Finnish does not belong to the same lanquage group as Swedish,Norweigan,Danish etc. Our lanquage is part of Fenno-Hungarian group, where belong Finnish, Estonian & Hungarian. I sometimes wonder how Hungarian can be part of this lanquage group because it is so different. It's quite easy to us to understand Estonian though. Most Finns understand Swedish even though it's somtimes difficult to speak it.
I used to have manadatory Swedish at school, it was considered as a second domestic lanquage. Then i had three foreign lanquages as well, English,French & German