Originally Posted by
Aviatrix
And I've yet got to meet a Finn (Swede/Norwegian/Dane/German/Austrian) under 65 who doesn't speak at least some English... but that doesn't make these countries part of the English-speaking world. :-)
According to Finnish people I know, Swedish is very much on the decline as a native language in Finland. A lot of families that were Swedish-speaking a generation ago are now Finnish-speaking as a result of mixed marriages (or so I am told). The fact that lots of Finns speak Swedish (along with English) as a foreign language is a different matter entirely.
The majority of Finns I know have had Swedish even in school from a young age. Then again it's sort of hard to run into a Finn who doesn't speak Swedish where I am today.
I know quite the number of Swedes/Norwegians/Danes above 40 years of age whose grasp of English is rather questionable ... and more likely to be behind their German. I guess we are going to start dating people here -- not that kind of dating
.
Originally Posted by ksu
And exactly which parts of Norway weren't Denmark's lands before 1814?
Well, I don't think offshore claims (i.e., oil) were fought over back as much then as the right to move/not move through the waters.
And it depends on how far back you want to go.