Talk:Finns/Archive 1

Archive 1

Ethnicity

This article is questionable. Its very clear that Swedish-Finns represent an ethnicity separate from Finnish-Finns. 80.0.191.52 21:18, 5 October 2005

I stronly disagree. Actually you can not tell a Finn from a Swede and opposite. (I noticed that in real life)

I agree. This article seems to have a hard time distinguishing between the people who live in Finland (of whichever ethncity or nationality) and the people who are seen as and see themselves as Finnish (wherever they live or whatever citizenship they hold). Interestingly, the author(s) of the article say(s) that there is no difference in ethnic identity among groups who share similar genetic origins or if the citizenship is the same, which is parallel to what the Egyptian state says of the Copts. I think that the Ingrians, the Roma, the Sami, the Karelians and the Swedes that call Finland their home would prefer to think of themselves and their communities as distinct, even if not totally fixed for all eternity.

See also article on ethnic Turks, language shift and cultural assimilation for further insights. //Big Adamsky 09:50, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps one should look at e.g. Irish people for a comparison... Clarifer

Tornedalians is a term which is tightly related to region close to finnish border, reading article you can confuse that meaning whole population with finnish heritage living in Sweden, which is not the case. Also I am not sure, but I believe swedish and finnish are ethnically more close than finnish and hungarians. Being local to border region near swedish-finnish border, I can say you cannot say who's finnish, "tornedalian" or swedish. Only real difference is spoken language. I'd suggest checking that a bit deeper. //jylilaht

Genetically Finns are close to all Germanic people in Europe. Hungarians are in my understanding genetically close to Slavic people. --Drieakko 09:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a wide consensus in Finland both among Finnish speaking and Swedish speaking Finns that Finland-Swedes are not an ethnic but a language minority. Any idea of a ethnic division is most likely something assumed by foreigners and has little to do with facts on the ground. -- Petri Krohn 12:25, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps ethnolinguistic is more appropriate then? Ethnic variations in this case seem to have much to do what is your mother tongue as well. I think also, that too many people confuse ethnic with something like a brick wall rather than just a category that can encompass many different aspects. As for example, Somalis are very similar to the Amhara, but are considered different ethnic groups. Denoting this in the article shouldn't change anything. Perhaps there could be some explanation as to how this is rendered and viewed inside of Finland then? Tombseye 20:30, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

As a Finland-Swede I would prefer to be considered a member of a language minority, not a ethnic minority. Many of the Finland-Swedes are not of Swedish orgins. We have a own culture and language, but we share the most of our thing with the majority. �Dr.Poison 10:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The thing is that there are probably Finland-Swedes that are "ethnically Swedes" (especially in Ostrobothnia...I'm from there myself but very mixed in ethnicity), but then there are those who are very mixed and those whose families have adopted the Swedish language. There are also Finns (Finnishspeakers) that have roots in Sweden or in Swedishspeaking families in Finland, but they don't use the Swedish as their language anymore. The point is that the whole country is very mixed when it comes to ethnic background. During the last 1000 years (and before that as well) Finns, Swedes, Sami people, Russians and whoever else has come this way have intermixed in many different combinations. So that means that being a Finland-Swede is mainly connected to the mother tongue, while ethnically you could be whatever. There are many different interpretations on this. One could also argue that Swedishspekaing Ostrobothnians are ethnically different from the Swedishspeakers in say Helsinki. One could also argue that Finnishspeakers in Turku are ethnically different from Finnishspeakers in Karelia or Lapland. That would mean that being a Finn is mainly a language identity too. Ostrobothnian 08:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Image

Can anyone suggest a few very famous Finns, preferably one representing a specific field (ie: Writer, Scientist, Politician, Composer) to make an image for. I was considering using Jean Sibelius, but it is controversial as he is a Swedish-Finn. Thanks for any responses. Antidote 18:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

anyway, I was thinking:

Eero Saarinen for art maybe Alhfors for Science (if he's not a Finnish-Swede allegiance).

Antidote 19:18, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Jean Sibelius, Eero Saarinen, Aki Kaurismäki, and Minna Canth

Only controversial selection here would be Sibelius. Antidote 07:01, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

--In fact Sibelius would do fine because he had both Finnish and Swedish-Speaking ancestors and spoke both Finnish and Swedish with his family (although mostly Finnish).

Sibelius is an interesting case. He was totally bilingual as many people in Finland (including myself) are and both of our national languages were a part of his identity. His political opinions are known: he belonged to the "Young Finns", more precisely, to the right wing of that Finnish-oriented (in a linguistic sense) political party and he was, among many other "Young Finnish" notable personalities (one of them, BTW, was my great-grandfather), one of the signers of the platform of the monarchist (right) wing of the Young Finnish Party in 1918 immediately after the Civil War when the question of monarchy versus republic divided the white side which had won the Civil War. The monarchist wing of the Young Finns and of the People´s Party merged with the monarchist majority into the culturally more conservative "Old Finnish" Party in December 1918 and formed the National Coalition Party as the single Finnish-speaking (or more or less Finnish-oriented bilingual, such as Sibelius) party of monarchist persuasion (the republican elements in these three parties founded the National Progressive Party). The Swedish People´s Party (which united both conservative and liberal citizens who were linguistically "Swedish-oriented"; the socialist left, on the other hand, has always included both Finnish- and Swedish-speakers) divided as well: as its majority was monarchist, the republican minority formed a little party called "Svenska Vänstern" or "The Swedish Left". To sum up: Sibelius was totally bilingual. It is rather difficult to say with exactitude which language he spoke best. As he spoke perfect Swedish since his childhood (naturally, in the "well-educated" Helsinki area accent which is the "prestige" norm among Swedish-speaking Finns and sounds very different indeed from the kind of Swedish spoken in Sweden), it is a partial truth to call him a Swedish-speaking Finn. To call him a Finnish-speaking Finn is a partial truth as well, as he was totally bilingual. In any case he considered himself to be a Finn in a national sense and his position on the language question was very moderate. His "Finnishness" was inclusive in the sense that it most certainly did include the Swedish language as a part of the Finnish national identity. This is an attitude which is very typical, indeed the rule, for Bilingual Finns. As I´m one myself, I know that very well indeed... Monegasque 16:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Using Tove Jansson, C.G.E. Mannerheim and Jean Sibelius as example of ethnic Finns is not a good idea, as all of them were Swedish-Finn (or Sweds living in Finland). I would only make an exclusion for Sibelius as he s considered to be a national composer of Finland, but replacing all three would be better. Netrat (talk) 15:45, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

More info and Sibelius

If you would like more information about the multilingual situation in Finland, please see this brochure of the Swedish Assembly in Finland (Folktinget) [1]. Also, please see the wikientry on Finland-Swedes and the discussion page. As Jean Sibelius was born in 1865, it is a matter of taste whether to see him as a Finland-Swede, since this identity only developed as a reaction to the gaining significance of the Finnish speaking population toward the end of the 19th century/early 20th century. However, this might be insignificant, because in Finland Jean Sibelius is embraced (or not, depending on personal tastes ;) equally by both language communities in a similar fashion as Helene Schjerfbeck, Ville Valo, Minna Canth, Larin Paraske, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Tove Jansson, Aki Kaurismäki, Aleksis Kivi, Mikael Agricola, Mika Häkkinen, Alvar Aalto and the like. Clarifer

Hair

Is it true that most finns are blond? I've always assumed that they were kinda slavic, and had darker hair. Some guys from finland told me that finland has the most blond people in the world. I was just wondering if this is actually true? -Alex 12.220.157.93 11:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe articles like this here from the BBC [2] would be some of the sources of remarks about the high number of people with fair hair in Finland. Clarifer

The idea that Finns are a dark haired population is based on ignorance of some racial theorists from the beginning of 20th century. They believed that because Finnish language is not Indo-European then Finns are not Europeans. They did not necessarily even study finns, but they just theoretized based on prejudices. Modern studies have proven othervise. Finns are the most blonde population. 193.65.112.51 11:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

According to the Discovery Channel's Insight Compact Guide: Finland, 'most of the population is dark-haired' and 'Finns don't conform to the Nordic image'. I don't know how reliable that is as a source, but personally I think it's quite accurate - Finnish people do look different from Swedes for example, and I think I've seen much more blonde Swedes than Finns. - ulayiti (talk) 22:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

So which are you going to believe, a scientific study or a travel guide with essentially made-up information? --Vuo 12:27, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Finns are actually blonde, in other words Scandinavians. The languange does not have an effect to their genetics.

Often, such comments in "popular science" may stem from very old sources. After all, there is very little anthropological research on the facial features of European peoples going on. The discussion about the hair coulour of the Finnish people (and the geographical distribution of different hair coulours) was very active in the 1920's. At that time, the goal of the Finnish scientists was to show that the Finns were not part of the yellow race. The prevalent view in Western anthropological community was that the Finnish-speaking majority of Finns had a strong mongoloid strain, while the Swedish-speaking minority consisted mainly of Nordic race. The discussion died out in the 1940's, as racial biology fell out of fashion. Present research, on the other hand, studies mainly genetic markers, not hair coulour, so the origin of ideas about Finnish hair coulours is, most likely, some early 20th century discussion about racial features. --MPorciusCato 07:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wtf :/. I'm pretty sure Lithuania has the most blonde people per capita in the world (over 90 %). I don't see why Slavs should be darker than Germanians though, the blonde gene is belived to originate from north-slavs. Anyway yeah there are alot more blonde people in Finland than there are in Sweden and no you can't tell them apart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.224.47.54 (talk • contribs)

I´ve been in Finland and yes,the majority os finnish people are blonde.And the ones that arent are fake dark haired metall music fans.My mother is finnish and my father is spanish from Andalusia,he has black hair and very tanned skin.I look like a gipsy in Finland.XD—Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.57.73.110 (talk • contribs)

One thing is sure: whoever labours under the delusion that most Finns are dark-haired has never visited Finland. Personally, I´ve never seen a country where the population would be blonder than in Finland. The degree of night-dark ignorance that some people tend to display is truly astonishing. The next thing somebody will probably ask is whether Finns really have naturally green hair and a light-blue skin, or is it just a legend... :) Beati pauperes spiritu... Monegasque 17:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm from Finland myself, and yes, blonde hair is prolly the most common hair color here (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between dark blond and light brown though), especially our children are over 90 % blonde and black hair is VERY rare here —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.130.22.174 (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Magyars related ethnically to Finns?

Not that I'm a big fan of "ethnisism" of any sort, but on what grounds are Magyars a related ethnic group to the Finns. If it is based on linguistic relatedness, one could equally well say that Indians are a related ethnic group to the Irish people.... Once again: Finnish belongs to the Finnic group of the Uralic languages. Hungarian belongs to the Ugric group. The relatedness of these languages is of a similar measure as e.g. Swedish and Urdu. Clarifer

Nothing wrong with supporting the survival of indigenous ethnic groups. Finnish is much more closely related to Hungarian than Swedish and Urdu are. Finno-Urgic is a smaller subfamily compared to the single superfamily of Indo-European languages. Indo-European is the largest and broadest family of languages in the world and distributed over a massive geographic area from the Western tip of Europe to South asia. As well as this, the Finnic and Urgic peoples have a shared origin in the Ural mountains and northern Russia (where other Finno-Urgic groups still exist very close to each other to this day) and a somewhat shared history, both invading eastern Europe (although the Finns were already in their present lands long before the invasion of the Magyars into the Carpathian basin) during the dark ages. Epf 08:11, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see the FAQ on Finno-Ugric languages @ the University of Helsinki for more information [3]. "The proto-language was spoken at least some six thousand years ago (roughly at the same time as the Indo-European proto-language), which means that the most distant branches of the FU language family are very distantly related. The relationship between Finnish and Hungarian could be compared to that between English and Hindi. (This means that there is necessarily no more racial or cultural similarity between Finns and Hungarians...)" Should we now add Hindi speaking people to related ethnic groups of Englishmen? Clarifer 12:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I researched a little more and Hungarian is significantly more different from Finnish than I previously thought, agreed. I'll change the Estonian page then too. Peace, Epf 13:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Finns and genetics

Contrary to what was suggested in a previous version of this article, the gene pool of the Finns is not the only isolate in Europe nor the most isolated one. The main recognized founder populations in the world are those of French-speaking Quebec, Finland, Sardinia, Iceland, Costa Rica, the northern Netherlands, Newfoundland, and several discrete ethic groups, including Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews and certain populations in India. Clarifer

- Does this mean the Fínns are somewhat inbred? (an exaggeration I know but anyway?) 130.243.161.203 (talk) 16:36, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Inclusive or restrictive interpretations of "Finnish people"

This article has symptoms similar with those sometimes found at Talk:French people, Talk:Azerbaijani people and Talk:Turkish people. Let's not confuse communal identity based on ethnicity with a communal identity based on citizenship or civic society. While some Swedish-speaking Finns may be considered or self-identify as part of a larger Finnish "nation", most do not. A few don't care what they "are" while some may feel that no one single identity is primary. But these are clearly the exception to the rule. //Big Adamsky 06:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Finland-Swedes are usually considered ethnic Finns who simply happen to have a different native language than the majority of the population, not an ethnic group of their own (since the Finnish people is considered 'one people with two languages'; see Talk:Finland-Swedes for discussion on this). This is of course debatable, which should definitely be included in the article, but Finland-Swedes are definitely not 'ethnic Swedes in Finland' as you put it. Even if there's an 'ethnic' difference between Finnish-speaking Finns and Finland-Swedes (which I don't think exists, since it's so easy to change languages in Finland), nobody has ever seriously argued that Finland-Swedes are ethnic Swedes. It's like saying that all Americans are ethnically English people because they speak a (considerably different) version of the same language. - ulayiti (talk) 07:11, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

As a close follower of the language-political issues in Finland, I have always disliked this intentional fudging of mother tongue's significance in defining what, if you will, we could call "ethnic identity" especially when it comes to Finnish-speakers. Swedish-speakers have identified themselves very clearly as essentially an ethnic group all the way until the latter half of last century, when it became much more politically convenient to start pushing the idea of the entire people having "two languages", which from individual people's mother-tongue point of view is patent nonsense -- the mother tongue of, say, my entire family tree is Finnish and what Swedish they speak has been taught to them at school as essentially foreign language. Whatever happens in the future, our language policy has not yet managed to implant Swedish as a general second language in the population, and this must be taken into account here. I can well understand how Fenno-Swedes can identify as some sort of particular subgroup and still be considered "Finnish", but there is always the flipside of such a coin. HuckFinn (talk) 13:39, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

I do not think that members of this community are "usually considered" to be ethnically Finnish, although some might, for either personal or political reasons). The Finnish, Swedish and Russian langauges all distinguish between words for a citizen or [long-term] resident and a member of the nominal ethnic group (see Russians and Finland-Swedes). The wording in the article has to reflect this ambiguity and explain more clearly that sometimes identities can overlap. English speaker in the United States are mostly not of English origin (see Ethnic origin and British American). //Big Adamsky 07:29, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The Finnish word for 'Finns' (suomalaiset) practically always includes Finland-Swedes. The only language I know of that differentiates between Finland-Swedes and other Finnish people is Finland-Swedish (Swedish as spoken in Finland) - even the Swedish of Sweden doesn't make that distinction. The Russians in Finland are not considered ethnic Finns, since they are of Russian origin. Finland-Swedes, on the other hand, are mostly people with Finnish origin whose (Finnish) ancestors have at some point decided that raising their children in Swedish would be a good idea. For example, while Finland was part of Sweden, this helped to boost one's social status a great deal.

