 According to a rough estimation , as of 2010 there were up to 300 @,@ 000 Swedish @-@ speakers living outside Sweden and Finland . The largest populations were in the United States ( up to 100 @,@ 000 ) , the UK , Spain and Germany ( c . 30 @,@ 000 each ) and a large proportion of the remaining 100 @,@ 000 in the Scandinavian countries , France , Switzerland , Belgium , the Netherlands , Canada and Australia . A considerable majority of Swedish residents born outside Sweden ( c . 1 @.@ 5 million ) speak Swedish and according to the <unk> Project , there were c . 2 @,@ 390 @,@ 000 second @-@ language speakers in Finland . According to a survey by the European Commission , 44 % of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold a conversation , for a total of about 5 million second @-@ language speakers . The total number of native speakers could be up to 8 @.@ 6 million with an additional 4 – 5 million second language speakers in Sweden and Finland . Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages , a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are highly fluent in Swedish for a total number of speakers that could be as high as 15 million . 
