As a language minority with the same national status as the Finns Swedishspeaking ethnologists have consolidated their position with institutions such as the Swedish Åbo Akademi University and the Swedish Literary Society. A flourishing ethnology has developed with the creation of a chair of ethnology in Turku in 1919 and of Folk Culture Archives in Helsinki in 1937. In the recent decades this ethnology has focused on coastal and urban studies, ethnic stereotypes, historical mentalities, the culture of age groups, and rural areas. Close contacts with Scandinavian and German ethnologists resulted in a shift of paradigm in the 1980s, more weight being put upon life modes, modern and postmodern attitudes as well as material life.