[Ingen tekst i felt]
The Finnish-Swedish border area is one of the internal border regions of the EU. This sparsely populated northern European border region shares a common history and has a long tradition of cross-border interaction and cooperation. Historically, the region has formed a culturally, economically and politically united region from the 11th century until the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, the Kingdom of Sweden ceded Finland to the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Hamina in 1809. The new border was drawn along the Tornio and Muonio rivers and divided the villages and communities built around these rivers. In the Tornio River Valley, people originally spoke Finnish dialect Meänkieli(“our language”) which is nowadays acknowledged as a minority language in Sweden. In addition, the northernmost part of the border region is part of the Sami region (covering areas from northern Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Kola peninsula in Russia) as well. The Sami are the only indigenous people within the European Union, and they have their own self-government and minority status in each country.
Even though the border area has experienced geopolitical tensions and changes during the 20 th century such as Finland gaining independence in 1917 after being an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia for more than hundred years, strict regulations of cross-border mobility during the WWs and being a frontier between West and East during the Cold War period, both formal and mundane interactions across the border have remained active and vivid. Both local level cooperation and Nordic ministry level cooperation have played a significant role in this; for instance, the exemption of passport requirements between the Nordic countries was introduced in 1957.
Sweden and Finland joined the EU in 1995, which strengthened the institutionalization of local and regional co-operation. Especially the advanced cross-border co-operation initiatives of Tornio (FIN)-Haparanda (SWE) twincity have gained scholarly, policy and media attention. Due to the integrated nature of the region in terms of cross-border commuting and daily interaction, the border closures introduced as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic were seen as highly problematic by local authorities and citizens. There are various ongoing cross-border cooperation projects including a project investigating needed policy and legislative changes on how to secure free cross-border mobility and interaction in the future, also during exceptional times.