ABSTRACT
When minority language speakers have realized the need to take the future into their own hands, irrespective of what the surrounding society is or is not willing to do to assist them, individuals, historical events, and key groups of people will play crucial roles in the process of the awakening and revitalization of the language, thereby increasing the self-confidence of its speakers. For one of the more recent groups of Finnish-speakers in Sweden, the Sweden Finns, living in most parts of Sweden but concentrated in urban areas, the big cities, and the industrial towns of central Sweden, events, individuals as well as organisations have been of crucial importance (Lainio, 1996, Tarkiainen, 1993). One should of course add that the changes in our basic concepts and ideologies are a fundamental cause of such changes, nevertheless the mediation of these takes place through the deeds of individual actors.
