Finland’s results in the European election bucked a continent-wide trend of rising support for parties on the outer fringe of right-wing politics, with the Left Alliance and the National Coalition winning big at the expense of the nationalist Finns Party.
Leftist leader Li Andersson received more votes than any other candidate has ever received in a European election.
I’m familiar with the language, I just don’t know it. But Finland is bilingual, as there is also a lot of Norwegian Swedish spoken and many signs are in Norwegian Swedish too. I have less issues understanding Norwegian Swedish. Myself I’m Dutch, I’ve been to Finland several times. I’m not even going to try to learn the language, it’s really hard. But in major cities they speak English.
Edit: I didn’t remember correctly the second language
A finnish person here. Our second language is swedish not norwegian :-). Aside from that, it is true that many signs etc. are written in both finnish and swedish. People working in public sector are also supposed to know swedish.
Outside of few swedish speaking areas you are better off using english as it’s more widely spoken by the general population.
I just remembered that my dad said that about the same trip. That he was able to get around the city because pretty much everyone spoke English, so they could just help him out. The signage was the issue for him.
This was back in 1989 and, just by coincidence, this morning I found a postcard he sent me from Leningrad, because he got permission to take the train there from Helsinki. He wrote that he hoped one day I would learn about Peter the Great and visit the beautiful city he founded. Always the professor. Zero for two, unfortunately. I know basically nothing about Peter the Great and, even though the name St. Petersburg/Petrograd should be a clue, I didn’t even know he founded it.