I personally know people who are Finland-Swedes simply due to the fact that their (Finnish-speaking) parents decided to enrol them in a Swedish-language school. You can hardly say that these people belong to a different ethnic group than their parents, let alone that they have anything to do with the country of Sweden (which is what 'ethnic Swede' would mean). And I know that English-speaking people in the US are mostly not of English origin - that's why I used that example. The same can be said about Finland-Swedes, most of whom have nothing whatsoever to do with Sweden. - ulayiti (talk) 07:45, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I, too, personally know of people who would describe their own ethnicity variously as either Finns of Swedish origin (or German or Polish) or as Swedes or Germans etc whose families have for generations been part of Finnish society or alternately people of Finno-Ugric or mixed or unknown origin whose current ethnic identity lies excluseively or primarily within either the Swedish or Finnish ethnic group (as a consequence of historical accident and, as you poiinted out, language shift). And then there are all those who simply don't care or don't feel particularly affiliated with either "people". My objections to the wording is simply that it is by no means universally taken for granted that these people see themselves as part of the Finnish nation or that others recognize them as such. //Big Adamsky 07:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, variation in the definition - and feeling of significance - regarding the words suomalainen, finländare and finne do exist in Finland, the same holds true for e.g. the terms British, English, Welsh, Scottish etc. Some of this has been mentioned under the title 'language usage' (and could by all means be expanded). I have yet to meet a finlandssvensk who e.g. supports the Swedish team in ice-hockey over the Finnish one (if both are still in the competition) ;). Based on my small sampling of ca. 20 people, I would say that most finlandssveskar feel almost as alien to Sweden and Swedes as any Finnish person not familiar with the country and the people would. (Alänningar apart, of course) Clarifer 09:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Finnish people vs. Finns

So is anyone in favor of changing the article name to "Finns"? Hakkinen

No. We have been there and it resulted e.g. in separate articles referring to Finns and Finland-Swedes as separate ethnicities which, to my understanding, does not reflect the opinion of most people in Finland (in both linguistic groups). See also Talk: Finland-Swedes. Clarifer 05:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there's too much potential overlap with articles Demographics of Finland and Finland-Swedes. This page in particular is missing the subdivisions in the Finnish people (hämäläiset, karjalaiset, savolaiset, pohjalaiset, ..). --Vuo 15:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is. Kahkonen 19:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

This article's title follows the format of Irish people (not Irishmen), Danish people (not Danes), English people (not Englishmen) etc. etc. If you'd like to see subdivisions of Finnish people (such as Finns?, Tavastians?, Karelians?, Savonians?, Finland-Swedes? and what not) then start writing and stop discussing? Clarifer 16:38, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

NO. Finnish People is fine. "Finns" reminds me of fish. Arctic-Editor 14:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

POV issues w/ Finland-Swedes

If you want to give the impression that any serious source claims Finland-Swedes to be a separate ethnicity, please provide the source in the article. - ulayiti (talk) 10:15, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no source in that referenced article which says that the differences are minor or that they are not related to ethnicity. I know that many Finland-Swedes are of Finnish descent, but many are also of primarily Swedish descent. Epf 10:29, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

See Burden of proof (logical fallacy). - ulayiti (talk) 10:58, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Lol, I am not making a logical fallacy, I am merely pointing out that the source doesn't support the current wording/format as much as it didn't support my edit. If its not sourced, then remove the current wording, especially since the source doesnt make a claim that the differences do not revolve that much around ethnicity. Epf 11:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

But if you state that many people view Finland-Swedes as a separate ethnicity, you can't expect me to prove that it's not true. By expecting me to prove that 'the differences are minor or that they are not related to ethnicity', you're reversing the burden of proof. - ulayiti (talk) 11:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

umm, I disagree. My intent is merely that your source doesnt support the current format or wording in the article. If this is the case, then why can't my opinion be included as well ? Since this is the case, i ask you to remove or change that section, or I will. Epf 12:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Either point should be proven by references. As it stands the article reads like official bi-lingulalism "propaganda" even if the reality is something else (at least in terms of how I understand the term "suomalaiset" as opposed to "population of the Republic of Finland" 82.181.150.151 02:13, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

If a claim/statement (especially a controversial one, as, apparently, this one is) cannot be supported by reputable references, then it should be either deleted or moderated so as to show that a controversy exists. That way the 'burden of proof' isn't on any party.KarlXII 10:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Etymology FINLAND from FEN LAND?

I have been quite interested to discover how the word FINLAND came about if the Finns themselves call their own land Suomi. Well I think I have may have the answer.

The Finnish name SUOMI has clear roots in the word for SWAMP or wet-land, which in Finnish is SUO. MAA is land, and so SUOMI is not very far from SUOMAA - swamp land. But how about the word FINLAND?.

The words for SWAMP in modern Swedish are MYR, KÄRR and TRÄSK (according to my dictionary) so there is no obvious relationship there.

But in Britain there is a vast area in south-east England known as THE FENS which were also once wetlands, just like Finland. They have been mostly drained these days and turned over to agricultures as much of the Finnish wetlands have been. Being intrigued at the possibility of a connection between FENLAND or FINLAND I have been investigating the origin of the word FEN.

According to the Oxford Concise dictionary of English Etymology, FEN was in Old English (yr 500-1000 AD) FEN or FENN, and was in Old Dutch VEEN and in old Saxon FEN, FENN, or FENNI. In Old Norse, the word was also FEN, all from about the same time.

So my (not very scholarly) guess is that FINLAND got its international name from its SWAMP-like features just as the name does in Finnish. Or am I revealing something that is already known??Tom 15:17, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Sorry. ;) See the part on "etymology" with a mention about the good old "fen"-theory. But a nice try anyway, keep it up. (by the way, to my understanding the popular etymology fen->fenland->finland or suo->suomaa->suomi has fallen out of favour since the 19th century... Suomi is now thought to have something to do with the Baltic word "zeme". All of it speculative as no-one really knows...) Clarifer 15:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. I have always thought that the roots of the word "Finland" are in latin and english; Finland - Finis (end), land. So "Finland" would roughly mean "end of land". That would seem logical for me, considering that from the point of view of the English (or any West-European nation), Finland could've seemed to be the border of the world (during the Middle Ages that is).

Saunavihta 14:13, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I regret, but I think this is a fanciful theory, without any scholarly support.217.112.242.181 09:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

VENE??

Seeing the Dutch name VEEN above, it struck me that Finnish, having no F sound in its own language would mutate FEN to VEN to make it pronouncable. Am I being too fanciful to think that the Finnish word for BOAT, which is VENE, might have its roots in FEN also? Tom

Heh, and so where does this leave the etymologies for Venemaa and Venäjä (Estonian and Finnish for Russia)? Clarifer 15:18, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Venemaa/Venäjä is likely to have the same etymology as Vanaheim in Ynglinga Saga, which in turn reflects the ancient - well, at least medieval - habit to call all north-eastern Europe the land of Vandals/Vends or something similar. Knowing that Russia and the Baltic area were predominantly Finnic until the Slavic (and Baltic) expansion, starting around the ninth century, it would be tempting to assume that "Venäläiset" ("Russians") were indeed Finns in an anachronistic sense ... or let's say Estonians to avoid any implications of Finnish nationalism. I seem to remember that the language used at the "national assembly" of Novgorod (Veche?) was Finnic to begin with. A more likely explanation, though, in my opinion, is that Vandals/Vends/Finns/Venäläiset and so forth meant simply the "wandering people" reflecting their way of life as slash-and-burn agriculturists and/or hunter-gatherers. If so, the term doesn't refer to any specific ethnic group or language. Tomppeli 08:43, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Swedes an ethnically related group?

Ok, here's where all this ethnicity business gets tricky. On what grounds are Swedes ethnically related to Finns? I personally don't care if one wants to write that the aboriginals of Australia are ethnically related to the Finns, we're all people, yeah, but on what grounds are PARTICULARLY Swedes an ethnically related people to the Finns? Please read what an ethnic group is. Essentially it is a group of people whose members identify themselves with each other at some level be it liguistic, cultural, religious or whatever. I do NOT think that the Finns and the Swedes PARTICULARLY identify themselves with each other when compared to many other groups of people... Clarifer 15:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, just look at Finland-Swedes. They're Finns, not Swedes, therefore that makes Finns related to Swedes. Then there are plenty of people who have Swedish ancestry but are regarded as fully Finnish, like myself. --TonyM ^{ｷﾀ━( °∀° )━ｯ!!} 17:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

> On what grounds are Swedes ethnically related to Finns?

700 years of common history in one unified nation state. -- Petri Krohn 15:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that the "related" in this case means somehow genetically related, whatever that means in context of entire peoples. In this case, Swedish and Finnish cultures are unrelated, despite the political situation and linguistical contact. They do not descend from a common "ancestor culture". Swedes and Norwegians, on the other hand, are related, both being of Viking ancestry. If all sorts of contact is accepted as a criterion for being "related", then the concept overextends, becomes unfalsifiable and therefore pointless. For example, one could also claim that White Americans are related to Native Americans. We already have this sort of discussion in Talk:Ural-Altaic languages. --Vuo 17:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Vuo is correct. Also, if you want that mention to be here, why isn't it in the Swedish people artcle also? 80.186.100.180 18:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok, again, I really don't care if Finns are said to be related to the Masai, but still if we're trying to follow the same patterns in this article as in other articles about ethnic groups, here goes... The info box heading which this conversation refers to reads 'related ethnic groups'. Again, please read what an ethnic group is. It has very little to do with a state or a governing body. Sure, the ethnos Swedes and the ethnos Finns (whatever those were and whatever they are now) were once living in a monarchy (NOT a nation-state which is a modern construction!) called Sweden but this does not necesserily mean that these populations now somehow particularly IDENTIFY themselves with each other (over other groups of people). Does the fact that Austrians and Hungarians were once living in the same country make them ETHNICALLY related? The question about Finland-Swedes, on the other hand, seems unrelated to this question. The discussion about their identity corresponds more with a discussion of whether e.g. Dutch speaking Belgians are in fact Dutch people and not Belgians... Or whether German speaking Swiss are in fact Germans and not Swiss... Or whether French speaking Canadians are in fact French and not Canadians. (my answer is: they are not). In any case, I still think that the ethnic groups we call 'Swedes' and 'Finns' do not PARTICULARLY identify themselves with each other over other groups of people and so they are not (particularly) related ethnic groups. Clarifer 18:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Why is it that all those "related" peoples (Estonians, Livonians, etc.) happen to speak a related language? Would we be related to Swedes if we would speak Swedish today and not Finnish? Or are we truly blue-eyed and blonde-haired Mongolians as people thought oh not so long ago? --TonyM ^{ｷﾀ━( °∀° )━ｯ!!} 15:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Well. A good question. What is a related ethnic group, really? Linguistic, genetic, religious identifying to another group of people? Which "amount" of each does one need for an ethnic relation? Could this identification be only "one-way" or should it be reciprocal? I'm personally not too keen on grouping people too stricktly together - and while doing that setting borders towards other groupings - but I suppose this article should follow a similar principle as other articles. (As soon as Finns appears on the related groups list in the article on Swedes, Swedes should be added here as well, try it there if you wish). What I find interesting in your comment though is: What makes you consider the two old theories and nothing else? (Finns are either related to Scandinavians or they are mongolians gone very wrong ;) or a mixture) Do you think that speaking a Finnic or a Finno-Ugric or a Uralic language makes someone mongolian? How so? Do you know what language Mongolians speak? Speaking an Indo-European language (like Swedish) does not make the people Indian or (South-East-)Asian either. In a predominately Indo-European speaking Europe Uralic speakers seem the exception requiring some sort of an explanation and boy have these explanations been wild. The situation would probably be similar but in the opposite way if Europe was predominately Uralic speaking with a small minority of Indo-European language speakers somewhere (then Uralic would probably not been called Uralic but something like Uralo-European and wild theories about the origins of "Indic" speakers would be made ;). Clarifer 14:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The article on Karelians says Karelians are two distinct ethnic groups. The article on Finland-Swedes says they are not an ethnic, but a "language minority". The very same reasons that differentiate Finns from Russian Karelians and unite them to Finland-Swedes make Swedes a close, if not the the most closely related ethnic group. Restoring text. -- Petri Krohn 03:52, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. On what grounds are Swedes and Finns related "genetically"? Finland-Swedes are usually considered Finns, so that doesn't establish a "genetic" link. Also I don't understand what you mean by "cultural" relatedness. All other peoples mentioned are related linguistically, Swedes are not. Linguistics is the thing that is used in other people articles also to define related peoples. I'll wait for your answer and if I don't get it, i'll edit that out. 80.186.100.180 12:15, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

