ABSTRACT
Education in the heritage language (HL) of immigrant students has been a part of the public school system in Norway and Sweden for the past 40 to 50 years. These two Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe, with a total population of about 15 million people, are comparable in size to the province of Ontario in Canada. While there are many similarities in HL education in Ontario and these two Scandinavian countries, one major difference is that twice as many students receive HL instruction in Sweden and Norway as in Ontario. Roughly 150,000 students in elementary schools in Norway and Sweden receive education in their HLs. Such education encompasses approximately 150 different languages.
