Ostrobothnian Swedish is a variety of Finland-Swedish

Finland-Swedish

Finland Swedish is a general term for the closely related cluster of dialects of Swedish spoken in Finland by Swedish-speaking Finns as their mother tongue...

, spoken in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

. Outside the autonomous island province of Åland, which is officially monolingually Swedish, Ostrobothnia

Ostrobothnia (region)

Ostrobothnia is a region of Finland. It is located in Western Finland. It borders the regions Central Ostrobothnia, Southern Ostrobothnia, and Satakunta and is one of the four regions making up the historical province of Ostrobothnia....

 is the only region of Finland

Regions of Finland

Finland consists of 19 regions called in Finnish and in Swedish. The regions are governed by regional councils, which serve as forums of cooperation for the municipalities of a region. The main tasks of the regions are regional planning and development of enterprise and education. In addition,...

 besides Åland where the Swedish-speakers are in the majority (51%). Ostrobothnian Swedish-speakers are traditionally farmers, and as such, isolation of the communities produces strong dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

al variations.

One famous Swedish dialect in Ostrobothnia is the Närpes

Närpes

Närpes is a town and municipality of Finland.The municipality is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Ostrobothnia region. The town has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is ....

 dialect, whose mutual intelligibility with other forms of Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 is questionable. Finland-Swedes have difficulties with understanding the Närpes dialect, and it is almost unintelligible to anyone else, so speakers of the Närpes dialect have to learn their standard Swedish well.

The most archaic Nordic dialects

North Germanic languages

The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...

 in Scandinavia are found in Ostrobothnia, Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

excluded. The abovementioned Närpes dialect is in syntax, grammar and vocabulary fairly close to Icelandic, hence the difficulties in understanding.