??? I don't understand your reasoning, please explain. Your reasoning seems to be: since Finns are not Karelians, they must be related to Swedes? Did I undertand it correctly? You seem to make a logical fallacy here? Finnish people are finnophone and swedophone. How is a close ethnic relationship between the Swedish people (whatever that is) and the Finnish people related to this? Do you also think that because of Switzerland and the Swiss the Germans the French and the Italians are ethnically related groups in the sense this word is used in these articles? Do you see Austrians especially related to Hungarians too? Why? How about Greeks and Turks? (Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots...). I think, in a sense, you are right, these groupings are artificial and you can argue which ever way but I still think this article should follow the pattern of the rest of these articles. Clarifer 06:52, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, Sweden in those days was not a nation state: it consisted of many peoples: Swedes, Finns, Baltic peoples, Danes, Germans... 80.186.100.180 15:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

The Swedish Empire consisted of Sweden proper and Swedish dominions. Sweden proper was a nation state consisting Swedish speaking and Finnish speaking people. The dividing line was not between different languages, but between the nobility and peasants -- Petri Krohn 15:37, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

This fact doesn't seem to have much to do with Swedes and Finns identifying with each other to form "related ethnic groups", does it? Clarifer 08:01, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and again, a pre 19th century Sweden, however you define her borders, was no nation state which is a late 18th century early 19th century concept. Clarifer 15:49, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

If an ethnic group is defined as "a human population whose members identify with each other" eith because of a understood common ancestry or common culture and or language, then Swedes could reasonably be perceived as a "related" ethnic group (though I don't know about "closely"). Although the Finnish and Swedish languages are not related, there is a shared historical and cultural experience. To what extent this is closer than, say, between Germans and French or Dutch and English, I don't know.KarlXII 10:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

That makes no sense. By that logic the Spanish and Mayan peoples (in Spain and Yacatan) would be ethnically related, 500 years of common historical and cultural experience. Or the Dutch & the Bushman. Fin&Swe: ancestry&origin: who knows, but its certainly not perceived as shared (f.ex. the historical Mongoloid theory of (Fin-)Swedes. Language: not at all related. Religion: same, but that's true of many other peoples from Spitsbergen to Kalahari. Finnish &Swedish Churches have been seperate since reformation. Political system: both democracies but no more similar than Spain & Greece, arrived to that from very different directions. Legal tradition: Shared — like Portugal, Romania & Panama. History: Swedish occupation ended almost 200 years ago. After that not much in common. Compare to Turkey & Greece. Following to logic that some common experience makes relatives all neighbouring peoples would be related as well as all former colonies and their masters. Good neighbors? Certainly. Ethnically related? Certainly not. 82.181.150.151 20:13, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Most of your other points carry weight, but not the spiritual one. The Finnish and Swedish churches were one church until 1809, the dioceses of Turku and Viipuri being under the authority of Archbishop of Uppsala. Even after that, the churches have always been in full communion. --MPorciusCato 05:38, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

By the way, there is at least one archaeologist, Unto Salo, the former professor in the University of Turku, who believes that a large part of the iron-age Finns spoke old Norse or some other Germanic language. That would explain the vast amount of "Swedish" place names from Finland proper to Häme, in Kalanti in particular, nowadays solely Finnish area. For example the river Aura was originally probably Adra (Germanic "vein", the same as Oder for example). There are also great many iron-age villages whose names seem to derive from Germanic first names. There is also quite clear archaeological evidence of Scandinavian immigrants. Here's are a couple of articles in Finnish [4][5]. In my opinion all that could also explain the quite close relation between Finnish and Swedish languages. Not that this would have much to do with how "close" the Finns are to the Swedes. Tomppeli 13:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Germanic migration took place to Finland first in the Bronze Age (some 1500-700 BCE) on the coasts of Finland from today's Helsinki to Vaasa and then again to a smaller area to the coasts of today's Varsinais-Suomi during 0-200 CE. There really is no doubt of their Germanic origins. Using the term "Swedish" for them is somewhat misleading as there was no "Sweden" at the time. The settlers seem to have originated mostly from today's eastern Sweden and Gotland. The many Germanic place names, loan words in Finnish and of course Finns' Germanic genes result from this era. As to when the settlers eventually lost their original nature and adopted the Finnish language from the "original" population, is not known, but most of the "foreign" characteristics in the finds in Varsinais-Suomi seem to end around 400 CE, perhaps marking their cultural and linguistic assimilation. What can be called as characteristically "Finnish " culture did not evolve before the 6th century CE. --Drieakko 14:28, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Ethnicity and personality

[Tavastians] are known as slow, but determined.

[Bothnians] are known for their conservative, but boastful attitude; one has to have a larger house than one's neighbor.

These excerpts sound like an old schoolbook text from early 20th century (according to one book "negros are happy and they like loud music"). One can't conclude a person's character from his ethnicity. Inappropriate style for an encyclopaedia.--JyriL ^talk 21:08, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Language

The Finnish people speak Finnish (the vast majority) and Swedish (a minority). Jaakko_Sivonen removed the Swedish language by claiming that it is spoken by a minority. A look at Scottish people, Cornish people or Irish People, to mention but a few, show corresponding articles with languages spoken natively by an even smaller percentage being listed. The fact that Jaakko did not touch the Orthodox Church, representing an even smaller percentage of the Finnish population than the Swedish speakers, makes it safe to conclude that the edit was made out of ideology, not neutrality JdeJ 08:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Then I suppose we should add Turkish and arabic to the languages of the Swedish people since there are large minorities from Turkey and the Arab world in Sweden? What do you think? --Jaakko Sivonen 10:19, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, Orthodoxy should indeed be taken out of the box, ~1 % isn't that important. Or then we should put the percentages there. --Jaakko Sivonen 10:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you will find that most people who speak Turkish and Arabic in Sweden identify themselves as Turks and Arabs. Surely there's a difference between recent immigrants and people whose ancestors have lived in a country for well over 500 years? I do think it would make sense mentioning Finnish in the article about Swedish people, Finnish has a long presence in Sweden. Just keep in mind that Finland has never been a unilingual country during its history, nor has almost any other European country ever been. Having national minorities is the rule in Europe, not the exception. Even excluding recent immigrants, Iceland is the only European country without minorities. Given the fact that Finland has two official languages and two official churches, it would be wrong not to mention both. JdeJ 11:07, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Wrong, before the Middle Ages and the arrival of Swedes Finland was a unilingually Finnish country. Btw. Source the claim about Orthodoxy being official. --Jaakko Sivonen 11:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

The Sápmi people lived in Finland before both Finns and Swedes. Ever since the arrival of the Finns, there has been no unilingualism. Both Finns and Swedes are historical immigrants. As is taught in every Finnish school, the Orthodox church is one of the two state churches of Finland. [6] JdeJ 11:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

There is absolutely no archaeological or historical proof that the Sami inhabited Finland before Finns. If you do have, please give it... Finns are the indigenous people of Finland. --Jaakko Sivonen 14:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

1. So when would the Sápmi have arrived then?

2. And yes, there are quite a number of archeological proof for it. That's the reason it's taught in Finnish school and is mentioned in history books dealing with Finland. Finns arrived from the south and the east (Karjala) gradually pushing the Sápmi further and further to the north.

3. With the possible exception of the Basque people, there is no such thing as an indigenous people in Europe. We're all immigrants at one time or another, as has been confirmed by genetic studies. JdeJ 19:33, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

As I've said before, I don't consider one Wikipedia page as sufficient evidence for another page, but here is what the page on the history of the Sápmi has to say on this topic

Historically, the Sami inhabited all of Northern Scandinavia, Finland, and Eastern Karelia for a long time, though the Eastern Sami became assimilated into Finnish and Karelian populations after settlers from Häme, Savo, and Karelia migrated into the region. Placenames, e.g. Nuuksio on the south coast of Finland, remain as proof of former Sami settlement. However, Finnish and Scandinavian settlers drove them progressively more north. Finnish tribes even fought wars with one another and with Scandic tribes for the right to tax the Sami.[7] JdeJ 19:39, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

1) So when do you think that the Finns would have arrived then??? 2) You say that there are arch. proof but still you don't give them! Certainly no Finnish school history book tells of mass-migration as a known fact. Rather many theories are given. 3) Well, all humans descend from Africa, but Finns are the indigenous people as far in history as it is possible. --Jaakko Sivonen 13:47, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sami people and Finns share common history up until the time when Baltic (2000 BCE) and Germanic (1500-1000 BCE, also 0-300 CE) Indo-European settlers mixed together with the Finno-Ugric base population in the southwestern part of the country, separating them from the ones that lived further away inland. Greatly simplifying the picture, those on the coast developed into Finns and those inland to Sami people, Finns having a major dose of Indo-European cultural, linguistic and genetic heritance. Finno-Ugric ancestors of both the Sami people and Finns got to Finland approximately 3500 - 3000 BCE. However, there were people in Finland already then that embedded into newcomers. Some traces of their long lost language are said to be still found in Finnic languages. --Drieakko 16:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Uhm, Finns did not get a "dose" of Indo-European linguistics or culture... Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, what do you mean by that remark? Surely a few loan words do not count, all peoples loan words from other languages at some point. Also, what exactly is that "Indo-European culture" and how is its alleged "influence" seen in the Finnish culture??? --Jaakko Sivonen 20:44, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language by grammar but there are not many Finno-Ugric words left in Finnish. Old Indo-European and later Baltic, Slavic and especially Germanic (which all are Indo-European languages) loan words have replaced most of the original Finno-Ugric words during a very long period of time. For example, Finnish and Hungarian have only a handful of common words left anymore. Quickly thinking, I can not list many characteristically Finno-Ugric cultural elements, since most of the Finnish culture has traditionally been loaned from expansionist Indo-European cultures. Looking at present situation, Finnish political system, religion, architecture, clothing, entertainment, alphabets, numerals etc have all been loaned from Indo-European cultures. --Drieakko 21:21, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Religion? Do you consider the semitic peoples who were the first Christians to be Indo-European??? Democracy? Just because the Greeks were the first with democracy doesn't make it an 'Indo-European' thing to anyone with a decent brain... Numerals? I don't know what you mean by that, present the Indo-European source for yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi etc.... Finnish and Hungarian are very distant relatives, if you compare Finnish and Estonian or Finnish and Karelian you will see remarkable similarity in vocabulary. Most Finnish words are originally Finnic (not necessarily Finno-Ugric but Finnic) words by origin. Finnish has a lot less loan words than Swedish or English for example. So: you are wrong. It seems to me you don't know even the basics. --Jaakko Sivonen 23:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Kindly read WP:NPA. Finnish, Estonian and Karelian were all under a similar influence from the Indo-Europeans, separating to their own languages only after the 12th century. Words in Finnic languages that are not originally Finno-Ugric, are almost all loan words. Whatever origins mainstream Indo-European cultural elements have, it does not change the fact that Finns adopted the eventual forms more or less as-is from the Indo-Europeans, mainly through Swedes. Swedish and English have developed in a mainly Indo-European environment, so their loan words are mainly from other Indo-European languages. --Drieakko 04:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced lies. There never was any huge dose of word adoption in Finnic languages, most are original Finnic words. If you disagree, I demand reliable evidence. P.S. I said that you are wrong and don't know the basics.. That is not a PA, but a cold fact.--Jaakko Sivonen 15:23, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Well. Some examples of commonplace Finnish words with Indo-European origins here. A good wrap-up of the development is here. More of the subject with list of books to read here. This subject is covered in every publication regarding the development of the Finnish language. Inventing completely new words is very rare. Words are usually changed by adopting a new one from another language. --Drieakko 16:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you understand how many words a language usually has? If these are the main loans, there truly isn't that many loan words in Finnish; certainly not a dose. --Jaakko Sivonen 17:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, these lists go on and on. Aateli, jumala, pormestari, virkata, satula, radio, televisio, narrata, kaupunki, markka, insinööri, kapteeni, sankari, holvi, sali, ritari, suutari, munkki, poliisi, auto, etc etc etc. All taken from Indo-European languages. --Drieakko 19:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

So? Mention a language where TV and Radio wouldn't be loans? Point is that most Finnish words are not loans and Finnish is much more purer language than Swedish for one. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:15, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Kindly give a reference to your claim that Finnish would be a language "pure" of foreign loans. Currently it looks like your own thinking. Finns are genetically very close to their Indo-European neighbours and the Finnish language is mostly Indo-European words on a Finno-Ugric grammar. This is a result of 5000 years living close to Indo-European people, so there is nothing strange in that. --Drieakko 19:30, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a bucket of naive and anti-Finnish lies, here you go: "Trots det är det ett faktum att finskan är ett av de språk i världen som är mest puristiska, d.v.s. varit minst villiga att ta in internationella ord. Språkvetare räknar med att 60-80 % av alla ord i finskan är av helfinskt ursprung, vilket är en hög siffra." from: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finska#Ordf.C3.B6rr.C3.A5d Happy now? It also says that there are only about 4000 loans from Swedish, which is a drop in the ocean considering the number of all words in the language. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:40, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Not happy yet :) You can not use an unreferenced claim in Wikipedia as a reference to support another claim in Wikipedia. Kindly provide other reference. --Drieakko 07:58, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

