces the people are more clearly divided in two groups that consider themselves either ethnically, culturally, politically and linguistically *Finnish or *Swedish. When and if the *Finnish nation state now breaks off on its own, maybe as a part of a larger disintegration of the Swedish realm, a part of south-west of Finland is, due to diverse butterflies, likely to have a *Swedish majority. Thus, it sticks with Stockholm. Voilá, a Swedish exclave.

This could well happen with both the *Finnish and the *Swedish becoming happy and free in their respective nations. There is also the possibility that this area (centered around Österbotten or, ironically, Egentliga Finland or Finland Proper) might become a Northern Ireland analogue, with *Swedish Unionists and *Finnish Nationalists facing off against each other decade after decade.

If Russia is as strong as IOTL or stronger, it will conquer Finland at some point before 1900, and in that case it will want all of Finland, not leaving to the Swedish ready-made staging areas for an attempt to retake Finland. In that case, exclaves become that much harder to create. One possibility could come about through a different Russian period in Finland post-1809, "now with more Russification!(tm)": the national development of a unified Finland (politically and organisationally as well as in terms of nationalism) is delayed in a major way. This disruption could also happen if Russia takes Finland only around, say, 1850.

If Russia later falls and breaks apart as a result of a Great War or revolution or both, we could have a Finland that also disintegrates internally, part of which asks to rejoin Sweden.

In this scenario, as I guess in the former one too, the absense of a united Finnish state it becomes much easier for Eastern Finland to soon or later fall back under Russian control. Thus, at least for a while, we could have a Swedish exclave/exclaves in a Finland that is part of a Russian state.
 
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