About twenty years ago a group of young Tornedalians organized a conference in Svanstein in the Swedish Torne Valley (Tornedalen) called "The Last Language Struggle". Because of the Swedishization policy in Tornedalen, pursued by Swedish authorities especially in educational policy sporadically from the end of the 19th century, and other societal factors, language shift from bilingualism in Tornedal Finnish and Swedish to Swedish monolingualism was becoming more and more frequent among younger Tornedalians. Could anything be done in order to put an end to this development? Or was it too late already? Was there any future for a Tornedal Finnish language and cultural heritage? These were questions asked by the organizers of the conference.
The discussion, started in connection to the conference, resulted in the founding of an association, a Central Union for Swedish Tornedalians (Svenska Tornedalingars Riksförbund-Tornionlaaksolaiset, STR-T). An ideological consequence of the conference was the development of a more conscious ethnic identity among many of those who were active in the association. This was, in turn, concretely manifested in the change of the name of the language variety, from Tornedal Finnish to Meänkieli. This change suggested that the variety was regarded as a language in its own right, not merely a dialect. Twenty years after "The Last Language Struggle" Meänkieli has been recognized as a minority language in Sweden, according to a parliamentary resolution (Dec. 9, 1999), which gained legal force on April 1, 2000.
Is this a Tornedalian success story or not? With a brief overview of the main features of the development of educational policy since the beginning of the 80s, the paper will try to analyze what factors have contributed to the development of Meänkieli and Meänkieli-related culture during the period.

1. The concept Meänkieli is used here to represent not only the language in its concrete linguistic manifestations, but an attitude and a symbol for a movement.