To begin with, I don't see the value in claiming that a language is 'pure' of borrowings. English is filled with borrowings, more so than most other languages, and it seems to be doing pretty well. Having a large number of words of foreign origin does in no way diminish the value of a language. In the case of Finnish, linguists only count about 300 words derived from Proto-Finno-Ugrian, although derivatives of these of course increase the number above 300. [8]. Among the loanwords in Finnish we find even some very basic concepts: äiti (mother), sisar (sister), tytär (daughter) tuoli (chair), lattia (floor), kaappi (closet), kaupunki (city/town), kuningas (king), meri (sea), nainen (woman), vesi (water), sata (100), ostaa (to buy), myydä (to sell), taivas (heaven) [9]. The majority of Finnish words have been borrowed from a host of other languages. Once again, this is nothing unique or bad. It's fairly common and goes for most languages. JdeJ 09:24, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a source for "majority of words are loans". According to the Swedish Wikipedia (which had a link to a source, a book) there are only 4000 loans from Swedish. And why do you think people would have written it to the Swedish Wikipedia if it was without basis? --Jaakko Sivonen 18:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

'Please provide a source'? Read my post again and you'll see that I already provided the source. Twice. The person saying that only about 300 words (plus derivatives) derive from Proto-Finno-Ugrian is none other than Ulla-Maija Kulonen; professor at the department of Finno-Ugrian studies at the University of Helsinki. You'd be hard pressed to find a greater authority. And nobody's saying that all borrowings in Finnish are from Swedish, there's a huge number of loans from Indo-Iranian languages, Baltic languages and other borrowings as well. JdeJ 18:22, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Fine, you have a source, here is another: ""Trots det är det ett faktum att finskan är ett av de språk i världen som är mest puristiska, d.v.s. varit minst villiga att ta in internationella ord. Språkvetare räknar med att 60-80 % av alla ord i finskan är av helfinskt ursprung, vilket är en hög siffra."" Being a professor doesn't mean it's a fact, now does it? Science is not based on authority. --Jaakko Sivonen 18:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

AND let me remind you that not only Proto-Finno-Ugric words are alkuperäisiä sanoja but also Proto-Finnic! --Jaakko Sivonen 18:49, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, there's quite some difference between the source I gave and the one you gave. The one I gave is a verifiable source written by a Finnish professor in Finno-Ugrian linguistics at the department of Finno-Ugrian studies at the University of Helsinki. You did not provide any reference for your source, but it's taken from a page in the Swedish version of Wikipedia and is an unsourced claim there. So it's an unsourced claim by an unknown Wikipedia writer against an essay by a recognised professor in within this field of study. May I also point out that all Proto-Finnic words are by definition Proto-Finno-Ugrian unless they are borrowings, meaning that we're still left with the 300 words. I don't know why this is an issue, it does not make Finnish an ounce less worth, nor would more Proto-Finno-Ugrian words make it more worth. JdeJ 19:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

That is, unless those proto-Finnic words are Proto-Finno-Ugric words that the Ugric peoples replaced but the Finnic peoples kept. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Jaakko Sivonen, please note that professor Kaisa Häkkinen is not given as the source for the citation in the Swedish Wikipedia. The citation is unreferenced. --Drieakko 19:04, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

The saga of Finns' mass-migration?

If you believe this to be true, please provide contemporary sources for the postulation that the ethnicity we today call the Finns migrated into the present location in an identifiable archeological (or linguistic) wave during a defined time period. It may be true that prior to the 20th century, the story of a Finnish mass migration into Finland was popular among some people (for many, even sinister, reasons). However, Finns as an ethnic group have not migrated into Finland any more than the Norwegians or the Swedes have migrated into Norway and Sweden in a clear cut migratory wave (of course humans followed the edge of the retreating ice sheet in all of Fennoscandia so an OLD migration did take place there). Ethnogenesis, however, is a totally different matter and seems to be a similar and an equally paced phenomenon everywhere. Linguistically speaking, both the postulated proto-Indo-European and the proto-Uralic languages seem to have been spoken around the same time so both language groups and their successors seem equally "new" (or "old") in Europe. Clarifer 14:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we disagree much. As you say, there has never been a Finnish 'invasion' of Finland in the sense of the Europeans colonising America. Something we can be fairly sure about is that current national borders and language borders bear almost no correlation to the actual ancestry of many peoples. The fact that the language spoken by the Finns today is Uralic does not mean that the Finns are a Uralic people, much in the same way as the fact that the Swedes speak an Indo-European language does not suggest a genetic Indo-European ancestry. I think we both agree that the genetic make-up of modern Europeans to a large part derives from the peoples living in Europe before the coming of Indo-European and Uralic languages. Contrary to the believes in the 19th and early 20th century, a massive wave of Indo-Europeans has never arrived in Europe, displacing earlier people. Instead, we had a successive process in which Indo-European languages gradually gained dominance and was accepted by the peoples already inhabiting Europe in lieu of their own language; much in the same way as English is gradually gaining dominance in our Europe of today without any Englishmen actually invading Europe and displacing the rest of us. Finnish was spread to Finland in much the same way, with the inhabitants accepting a Uralic language instead of an Indo-European one. If Swedes and Norwegians would be genetically Indo-European and Finns would be genetically Uralic, we would expect a Swede to be much closer in apperance to a Spaniard or a Persian than to a Finn, and a Finn would look more like a Khanty or a Mansi in Siberia than as a Swede or a Norwegian. We all know that this is not the case, but we don't even have to trust our eyes. Modern genetics have shown that the idea of an Indo-European people or a Uralic people is nonsense. With the possible exception of the Hungarians, depending on how many actually took part in their famous invasion in 895, all modern peoples in Europe descend from earlier peoples of whom we have very little knowledge. Not in the sense that any given modern European people descend from a particular earlier people. The mere idea that Swedes or Finns or any other people, except the Basques, would have a particularly long history is just down to nationalistic nonsense, such as the highly speculative works of Kalevi Wiik. The interesting thing with 'research' like that of Wiik is that the outcome always is that the researcher's own people has got a particularly long and noble history. To talk about which people came to a certain place first is fruitless. It's even more comic to try to apply current national borders to a situation thousands of years ago. It can be safely assumed that Finnish has been spoken in at least some parts of what constitutes contemporary Finland for a longer time than Swedish. It can also be assumed that Swedish has been spoken longer in some of areas that are currently Swedish speaking in Finland. The idea that the Finnish or Swedish people in the year 500AD conformed to the borders we have today is absurd to say the least. Quite possibly, at least some of the areas that now are Swedish speaking had an earlier Finnish presence and some areas that are Finnish speaking had an earlier Swedish presence.

Based on the argument above, I'm in doubt over the benefit of having a section about The Past in this article and to talk about the ancesty of different peoples. To borrow Clarifer's term, it has a sinister ring to it, a nationalistic competition to show that 'my people were here before yours'. As the mere idea of a genetically distinct people corresponding to the people speaking a linguistically distinct language is pure nonsense, I would suggest that this article would be amended to focus more on contemporary Finns than on what might or might not have been thousands of years ago. JdeJ 08:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

We seem to think similarly. A few remarks though: 1. Finns can be termed "Uralic people" in a similar sense as Swedes can be termed "Indo-European people" and there's nothing wrong with it. These terms should be understood purely linguistically as "Uralic/Indo-European speaking people" and neither bears any particular prestige. Both languages are used by people representing many kinds of anthropological attributes ranging from north European phenotypes to pigmentated skin and hair (e.g. Hindi speakers among I-E) and epicanthus (e.g. Nenets speakers among U). 2. This shows that there's no real genetic Indo-European nor is there a genetic Uralic. Language can indeed be fairly random. 3. There were no Swedish or Finnish people in AD500. The languages didn't yet exist (Norse and East Norse differentiated into early Swedish and Danish only by the 13th century. On the eastern side of the Baltic sea only Baltic-Finnic dialects existed, on both sides a bit further north: Sami dialects). While this may seem a bit cheeky, it shows how incapable today's people are of discussing human group identities, cultures etc.etc. of the past as you too mentioned. 4. I don't agree that there shouldn't be an attempt at "a past" section in this article. If any kind of consensus, however vague or lengthy, can be reached it will make the article - and the whole project on ethnicities - worthwhile. ;) Clarifer 15:31, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to express some doubts about the theory people changing their language without a significant inflow of new people speaking it. Quickly thinking, I don't know any examples in the present-day world (or from any period of recorded history) that would have witnessed such a development. People that have stopped talking their own language and switched to another one, have done so under a heavy pressure from newcomers speaking the new language. The nature of the pressure can of course vary. It can come from a small, but very dominant group of people, or from an over-whelmingly large number of settlers. Kelts in France or in Ireland switched to new languages mainly due cultural pressures from their very dominant foreign masters whereas in England they where overwhelmed by an influx of settlers. IMHO, prehistoric changes in languages have happened more or less in the same manner. --Drieakko 16:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree through and through with all the points Clarifer makes. Drieakko, language change without any significant influx of foreigners is very common. In fact, language change is much more common without mass immigration. Some well known examples. 1. Ireland, as you mentioned yourself. In the 19th century Ireland went from being almost completely Irish speaking to almost completely English speaking. This was not accompanied by any influx of people from England. 2. The Roman Empire. Rome started as a city state, yet Latin spread to such an extent that Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Romania and Moldova are overwhelmingly Romance speaking. As a matter of fact, Latin was even more widespread before the arrival of Germanic and Slavic tribes in Europe and Arabs in North Africa. As I'm sure you understand, there was no way a language spoken in a small area around Rome could have had enough settlers to colonise even Italy, yet alone much of Europe. 3. About 100 years ago, at least 25% of the French population could not speak French. They spoke a variety of smaller languages, almost all of those are moribound today and replaced by French without any emmigration from the Langue d'Oil area. 4. I don't think anyone of us taking part in this discussion has got English ancestry, yet we discuss in English. It's part of an on-going process of Anglization. As Clarifer clarifies, when we're talking about Swedes and Finns as Indo-European or Uralic peoples, we're talking about language only. These languages are not the original languages of Swedes and Finns. No people in Europe except the Basques speak their original language (even the idea of original language sounds a bit awkward). The nationalistic efforts, present in almost every country, to claim a long and continuous history for one's own people, language and culture (almost always as opposed to some neighbour(s)) lack scientific founding. JdeJ 18:06, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for comments. Kindly read me previous comment again. Like I pointed out, the inflow does not need to be overwhelming in numbers. In all of your examples, the groups changing their language were very effectively controlled and even subjugated by a group of people speaking the new language. The present-day spreading of English via electrical media is a unique phenomenon not comparable to anything that has happened in previous times. What I very much doubt, is that people would change their language without a very powerful external pressure, either from a surrounding majority or a controlling minority. --Drieakko 18:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

My bad, I misinderstood you. Yes, it would be very rare indeed for a people to change its language without considerable pressure of some kind. All the examples I mentioned including such changes, often economic or cultural pressure. The peoples that almost all Europeans descend from were living at a more basic level than the newcomers. Modern academics usually credit the language change that took place with the introduction of agriculture. It represented an enormous cultural change, far greater than the Internet, Hollywood and modern music. JdeJ 10:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

It would be almost certain that the cultural (r)evolution included an introduction of a foreign ruling class, not necessarily overwhelming the earlier population in numbers, but definitely controlling it long enough to suffocate its old language and most of the original culture. --Drieakko 12:26, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Indoeuropean <-> Finno-Ugric language shift

"These languages are not the original languages of Swedes and Finns."

Uhm, Finns spoke proto forms of modern Finnish in ancient history, Proto Finno-Ugric etc.. Modern Finnish evolved from those languages, Finns never changed their language, it just evolved over thousands of years! --Jaakko Sivonen 20:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

We know you think so, but that view does not have any scientific backing. The present Finnish language sure did evolve from from Proto Finno-Ugric, but the present day Finns did not evolve from a Finno-Ugric genepool. They spoke an earlier language that with time was replaced by Finnish, just as in the case of virtually all other European peoples. JdeJ 10:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

How about giving some evidence? As long as you do not give, I will ignore your opinions about the matter. --Jaakko Sivonen 15:20, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

You really are talking absurdities. No respectable scientist has claimed that the Finns would have suddenly changed their language at some point, neither are there any proof of that, thus there is no reason to think that. When would this have happened? And from whom was the language allegedly adopted? And what reason is there to think so? Again, you are pushing an anti-Finnish and pro-Indo-Euro agenda here. --Jaakko Sivonen 15:38, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. Jaakko's constant accusations directed against anyone who doesn't agree with him are getting somewhat tiresome. Jaakko, it's perfectly possible to disagree with somebody and still remain polite. Not only is it more constructive, it also adds more credibility to one's own arguments. Your tactic of accusing everybody who disagrees with you of being either vandals or svekomans is both wrong and immature.

So I'm pushing an 'anti-Finnish and pro-Indo-European agende'? Well, that's interesting. Given the fact that I wrote exactly the same thing about both groups, that both have undergone language shift, I fail to see how saying precisely the same thing about both is anti-Finnish and pro-Indo-European. This is typical example of the vile and unfounded accusations that undermine your credibility. JdeJ 08:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

In any process of evolution of change, the fastest changes happens in the "central" areas. Archaic forms are usually preserved on the fringe, in the outlying areas. If one where to look out for the desendants of the original Cro-Magnon people and the creators of the Lascaux cave paintigs, one should look in North Cape, Norway and West Cork, Ireland. If North European people have gone through a language shift, as either the Finnic or the Germanic people must have, then it is much more likely that this change happened in Central Europe, with many more cultural influences to choose from than in the isolated Finland. -- Petri Krohn 18:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S. For some reason fi:Kalevi Wiik was not linked to fi:Kalevi Wiikin teoria suomalaisten alkuperästä. There is some material there that should be brought to the English Wikipedia, and possibly integrated into Germanic substrate hypothesis. -- Petri Krohn 19:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

As you say, in the vast majority of cases, it is some fringe areas that preserve older forms. It's rarely all fringe areas, but at least some. I would not say that the case of Finnic and Germanic language shifts is necessarily as case of either-or. It's quite possible that both the Germanic and the Finnic languages in their present habitat arose as a consequence of at least one language shift. In fact, that would seem probable.

