 Haparanda has strong connections to Tornio and the Finnish side of the river and bilingualism of Swedish and Finnish is common although Swedish is the sole official language and the mother tongue of a vast majority of inhabitants.In 2010, it was estimated that 70 % of Haparanda's inhabitants spoke Finnish as a second language.The municipality itself, on the other hand, uses the term (City of Haparanda) not only for the town itself, but for its whole territory ().