Luleå municipality has launched the Swedish Finnish Circle, a monthly program for Swedish Finns over 65, featuring lectures, coffee breaks, and discussions in Finnish as part of its minority work. The initiative aims to promote national minority languages and ensure participation for those belonging to national minorities. The Swedish Finnish Circle meetings are held at Storgatan 13, at Funktionsrätt, and are organized by Eva-Maria Wiggefors in collaboration with Anne-Mari Angeria, Luleå municipality's coordinator for minorities.
Participants themselves can suggest themes for the circle meetings, fostering community involvement. The first Swedish Finnish Circle meeting was held in spring 2025. Specific examples of meeting attendance include 27 people attending a session with the theme of legal issues around wills.
I got a request to start a Swedish Finnish circle group and in spring 2025 the first circle was held here at Funktionsrätt, Storgatan 13. In the startup phase, I collaborated with Anne-Mari Angeria, Luleå municipality's coordinator for minorities, and the main purpose was to offer Swedish Finns the opportunity to meet on a few occasions to talk Finnish together and socialize. To give them the chance to 'be Finnish', both linguistically and culturally. And the collaboration with Anne-Mari continues as she handles the budget and more.
Previous lecturers have included Sanna Gustafsson from Kvinnojoren and Rasmus Juhani Aspholm from Hemrehab. However, it is unknown how many Swedish Finns over 65 live in Luleå and what percentage attend the meetings, nor what the annual budget allocated by Luleå municipality for the Swedish Finnish Circle and minority work is. It remains unclear if there are similar programs for other national minorities in Luleå, such as Sami or Roma communities, or what specific outcomes have been measured from these meetings on participants' well-being or community integration.
I have tried as much as possible to meet their requests in this, but sometimes it has been difficult to find, for example, Finnish-speaking lecturers, and then we instead have discussions in Finnish about the topic after the lecture.