1. To begin with the peoples speaking Germanic languages, I think the evidence for a language shift is pretty convincing. As already said, a Swede or a Dane does not look particularly Indo-European, if we by that means Indo-Iranians who presumably live closer to the Indo-European cradle. That the people(s) of Scandinavia spoke at least one completely different language but with time shifted to Indo-European is also probably given the substrate that can be observed in the Germanic languages. While there has been some bold ideas of a Celtic or a Finnic substrate in Germanic languages, those theories have been proposed only by 'happy amateurs' in the field and has of course failed to gain any academic acceptance. Assuming a non-Indo-European origin of the present speakers of Germanic languages, and that their language was unrelated to any language spoken in contemporary Europe, seems a pretty safe bet.

2. The Finnic case is very similar, the evidence for language shift are very convinving. As already said, the Finns and Estonians do not much of the same genepool as their linguistic relatives on both sides of the Urals. By looking at how and when different words have entered the Finnish and Estonian languages, it seems very possible to conclude that the language spoken by today's Estonians and Finns might well have been a Baltic language - at any rate, there should be little doubt that when the speakers of proto-Finnic arrived in the Baltic region from Volga, the first Indo-European language they encountered must have been Baltic. The fact that they lacked a word for such a basic concept as sea and all things related to the sea (as opposed to words for rivers) firmly supports their origin in an inland area quite far from any coasts. The fact that they borrowed these words, and some other very basic words relating to agriculture, from a Baltic language tells us at least two things. a. The speakers of Finnic arrived in their present region after the Balts had settled there. b. The coming of the Finnic languages to the Baltic region must predate the spread of the Slavic languages. The number of ancient Slavic loanwords in Finnic is strikingly low. Even though many basic concepts relating to states and administration (kuningas, valta, kaupunki, tuomita etc) were borrowed from Germanic languages, these loans are considerably younger than the loans from Baltic languages and does not deal with concepts so basic as the Baltic loans. JdeJ 08:45, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

A counter-argument to the speakers of Finnic arrived in their present region after the Balts had settled there. This can not be based on the fact that proto-Finnic people borrowed sea-related words from Baltic people. For example, words like sisar (sister) and tytär (daughter) are also of Baltic origin, but Finnic people surely got sisters and daughters before that as well. Taking the entire sea-related vocabulary from Baltic people probably just means that the language was under heavy cultural influence from the people that considered sea crucially important. --Drieakko 14:44, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

You do indeed have a point there :) I guess it would still be an option to conclude that the borrowing of almost the whole inventory of sea-related vocabulary would suggest an inland origin, but I agree that it cannot be taken as a fact, only as a possibility. What we can take for granted is that Finnish has been under a very considerable influence from Baltic languages, so influential that it affected even its very core vocabulary. JdeJ 15:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Baltic influences are generally assumed to have arrived in Finland together with the Corded Ware culture around 2500 BCE. The same wide-spread culture is also believed to have expanded the Indo-European languages in Central and Northern Europe, later separating to Germanic, Baltic and Slavic groups. --Drieakko 16:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Nowadays the dating of the Corded Ware Culture has been radically revised by calibration of the Carbon-14 dates. The said culture arrived in Finland around 3200 CE and ceased to exist around 2500 CE. Many or possibly most linguistics seem to think that this is far too early to be simultanous with the reconstructed Baltic language horizon. This fact necessitates new hypotheses of the context of Baltic influence in Finnic languages. But Drieakko is completely right in the sense that the Baltic loanwords in Finnic languages are absolutely no proof of the Baltic-speakers living around before the Finnic population. I think the idea is quite weird.--217.112.242.181 10:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Correct. Seems that plenty of datings are now available, but the 3200 BCE to 2500 (or 2300) BCE most preferred. However, if Baltic influences are seen older than Germanic, it would be difficult to date them to any other period. Corded Ware culture is clearly seen as Indo-European, coming to Finland from Baltic area, and it matches the later distribution of proto-Germanic, proto-Slavic and proto-Baltic languages. --Drieakko 10:38, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not actually agree that it would be difficult to date the Baltic influence to any other period, but maybe we should discuss that here=). But in any case, Between the Corded Ware and the early Germanic inluence lie the Late Neolithiv, the Bronze Age and possibly the earliest Iron Age as well (presuming that the Germanic influence dates to the Roman Iron Age). Somebody might counter that the Baltic influence in the archaeological record is too slight in these periods compared to the huge linguistical innfluence, but that might a bit simplistic view of the relationship between language and material culture.--130.234.5.137 15:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

It is probable that Finnic people, genetically almost the same as the Germanic neighbours, borrowed their language from the forefathers of the Sami people. Sami people speak a language that separated from the Finnic language group during Bronze Age about 1500-1000 BCE. Scattered Germanic migration took place at that time on the Southwestern coasts of Finland. It can be argued that these Germanic settlers were too isolated from each other and too small in numbers to maintain their culture and language, and they eventually adopted the language of the Sami people, thus becoming the core of the later Finnic people. Sami people differ greatly from Finns genetically, and Finns can not be their direct relatives, even if both languages share the same roots. --Drieakko 13:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why the Baltic influence is supposed to have happened in Finland and not in the Baltic area or Russia where most Finnic people apparently lived up to the Slavic (and Baltic) expansion starting from around the 8th century. Don't all Finnic languages or dialects share about the same Baltic loan words? I also wonder if it's justified to assume that the Sami are genetically the same as the "lappalaiset" (Lapps) who lived even in the southernmost parts of what now is Finland in the Middle Ages. And what is their relation to the Finns (finnr) who seemed to have lived in most of Sweden and Norway. Interestingly Ynglinga saga puts Asas to migrate to an area where the only people worth mentioning are Finns (yes, Ynglinga saga is a medieval scholarly text, but it still may reflect the ideas the Swedes had about their history). Tomppeli 17:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

To iterate my October 2006 post, Sami people have changed their language to a proto-Finnic one in the course of time as well, making it possible that a third group must have existed speaking the original proto-Finnic language which then got adopted by both the Sami people and the coastal Germanic settlers. This makes it questionable if the hunter-gatherers in central and southern Finland were Sami people after all, but a now-extinct "original" Finnic-speaking group that eventually assimilated to Finns. Whatever the case, Germanic people seem to have originally used the word "Finn" for all Finnic populations in Fennoscandia: in saga sources, Swedes use it for the people who today are known as Finns but Norwegians use it for Sami people. Finnic word "Lapp" may also have meant any wandering groups in the wilderness, especially judging from the easiness how the Finns who moved to Lapland adopted it for themselves (lappilainen). --Drieakko 17:57, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Drieakko, I agree on the Lapp part, that it sounds credible or at least possible. Interestingly, in Sami languages (according to an Internet dictionary) "tsuudi" means "enemy" and that's also the name the first Russian chronicle gives to one of the Finnic "tribes" (Chuds) founding Novgorod. Later on Russians have used the word for all or many Finnic neighbors of theirs. In other words, it seems likely that the Sami/Lapps at some point encountered a hostile group called "tsuudit". But if there is any evidence of the Scandinavian, Iron-Age "finnr" being all Finnic I'm not aware of it. There were, after all, the "Finns" of Finnveden, for example, who hardly could have been Finnic, the area is too far south in my opinion. Furthermore, Finnic place names even in middle Sweden are rare if not non-existent - excluding hundreds of names beginning with "Finn" - and so are Finnic loan words in Swedish. Perhaps many of these ancient "Swedish Finns" were in fact Germanic? It may also be of some interest that both "Finn" and "Vandal" may have meant the same thing, "wanderer", and we know with certainty that they were not Finnic but East Germanic (for the most part at least). As I wrote earlier the Finn/Ven/Van term pops up about everywhere where "civilized" Germanic people got into contact with more "primitive" people, or perhaps where fur traders got into contact with people they bought the furs from, mobile hunters, "wanderers". The oldest "king burials" (AFAIK) in Sweden are in Vendel, Russia was called Vanaheim, Vandals are of course an example, as might be Vends and Wends in the same general region. In Orkney local "Vikings" told stories about mythical Finmen. Vantaa and Vanaja could originate from the same term, as well as Finland (proper) too, of course. Even in Celtic Britain there are stories about Finns (Fenians and so on) although putting that name in the same category with the rest could be a bit difficult. As a result, my suggestion is that the Finns in Finland were often Germanic "Swedes", perhaps specializing in hunting. The Finnic fur traders and hunters migrating to the country were, in turn, Chuds. But can I prove it? Nope. So, my apologies if you find this kind of speculation irritating and out of place in an encyclopedia.Tomppeli 10:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The origin of the languages are just speculations and will never be fully answered, whatever way they go, is it good for the encyclopaedia to speculate? MoRsE 17:20, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

This can't possibly be right

The terms Finns and Finnish people are used both to refer to an ethnic group historically associated with Finland or Fennoscandia and to the present-day citizens or residents of Finland.

Well I've been resident in Finland since 1999 and I'm not a Finn, my children and wife are Finns, though my children are also British. This term is certainly not used for people who are simply residents of the country. I think we should change it to ..citizens of Finland. Is there any problem with this? Alun 15:10, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Iawn, mi allet ti gyfnewid enw'r dosbarth. I agree that it would make sense to change it. JdeJ 15:53, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Were Baltic people in Finland before proto-Finnic-Samic?

Like user User:JdeJ suggested, there is a possibility that a proto-Baltic language was spoken in Finland before proto-Finnic-Samic. This possibility is usually ignored in Finnish publications, but let's give it a second thought here.

Problem here is the name "Suomi", also appearing as "Sapmi" and "Häme", most probably deriving from a proto-Baltic reconstructed word zeme, meaning "land". We have thus two main options:

a) Proto-Finnic-Samic language was spoken at a time when proto-Baltic people settled in Finland. Newcomers influenced the entire local population so heavily that they changed their own name and the name of their land, adopting a foreign word for it. Local population however continued talking their original language.

b) Proto-Baltic people lived in Finland before proto-Finnic-Samic people arrived there. When they finally came, they started to use the same name for the country than proto-Baltic people were already using, taking it eventually also to mean themselves as well. They also adopted several other words from proto-Baltic language.

If one thinks about it, option a) sounds actually quite unlikely. --Drieakko 18:58, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

This is totally irrelevant, because this page is for discussing the article, not the issue. In the article, the policy of "verifiability, not truth" is followed. It is entirely irrelevant if there are good arguments for a Baltic substrate in Finnish, if you cannot produce an article from a peer-reviewed journal presenting these arguments. In fact, I recommend you to find a Finnic linguistics forum for this discussion. --Vuo 23:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. This issue is however not "totally irrelevant" since it directly addresses the etymology section of the article. You are correct in your saying that external references are required, even though I am quite sure that they will be hard to find. I have never seen this issue handled in any scientific publication, although someone deeper into it might find a reference. --Drieakko 03:44, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Short answer: not a chance in Hell and that's why no scientist has proposed such a theory... And there still aren't any evidence of a mass-migration by Finns, but Finns have lived in Finland as far as one can determine, Finnic peoples inhabited a large area in history. On a second note, there have also been other theories about the origin of the names mentioned, for example it has been suggested that 'Häme' comes from 'hämärä'. I will also take your suggestion as a personal insult. --Jaakko Sivonen 17:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Redating the arrival of the Code Warded culture even 700 years earlier than before basically means that it now overlaps heavily with the arrival of the typical Pit-Comb Ware culture (about 3300 - 2800 BCE) that is traditionally also seen as the arrival of proto-Finnic-Samic languages to Fennoscandia. Based on archaeological finds, Pit-Comb Ware culture also brought plenty of new people to Fennoscandia from the east during the 4th and 3th millennia BCE, and along came the language as well. Remember that entire population of Finland was around 5000 people at that time, so no "mass-migration" was needed to radically influence existing populations. The Baltic origin for the names Suomi, Sapmi and Häme is generally accepted today, which in my opinion is easiest explained so that proto-Baltic people were present in Finland at the time when proto-Finnic-Samic languages arrived. --Drieakko 17:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Well that's your opinion, but no serious scientist of the field shares it... Why do you think that is? Also, the Baltic origin of those words is not an established fact, but a theory. There are still debates over the origin of the word Suomi, there would not be if it was a known fact. --Jaakko Sivonen 21:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually the theory of Finno-Ugrian immmigration during the Comb Ware phase II is still shared by some (though not all) archaeologists; during the 1980´s it was the mainstream view. However, I should note that after the calibration of traditional Carbon-14 dates, the Comb Ware has been redated too, just like all the other cultural phases of the Stone Age in Finland.--217.112.242.181 05:40, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Source this (preferably a modern source too): "that is traditionally also seen as the arrival of proto-Finnic-Samic languages to Fennoscandia." --Jaakko Sivonen 21:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not know about linguistics, but the first Finnish archaeologist who adopted this view was C.F. Meinander in his 1984 article in the book Suomalaisten esihistorialliset juuret. This view is traditional in the sense that nowadays some researchers have suggested that the Uralic language arrived in Finland already in the Mesolithic. But the later view is a theory, not a fact, and some leading specialists are highly sceptical of it. See, to example, many recent articles of Christian Carpelan.--217.112.242.181 05:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The point here is that if the theory about a common Baltic origin for the names Suomi, Sapmi and Häme is presented, it sounds strange without assuming proto-Baltic language prevailing in Finland at the time of the arrival of the proto-Finnic-Samic language. Are there any examples of original population adopting a new foreign word for their name and the name of their country without loosing their language as well? --Drieakko 06:02, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

No-one knowns WHERE and WHAT (if anything) the original zeme might have been so this notion seems to remain just random speculation. It is not very uncommon for a toponym or an ethnonym to wander about, to change meanings and to mutate into something unrecognizable. Think of e.g. the terms Svear and Svealand giving "Swedes" and "Sweden" that we today use as an "aggregate-term" combing all sorts of identities of the past: e.g. Geats, Gotlanders, Scanians (former "Danes") etc. etc. Clarifer 07:56, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox/article format

Is it necessary to emphasize the linguistic and the religious distributions in the infobox? If you look at e.g. Irish people the infobox merely lists the languages used and religions practiced. If someone feels that such demographic data is necessary in this particular article, could it not be inserted into the body of text instead of the infobox? Clarifer 15:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Is it worth noting that 14,7% (2005) are not part of any religious group? (http://tilastokeskus.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_vaesto.html#väestörakenne)

Origin of the Finns and Estonians

How far back is there evidence of the Finns existance in the land of Finland? Anyway I was thinking that since the Finns, Estonians, Lapps, etc. are related to the Hungarians that it's possible that they migrated from between the Volga River and Ural Mountains with Árpád in 896 then later split with the Hungarians and migrated northwards towards present day Finland and Estonia? I know the connections between modern Hungarian and Finnish are minimal but modern Hungarian and old Hungarian barely sound alike. Maybe old Finnish and old Hungarian have more similarities? Can anybody tell me if any historians have discussed the possibility of the ancestors of the Finns and Estonians migrating with Árpád, thanks.

No chance. There are lots of evidence for Finns and Estonians living in parts of today's Finland and Estonia for at least hundreds of years before the Hungarian migration. JdeJ 09:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Proto-Hungarian split from the proto-Finnic-Samic branch some 6000 years ago. Common elements in the languages are minimal and deal with only the most archaic vocabulary. --Drieakko 05:35, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Not going into the legend of an Arpad and a Hungarian mass migration, I don't think any main stream historian/archeologist in Finland or in adjacent territories considers the possibility of a combined Baltic-Finnic and Sami mass migration into present day Fennoscandia in the 9th century AD or thereabouts. In fact, there seems to exist only two archeological cultures in Finland that could be interpreted as representative of a human mass migratory movement (in addition to the very first human settlements). These are: 1. typical Comb Ceramics from ca. 5000BCE onwards and 2. Cord Ceramics from ca. 3200BCE onwards. On the other hand, almost no hard core data of an early Baltic-Finnic speaking presence by the Baltic Sea remains. The oldest piece of writing seems to date only to the 13th century (Novgorod birch letter no. 292). On the other hand, there's no evidence of an early non-Finnic presence in Finland either, no rune stones have been found and the earliest found texts are written in Latin during the 13-14th centuries. Clarifer 16:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Sweden Finns

The article currently reads:

"The remaining people and their children in Sweden are primarily thought as ethnic Finns, regardless of their citizenship"

While the immigrants themselves may be thought of as Finns I'm not so sure about "their children", especially not if only one of the parents is of Finnish ancestry. I would say that the situation is comparable to the Finland Swedes (or at least is moving in that direction as time passes). Is it OK if I change it?KarlXII 10:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Since I've had no reaction on the above comment I will assume everyone is fine with me removing the indicated text. KarlXII 16:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I found a source (in Swedish) that the majority of the Finns who emigrated to Sweden [returned.http://www.scb.se/templates/pressinfo____129027.asp]. However, as they are no longer living in Sweden it is not relevant to include them under the heading Sweden Finns. Instead I have replaced the text with information (Swedish Statistical Office, SCB) that there are an estimated 450,000 Finns living in Sweden, half of which speak Finnish. KarlXII 16:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Genetics and language

Not exactly sure where all this geneticism is leading to (seems to me that it is starting to look like 21st century anthropometry) so a few thoughts follow. 1) There seems to be the misunderstading - perhaps even in higher spheres - that ethnicities are visible in genes. This is not the case. There's no way of reading in the genes what the person designates himself ethnically (some very rough propabilities can be calculated at best). 2) The largest ethnicities in Northern Europe that we today see have evolved in situ. 3) It is likely that the Norse language was introduced in the area of contemporary Finland some time between 1000 and 1250. Who these people were, how many and where they came from is simply not known. There is no way of tracing those original settlers back in time. In the past millennium, Finland has received inhabitants from so many directions and languages have been switched so often between Norse dialects, Baltic-Finnic dialects, Sami languages and dialects and finally Finnish and Swedish that it is not possible - not even necessary - to speak of the Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers of TODAY having orignally been genetically separate human populations. Likewise, it is not possible to tell what the dynamics between the speakers of Sami and Baltic-Finnic were some 1-2 millennia earlier. 4) Finally, also the Finland-Swedish identity has evolved in situ: there were no Finland-Swedes prior to the 19th century as this identity could only evolve in a country where the majority speaks another mother tongue. To speak of Finns, Swedes and Finland-Swedes as genetically distinct population groups does indeed have the sinister clang of the past centuries. This does not mean that there aren't differences genetically, but placing these differences into the level of the ethnos seems just plain wrong or a misunderstaning. Clarifer 17:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Need for major restructuring

This article looks very much like it does not know what it is. It should basically better cease to exist and act mainly as a link collection to other articles that pretty much cover all that is has to say already. --Drieakko 15:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be contradicting yourself. I agree that the article needs major restructuring and rewriting, for example to get rid of repetition in the different sections (not the lead section), but there is no reason to delete it. All other peoples have a corresponding page, and it would be senseless not to have one for Finnish people. --Espoo 16:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I formulated myself badly. I'd keep the page but move most of the information to other articles that are listed by this page. As a Finn, I recognize citizens of Finland and people speaking Finnish, and those have their separate pages already. But what is "Finnish people"? I am really not getting the picture by reading this article. --Drieakko 17:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting the removal of similar info in all similar articles too? There is no way you will find any consensus on WP for such a radical change. And as long as WP has articles on Swedish people, Spanish people, Germans, Norwegian people, and hundreds of other peoples, there is absolutely no reason to remove similar info from this one. More specifically, if you don't understand what "Finnish people" is supposed to mean, how can you be suggesting what should be here or not? In effect, without a clear suggestion of what should be here, you are still proposing deletion of the article. And Finnish language has almost nothing about Finnish speakers, and attempts to stuff such info there would be surely rejected.

For all other peoples (ethnic groups) too, there are separate articles describing all members irrespective of whether they live in the country of origin or with the largest population or not and to a certain degree even irrespective of whether they still speak the language or not. Loss of the language is of course a decisive step towards loss of identification with an ethnic group and loss of cultural heritage, but many Finnish Americans, for example, no longer speak Finnish well or at all, but they would be very upset if someone said they were not ethnic Finns. You surely don't deny that Finnish immigrants living in other countries and even their descendants up to a certain degree have an important and distinct cultural and biological heritage that they share with current citizens of Finland? You surely also don't think that Swedish citizens who (or whose parents) were forced to stop speaking Finnish due to Swedish political decisions do not also share this same heritage?

And if you think this article is written in a confusing, complicated, or too detailed way, take a look at French people; we're doing very well in comparison, especially considering the smaller number of contributors and much smaller number of native English contributors.

Even though the definitions of the concepts of ethnicity and of a people are controversial, few people deny that these concepts and the reality they try to describe exist or that we shouldn't write articles dealing with them. And just because the total cultural and genetic influence of Finns is smaller worldwide than that of French people due to the smaller population involved does not mean that this influence is not notable or nonexistent. (And don't get me wrong, although i don't deny the importance of genes or their influence on behavior and even culture, i'd hope that most unbiased observers would agree that someone who lived in Finland "only" from the age of e.g. 5 to 35 and even only from 20 to 55, perhaps even 30-65, who moved to another country would be "exporting" Finnish cultural heritage and would have the right to consider themself an ethnic Finn.)

We could add a lot to this article similar to what is in French_people#Populations_with_French_ancestry, for example, but it's more difficult to find content and sources. But for the corresponding individuals and communities living outside Finland with Finnish ancestry, including spouses from other ethnic backgrounds, the "Finnish people" was not an abstract or unimportant concept; it was often one of the most important things in their lives, and the smaller amount of research and sources is completely irrelevant. --Espoo 00:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

It has already been proved that "Drieakko" is an anti-Finnish Svecoman. He should be banned from editing all articles regarding Finland and Finns. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I restructured the article now, especially regarding the unfocused and confusing discussion about Finland-Swedes that had earlier caused an editor to label the article as unbalanced. Finland-Swedes have their own article and further details should be discussed there. The same should go with other subjects that already have an article in Wikipedia. --Drieakko 06:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Percentages

The thing is that those percentages in the info box are from a source that deals with the whole population of Finland: thus it includes the immigrants as well, who are not Finns. --Jaakko Sivonen 19:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation of Finnish people

(Moved from User talk:Petri Krohn#categorisation of Finnish people)

Hi Petri

I'm not sure why you took Finnish People out of the category Ethnic Groups in Europe. Do you think that Finnish people are not an ethnic group ? Do you think they are not in Europe? Category does not mean the same as related article!

And its a trueism to say that the Finnish people are an Ethnic group in Finland! And although there are som Finnish people in Sweden, it does not constitute a categorisation. SO I undid your change to that article. The Swedish edit might be arguable. If you add that one back in I won't complain! However, I do think you are mistakingly thinking of "categorisation" as meaning "related articles", and that is not what it means. --Tom 19:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I have created the category Category:Ethnic groups in Finland. This is already included in Category:Ethnic groups in Europe, so there is no need to include Finnish people in the redundant main category. Compare this to Czechs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Hungarian people etc. -- Petri Krohn 20:53, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

While doing this, you seem to have defined the relationship between a Finnish people (what is this then?) and the Finland Swedes (or Swedish Speaking Finns) from being linguistic subdivisions into an ethnic division. Are you sure that the majority of the people designating themselves 'Finnish' agree with your interpretation? Both this article and the article on Finland Swedes seem to state quite the opposite and speaks of LINGUISTIC subsets. Clarifer 08:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I did think about this. However the categorization follows Wikipedia standards: The category is in Category:Ethnic groups in Europe, with similarly named categories for all European countries. We could consider renaming this to Category:Ethnic and linguistic groups in Finland, but this would break the pattern. Leaving Swedish-speaking Finns out, because it is factually or politically incorrect, is not an option. Readers will be unaware of the subtile distinction, and will be looking for Finland-Swedes here. -- Petri Krohn 23:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Let's make a comparison. Where in "Ethnic groups in Ireland" can I find Irish speaking Irishmen and English speaking Irishmen? Nowhere, as they are the same ethnos albeit speaking different languages. People inhabiting the Gaeltacht regions in Ireland do not have a separate ethnic article or do they? Clarifer 09:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

If they are missing from the category, it is for the simple reason that Wikipedia does not have articles on Irish speaking Irishmen and English speaking Irishmen. I hope someone would create the articles, so this etnic/linguistic issue (in Wikipedia categorazion) would get wider attention. -- Petri Krohn 02:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. The category Ethnic groups in Ireland does in fact have an article Anglo-Irish, and a subcategory Anglo-Irish people. I do not know if the distinction is really ethinc, linguistic or religious. -- Petri Krohn 02:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It is appropriate we have our own page, as Finnish people are unique amongst the lesser peoples of Earth.Aleksi Peltola 18:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Move entire article and start again

Reading the article, I see very little about Finnish people in it. I've added the most. The rest is demarcation between Finn and Finland-Swede. This is not good, it's an instance of someone's favorite opinion taking over the main discussion. This discussion should have its own article, and the current content should be in there. Regardless of any official policies or individual opinions, Finland-Swedes form a separate group that is not "Finnish people", but forms a distinct culture. --Vuo 21:17, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, discussing and defining ethnicities is a tricky matter if not altogether impossible (which makes it a very interesting topic!). This article is about an ethnicity. It is not about "groups of people" or "cultures". What, then, is an ethnos? Are you really sure that the main body of evidence and opininion in Finland and elsewhere in the world is that two separate major ethnicities inhabit Finland? If so, please provide evidence for this and rewrite the article. Did you know that in a study conducted by Svenska Finlands Folkting [10] (html format [11] ) when Finland Swedes were asked "what does it mean for you to be a Finland Swede?" 82% aswered "to be part of an own culture but also to be Finnish amongst the rest of the people." Only 17% answered "to be part of an own culture that differs from the Finnish culture." Please add relevant info on the Finnish people if the article lacks it. What does Finnishness comprise of? Clarifer 09:06, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh and I agree that this article is heavily disproportioned towards Finland-Swedish issues but that's how it evolved as a response to the ongoing argumentation and counter-argumentation on the issue. The relevant things seem to get pushed in the background. Clarifer 09:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

That's true. For a start, there could be a separate section for the demarcation and explaining very carefully the difference between Finn, Finland's native inhabitant, and Finnish citizen. --Vuo 16:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Floktinget quote

The Folktinget quote on the issue is Både att höra till en egen kultur, men också att vara en finländare bland alla andra. Interestingly, finländare means "Finnish citizen", "inhabitant of Finland", the most inclusive category. The correct interpretation is crucial: no one is saying the Finland-Swedes aren't finländare, it's whether they're finnar or not. --Vuo 09:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Read further and see that the paragraph on terminology tries to address this issue. Should we take the Finland-Swedish language usage as a model for English nomenclature (why?) or the Finnish and Swedish language usages? Definitions in the three (or four?) participant languages seeem to constitute a matter and also an obstacle when discussing the whole issue. Finländare is a late 19th century term created by some people in the Swedish speaking minority as an answer to the language issue and its meaning, too, seems to have changed since then? Whether using this term is suitable or not is debatable but this term exists and represents one of the manners to address the language issue. Is the translation into English of finländare nowadays really "Finnish citizen"? Or just "Finnish"? The term sv: finnar seems to have equally changed its meaning from designating an ethnic group into designating a linguistic one? Clarifer 12:18, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Naming convention

Petri Krohn prefers to use both Finnish and Swedish versions of the place names when writing about the Swedish-speaking Finns. I think this is not in line with the naming conventions. We use the English name, when available, and barring that, the names of used by the majority, mentioning the other names when they are significant. In my view, the historical provinces have English names, with the exception of Uusimaa and Satakunta. The other names are:

• Tavastia
• Finland Proper
• Ostrobothnia
• Karelia
• Lapland
• Savonia
• Aland Islands

For Satakunta, we might use Finlandia Septentrionalis, but I think it has not been used in English text for centuries. --MPorciusCato 13:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Preferred like this by me as well. --Drieakko 13:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Finland's toponymy seems to evoke all sorts of (unnecessary) discrepancies in Wikipedia. Perhaps this topic merits an article of its own? Here's what the Research Institute Of The Languages Of Finland has to say: "The names of many historical provinces were introduced into other languages while Finland was still part of the Swedish kingdom. Thus they have become established names (exonyms) in those languages - for instance, Karelia, Ostrobothnia and Lapland in the English language. According to the recommendation, excepting the exonyms, the Finnish forms of the names of Finnish provinces should be used in texts in foreign languages, the only exception being the province of Åland (Ahvenanmaa fi)." [12] So I suppose using the neo-Latin nomenclature for the provinces in English isn't really wrong although, in reality, they have never (prior to this day) been in wide use in the English language and so they can hardly be considered "established names". Why, then, isn't Nylandia, Alandia, Finlandia Vera (or something) and Satakondia used? At the end the day, I think very little is gained by using the neo-Latin names as they seem to only complicate things. The easiest way out would be to use the Finnish names and Aland because these can be read in all the www-pages, brochures and also in situ in Finland. Clarifer 07:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

True, but the only Latin names actually in use in addition to the ones RILF mentions are Savonia and Tavastia, which were really used at least in Latin and in some English texts of the 19th century. Nylandia is not used as much, and Åland (or Aland) Islands have indeed their own name in English. There is no "Satakondia" or "Finlandia Vera". The correct Latin names for those two provinces are Finlandia Septentrionalis and Finlandia Meridionalis but those names are not used in contemporary English. The reason for this is simple: You don't talk about the Southern provinces but about their cities, because usually cities are mentioned more often than regions. The Eastern and Northern regions of Finland are so sparsely settled that you actually must talk about the provinces, not about the cities inside them.

I think the question is whether to use Savo and Häme or Savonia and Tavastia. Lapland, Karelia, Ostrobothnia are settled names, as well as Satakunta and Uusimaa. Search Häme province gets 59.200 Google hits (on English pages), Tavastia province gets 698 hits on English pages. For Savonia province and Savo province the hits are 652 and 62.000, respectively. The only non-Wikipedia hit for Finlandia Meridionalis is a plant collection from 1830. There are no non-Wikipedia hits for Finlandia Septentrionalis on English-language sites. In conclusion, I think we should follow RILF and use Finnish names for the provinces, with the exception of Finland Proper, Karelia, Lapland, Ostrobothnia and Åland. --MPorciusCato 12:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Right. Well, you may be interested in editing toponyms of Finland I just began..? Others too, please rephrase and add! ;) Clarifer 14:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Repeated deletion of relations

It appears that the "related" infobox tab keeps getting removed. Now it is such that a linguistic relation doesn't imply a ethnic relationship. However, in the case of Finnish, Karelian and Estonian, there is more than just linguistic kinship. As an example, one can think of the wars: heimosodat, Finnish volunteer participation to Estonian War of Independence, Estonian participation to the wars against the Soviet Union. All of this has been motivated by the belief that there is a Finnic kinship. On the contrary, Finns are not related to Swedes; there is no "Nordic kinship". --Vuo 15:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

It should be restored. --88.114.249.135 23:19, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Genetically speaking, Finns and Swedes are very much related indeed. A language can be acquired and changed but the genes remain. Monegasque 17:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, genetically Finns are the same as Swedes, or basically any other Indo-European people in northern Europe. Almost all words in Finnish are also Indo-European even though the grammar is developed from an altogether different language. --Drieakko 17:44, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

"Almost all words in Finnish are also Indo-European" That's rubbish. There are naturally many loan words, but by no mean are "almost all" or even a majority loan words. Finns are not a Indo European people. Please don't pretend to be an expert when you clearly are not. --88.114.242.180 19:31, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Sinä puhut täyttä paskaa, tietämättömyytesi ei ole hyväksyttävä syy sille, sillä voisit yhtä hyvin hankkia oikean tiedon asiasta. How many Indo European loan words do you see there? --88.114.242.180 19:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

"related groups" info removed from infobox

For dedicated editors of this page: The "Related Groups" info was removed from all {{Infobox Ethnic group}} infoboxes. Comments may be left on the Ethnic groups talk page. Ling.Nut 16:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Why are there "related groups" on other articles of peoples? For example Swedish people. --88.114.250.205 12:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

vandalism

by User:Clarifer reverted. Please do not replace refed and sourced facts with unsourced ones in the future. Please do understand the difference between the population of Finland and ethnic Finns living in Finland. Since there are 93.4% of Finns in Finland out of the total population of 5,238,460. The number of ethnic Finns in Finland is roughly 4,893,000. Please also do not misuse tags in the future but start a discussion in case you see anything questionalble in an article. Thanks!--Termer 07:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Greetings Termer. Kindly read what vandalism is. Please inform yourself on how to construct an introduction in an article. If you wish to add detailed info about a topic, kindly first read the article through to see if the info is already present and whether a section other than the introduction might be more approriate. Please don't use obsolete ideas and terminology in contemporary writing. Please try and avoid controversial and too complicated ideas and concepts in a too careless fashion, especially in an introduction. Such concepts as "Finno-Ugric peoples", "Finnic peoples" are very ambiguous (as are "Germanic peoples, "Celtic peoples" etc). I don't know what you're trying to say with the ehnicity bit and how your claim might be relevant to discussing the structure of a Wikipedia article. The tag was not put into the article by me but by the user:Vuo, you can trace this from the history of this article if you know how to. Also, please avoid double messages as in here and in my talk page. Now, you might want to try and add the info on the Fenni here, but then again, there is already an article of its own for that. I suggest that instead, you just wikify the word fenni already present in the etymology part of this article? It's simpler and avoids over-lapping. You may want to add info on Getica, the Beowulf, Widsith and the Primary Chronicle in the past section but then again, legends and strict facts should be clearly demarcated in an encyclopedia. Clarifer 14:39, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you User:Clarifer for sharing your personal opinions, understandings and interpretations regarding the matters, both WP policies and the content. Specially the opinion that "Finno-Ugric peoples", "Finnic peoples" "are very ambiguous" is an interesting one. Please take such concerns to relevant sources, to Encyclopedia Britannica for example etc. In the future please do not vandalize WP by replacing sourced and refed facts in an article with unsourced claims. Reverting vandalism for the second time, this time by User:Drieakko. Please do not alter facts on WP. Thanks.--Termer 15:30, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

PS. The chapter "Who belongs to this ethnic group?" is going to be removed from the article unless proper working , not broken source is provided to back up the statements. Thanks--Termer 15:57, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Edits in the preface by Termer

Termer, your edits in the preface are misplaced and erroneous and can not be added there. The purpose of the lead is to sum up the article, not add content which is not discussed later. Opening up all that you want to add:

"The word Finn is first mentioned in the form fenni in the first century AD by Tacitus, the Roman historian."

What possible purpose does that have in the article lead?

"However it is possible that he was referring to the people of northern Europe in general, particulary the Lappic or Sami people."

Again, what is the point?

"After that the name finni is used by Claudius Ptolemaeus (170 AD) and the Gothic writer Jordanes in his Getica (551 AD)."

Again, pointless. Nobody knows who these people were.

"The first sure mention in the western sources referring to Finns is considered to be in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf (800 AD)."

I have not heard that before.

"Information about Finnnic tribes becomes much more numerous from the Viking era (800-1050)."

Well, they sure do not. What are the "numerous" sources?

"It was not until abut 1171 that the word Finni was employed to mean the Finns."

Incorrect. That is just the year when the Pope is known to have referred to Finns for the first time. Kindly discuss your claims here before adding the above text to the lead. --Drieakko 16:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Please back up your opinions with relevant scholarly sources and refs as are the facts listed, you've mentioned in the article. I personally don't have any preferences where exactly the historic considerations are listed as long as these are properly sourced and refd like the ones currently in the header or preface. Thanks!--Termer 16:38, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

PS. The new revert... Please note that unless the opinions, including the opinion of Unbalanced nature of the article, are backed up with proper sources and refs, I'd have to continue to interpret these reverts as vandalism and proceed restoring the integrity of WP by restoring the text according to Encyclopedia Britannica, the World Fact book and Prehistoric Finns that were listed as the refs for the facts in the article previously. Please have your opinions backed up with relevant scholarly sources within 24 hours, after that I proceed and going to restore the article according to previously provided sources. Please do not provide broken links or subscription services as refs for article like now. Thanks--Termer 16:53, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Drieakko and User:Clarifer. I do believe Termer is editing with the best intentions, but his edits are not improving the article. The "source" Termer is using to claim his own number of Finnish people in Finland violates WP:OR, so there's no vandalism in removing it. Nowhere in the source, the World Factbook, does it say that the Finnish people constitues any given number of people. Please understand that the percetange of Finns given in the source is the number of people who are native speakers of Finnish, not people belonging to the group Finnish people. That is Temer's own definition and his own calculations, so acccusing others of vandalism for removing it is completely out of line. JdeJ 17:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I hate to point out for the second time that the World Factbook clearly lists the percentage of ethnic Finns living in Finland. As long as proven otherwise by a reliable source your statement regarding "the percentage of Finns" remains to be an opinion that has no relevance in an encyclopedia. Please have clear refs ready to back up your claims. My intentions are to bring the article back to accordance with the facts and thereafter remove the unnecessary tag.--Termer 18:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Termer, you need to check the sources that you use. For example, claim that "Information about Finnnic tribes becomes much more numerous from the Viking era (800-1050)" is just plain fiction. Not a single source survives from that era that indisputably mentions Finns, and I think the same applies to all Finnic tribes. The only potential source about Finnic peoples from that era is the Old English Orosius from around 890 that presumably mentions Finns under the name Kven. Also, associating Pope's letter from 1171/2 with the claim that the name Finn was only then employed for Finns, is absurd; it's just the earliest surviving source. No scholarly publication today associates Finnish people with the remarks from Tacitus, Ptolemaeus and Jordanes. If you want a decent presentation about the way Finnish people evolved, take e.g. ISBN 951-746-321-9. Also, I need to remind you to be more careful with the word "vandal", as accusation for vandalism means that you ask that user to be blocked. ---Drieakko 17:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

The most of this is common knowledge and a matter of phrasing. Calling the earliest surviving source an absurd as "the first sure mentioning..." is an opinion. Please provide relevant source "who says so". Please note that I'm going to interpret any removal of properly sourced, refed facts and replacement with not cited and refed opinions and claims as vandalism. Please feel free to work with the article by adding the sources to the facts. Any claims, including the tag that are not reasoned with properly refed sources are going to be challenged any time within 24 hours. Thanks--Termer 18:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If your additions are badly formulated, random, irrelevant and unanimously opposed by other editors (as is the case now), they will be removed whatever amount of external references you attach to them. Kindly note that intimidating accusations and ignorance to co-operation take you nowhere. --Drieakko 19:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Drieakko for overhauling the article! I don't see any problems with it any more, all the facts are properly sourced and refed. Good job!--Termer 06:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --Drieakko 06:56, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

And thanks for stimulation, it always works ;) --Drieakko 07:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Why are these Swedes editing this article with such fervour? --88.114.242.180 19:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposition to stop the perpetual edit war

After watching this for a while, I'm inclined to support the idea of completely separating the material demarcating Finland-Swedes and Finns proper into the article Swedish-speaking Finns and having one sentence about it as a link. Then the article would contain only the discussion of Finnish-speaking Finns. This despite the possible Finnish-proper origins of some Finland-Swedes. The alternative is that this perpetual edit war continues. --Vuo 07:17, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Please note that there is no edit war here. IMHO, the way things are in the article now, Finland-Swedes are handled in a balanced way and need no more or less handling in the article. --Drieakko 07:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Statistics

The statistics column is inconsistent.

The figure for the UK (30,000) is the number of Finns living in the UK according to latest estimates. The figure for the US is the number of people claiming Finnish ancestry in the US census (700,000) which is nowhere near the same thing as the number of Finns actually living in the US (about 14,000?).

• Has this issue been discussed before?
• What do other editors think SHOULD be in the table?
• Do we need two tables? If so, where will we get the statistics?

The last official estimate of populations of living Finns abroad I could find is from the Finnish Instute for migration. It is 10 years out of date and does not reflect the big movement of Finns into other areas of the European Union following its accession into the EU.--Tom 20:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"Finländare"

Could a consensus regarding the terminology be somehow reached here? There seems to be no real equivalent of the Finland-Swedish term 'finländare' in the English language (nor in any language other than Finland-Swedish) so what should be the approach to this matter in the article? What does the term finländare mean nowadays and how should it be translated into English? Suggestions? Clarifer 14:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It essentially has the same meaning as the English words "Finnish"/"Finn". Those English words do not make any classification of a Finnish person / Finn's language group - hence "Swedish-speaking Finns" as a common term. The English word Finn can be confusing for those with knowledge of Swedish as it sounds so similar to finne (= "Finnish-speaking Finn") - so one can easy (falsely) think that it must have the same meaning. 94pjg (talk) 03:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Deletion review discussion

Please see the deletion review discussion here. Badagnani 18:38, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Successful good article nomination

I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of December 11, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Pass

2. Factually accurate?: Pass

3. Broad in coverage?: Pass

4. Neutral point of view?: Pass

5. Article stability? Pass

6. Images?: Pass

Overall, this was quite an excellent article, really gives the subject its merit. If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations.— ViperSnake151 14:28, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was PAGE MOVED per discussion below. -GTBacchus^(talk) 23:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Finnish people → Finns — If you take a look at European ethnic groups, majority of the articles use a short form. Albanians, Estonians, Germans, Greeks, Karelians and so on. There has been discussion about this before, and apparently some IPs vandalized the article after it was on Finns, because they probably were confused with the term as it's is close to Swedish finnar, which can exclude Swedish-speaking Finns. But there is no problem with that anymore, there is concensus. Even the article has been moved to Swedish-speaking Finns. Other than that, Interwiki links use similiar forms: Finnen, Finnoj, Finner, and Finns is just as much integrated to English as Germans, and there are no problems with the term as with Frenchmen for example. —Pudeo⺮ 01:26, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support --Pudeo⺮ 01:26, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support 857 hits on "Finnish people" versus 4390 on "Finns" @ google books; 2,270 hits on "Finnish people" versus about 590,000 for "Finns" at google scholar, although some returns on "Finns" mark sometimes a family name, it is clearly the name in English for the people of Finland who speak Finnish nowadays. Don't know anybody who'd go around and say "Finnish people" instead of Finns in reality + "Finns" definitely sounds like a name for the nation instead of "Finnish people" that reminds me like it was referring to a tribe somewhere.--Termer (talk) 03:58, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support The case is well-argued, most of the similar articles are on ethnic groups and thus Finns would be a more suitable name and content than Finnish people. JdeJ (talk) 10:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support. The argument about the article name has receded and a consensus seems to exist. Like JdeJ said, "Finns" is a form used in everyday language, and by the group itself. --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:20, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
• Support, mitigates the confusion between the Finnish ethnicity and inhabitants of Finland. Furthermore, I believe it's a POV that suomalaiset is translated to Finnish people while including suomenruotsalaiset, who, despite living in the same society, have a slightly different culture. --Vuo (talk) 13:42, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

I myself am willing to go with Finns or Finnish people as long as the definitions reach a consensus and are clear to all. I find it a bit funny that people are willing to rename the article 'Finns' even though they seem to disagree on what the term 'Finn' really means. You guys are aware of this? Pudeo's definition of 'Finns' seems to include both the Finnish and the Swedish speaking Finns. Termer speaks of 'Finns' as "the name in English for the people in Finland who speak FINNISH nowadays" i.e. excludes the Swedish-speaking Finns (or Finland Swedes). JdeJ seems to agree with pudeo regarding the definition as does MPorciusCato. Vuo, on the other hand seems to hold it POV to state that "suomalaiset" includes "sumenruotsalaiset" if I understand him correctly. So all in all, the case here has definitely NOT reached a consensus and until one is reached it is perhaps better to speak more vaguely of a Finnish people in analogy to e.g. Danish people (not Danes), Swedish people (not Swedes), Norwegian people and Irish people (not Irishmen)? Otherwise this article will be torn to pieces as a result of conflicting definitions. Clarifer (talk) 10:19, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Atleast to me, it clearly includes Swedish-speaking Finns (Finns, duh). The article formerly was on the name Finland Swedes, but has been since moved (Folktinget and tohers use Swedish-speaking Finns). Perhaps Termer was referring to more broad view, ie. Sweden Finns, Ingrian Finns which all speak Finnish. Finnar has nothing to do with the English term Finns. But of course some people disagree on the issue whether they belong to either Finns or Finnish people. Anyway, I'd support renaming Swedes and Danes atleast too. --Pudeo⺮ 11:02, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, some Swedish-speakers in Finland consider themselves Finns and maintain that the only thing that distinguishes them from Finnish-speaking Finns is language. Other Swedish-speakers don't consider themselves Finns and point to other differences as well. My guess would be that the former group is larger, thus agreeing with Pudeo's suggestion. JdeJ (talk) 12:27, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Notice that inclusion of Finland-Swedes into the article Swedish people directly contradicts the opinion that Finland-Swedes are "Swedish-speaking Finns". Also, the article on Finland-Swedes also contradicts it by stating that they actually fulfill the criteria of being a separate ethnic group. The Finnish article is also very thorough on this, elaborating even on the historical differences between rural and elite Swedish-speakers. I think the whole issue originates from the use of imprecise terms like "suomalaiset" or "Finns". There is no conflict in an native ethnic group living in the same mainstream society as another, while being distinct. Native inhabitants of Finland also include the Sami, and no one's shoehorning them into the article on Finns. (As a side note, my opinion is that Finland-Swedes are a separate ethnicity that share a "national culture" with Finns. The language isn't all that there is to the difference. For example, in the Vaasa coast, you can tell from a summer cottage who lives there: Finns always build saunas to their summer cottages, only Finland-Swedes would leave them without.) However, if for some reason in Wikipedia Finns and Finland-Swedes share the article, then it would be necessary to greatly expand the section about dialect-specific subcultures (the "tribes", heimot). While Finland is generally a very homogeneous society, these are of at least historical interest on explaining the subdivisions. It is inaccurate by omission to say that Finns can be divided into Finnish-speakers and Swedish-speakers, because Finns are divided into Savo (north and south), Karelian, Ostrobothnian (north, middle, south), Häme, etc. dialect speakers of Finnish and similarly with Swedish. --Vuo (talk) 17:21, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

To me, Vuo makes a lot of sense. Personally I would probably classify Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers as different ethnicities. I'm mainly of Walloon origin myself and no Walloon nor Flemish person would dream of classifying us together. In my experience, that is the case in Switzerland as well, to a large extent. Usually, I'm even been able to identify the language of some persons from Finland before they've said a word. Looks, fashion, the way to behave, they are all a bit different between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers. In Helsinki, at least. Still, as I said, most Swedish-speakers in Finland with whom I've spoken, they have classified themselves as Finns. In an international context, this makes little sense, but can we decide that those who claim themselves to be Finns are wrong? I don't have an answer to give, but I'll be reading this discussion with great interest. JdeJ (talk) 17:32, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

"Ethnicity" seems to be quite of context, because most of the populations there are bilingual, and for example I know a family where they call mother a "Finland-Swede", father "Finnish-speaking Finn", one child "Finnish-speaking Finn" and other child "Finland-Swede", because they used more Swedish when raising the other and put her to a Swedish-speaking school. It has been discussed at Talk:Swedish people several times, and apprently it's a stalemate. No one can decide these things. --Pudeo⺮ 18:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

But the objective of this discussion is not to decide where to draw the line. We are trying to reach a consensus solely on the issue whether material about Finland-Swedes should be kept in a different article than "Finns". No "drawing the line" is necessary to settle this question. --Vuo (talk) 09:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Bard my ignorance but I'm not getting it, what is it with Finland-Swedes that it has been made into such a big deal? As far as I'm concerned, it's up to the people if they'd like to think of themselves as Finns or Finland-Swedes. An it seems I need to clarify my comment above "the name in English for the people in Finland who speak FINNISH as their First language". --Termer (talk) 05:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that there is a distinct, self-defined group of native Swedish-speaking Finnish citizens, whose ancestry has lived in Finland for centuries and has (mostly) spoken Swedish all the time. The persons self-identify with this group. The question is whether we define this group to be a part of a larger self-identified group "Finns", which includes Finnish-speaking Finns. An alternative approach is to define that we have two different peoples in Finland: Finland-Swedes and Finns. Most Swedish-speakers in Finland (incl. Folktinget) think that this is not the case: there is only a single people which includes speakers of both languages. (The Sami self-identify much more as a separate people.) On the other hand, those Swedish-speakers who think that there are two separate peoples, do not accept a third option, self-identification as a Swedish-speaking Finn. Both opinions want to define the ethnicity of the whole group, the members of which are well-defined. So, any way you choose, you violate someone's right to self-identification. --MPorciusCato (talk) 14:33, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

And yes, this all sounds ridiculous from the international perspective. The idea behind the thinking that Finnish- and Swedish speakers form a single nation comes straight from application of Hegelian philosophy which was the dominant influence on the formation of Finnish nationalism in the 19th century. In Hegel's and Johan Vilhelm Snellman's thought, ethnically defined peoples are the actors of history. In a rightful world, there is a single nation-state for each people, Volk. The existence of Swedish-speaking minority caused a problem, which was circumvented by defining the Finnish people as a single people with two languages. (Most importantly promoted by the Swedish-speaker Zacharias Topelius.) The contrary idea of two separate peoples, supported by Axel Olof Freudenthal, would lead into the idea that Swedes are not rightfully Finnish citizens, but should have their own political institutions and their own, completely Swedish-dominated areas. In early 1920s, these were indeed somewhat popular ideas among the most radical Swedish-speakers, but they were countered by ultra-Fennoman demands that Swedish language be stripped all political and cultural rights and the Swedish-speakers be forcefully fennicized. The best way for the Swedish minority and for the moderate Finnish majority to preempt the re-emergence of those demands is to toe the line of "two languages, single people". --MPorciusCato (talk) 15:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The political thought is complicated by differing vocabularies. In Finnish, the people is suomalaiset and it divides to suomenkieliset (Finnish-speakers) and ruotsinkieliset (Swedish-speaker). In Swedish, the people is finländare, which divides to finnar and finlandsvenskar or just svenskar. In Finnish, the semantics convey the official line "two languages, one people". In Swedish, it may convey the official line, or it may not, depending on what you read into the terms. --MPorciusCato (talk) 15:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not resolved in Finnish language either: consider also suomenruotsalaiset "Swedes of Finland" and SFP's self-identification as Ruotsalainen kansanpuolue "People's Party of the Swedish". Furthermore, Finns typically refer to Swedish-speaking Finlanders with just plain ruotsalaiset, distinguishing riikinruotsalaiset if necessary. This suomenkielinen and ruotsinkielinen is fundamentally more accurate, but politically motivated. --Vuo (talk) 16:11, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

RE: The question is whether we define this group to be a part of a larger self-identified group "Finns", which includes Finnish-speaking Finns. No, as I hope I had pointed out clearly already, we can't decide it into what self-identified group anyone belongs. If we would, only then you violate someone's right to self-identification. And Finnish citizens is a different subject than Finns. Also, "Finnish Nation" can mean a different thing than "Finns". There is a nation called Belgians, some of them speak Flemish, some Wallonian and some German. Also, being a Swiss is a good example not to mention American, a citizen of the US.--Termer (talk) 20:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not mean to define anyone and I know that the Finnish nation may be considered to include also other groups than ethnic Finns. I was trying to clarify the ideological history of the nationality concepts in Finland, not trying to promote those antiquated concepts. --MPorciusCato (talk) 10:07, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

A lot of what has been said here formed the ground in Finland's language strife in the 19th century just as MPorciusCato very informatively wrote. Simplistically put, two ideas competed at that time: "Two nations-one country" and "Two languages-one nation". Whatever the justification may be, and whether correct or not, it appears that the country of Finland today (its institutions, its politics, the ideas of the majority of the people etc. etc.) bases its existence mainly to the legacy left by proponents of the latter concept. Or am I wrong? Now the question remains, which side of the story should this article reflect or are we able to should we write a common article? Clarifer (talk) 12:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Clarifier. And the whole point is further complicated by the fact that the Finnish kansa (Swedish folk, German Volk) is a different concept from the English words nation or people. --MPorciusCato (talk) 13:17, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I believe the accurate translation of nation into Finnish is kansakunta and the translation of people is kansa so perhaps I should have spoken about peoples instead of nations... I believe the coined in version (by Zacharias Topelius) in Finnish runs indeed: yksi kansa - kaksi kieltä. (Instead of "yksi kansakunta - kaksi kieltä"). And sure, there are a lot of semantic mismatches involved here... sigh. ;) Clarifer (talk) 16:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it's me but I still am not getting it what exactly has the thing with Finlands-Swedes to do with the article here: Finnish people and with renaming it to Finns? Are you saying that Finns might mean or include also the Swedes in Finland? so is it going to make a difference? It seems everybody supported the rename so I guess it's up to the proposer to go ahead and make the move?--Termer (talk) 06:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

WP:LEAD

I tagged this article with {{tooshort}}. The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article summarizing the most important points, per WP:LEAD. Expanding the lead is particularly important for this article to maintain its GA status. --BorgQueen (talk) 14:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Good article reassessment

Since the lead hasn't been expanded, and one section has been tagged with {{contradicts}} by someone, I am bringing this to Good article reassessment for reassessment and possible delisting of its Good article status. --BorgQueen (talk) 15:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The way I see it, in case anybody might think "the introduction is too short", one should feel free to expand it instead of spamming the article with the tag. There is nothing wrong with the introduction as evidenced by the GA process, nobody has addressed the concern so far. Therefore in case you BorgQueen think the lead should be extended, feel free to go ahead and extend it since it's only you so far who thinks it could be an issue. The second, Swedish-speaking Finns appears to contradict the article Swedish people is yet again another opinion. It would be like making it an issue that German-Speaking Swiss or Italian-Speaking Swiss or Spanish-Speaking Americans contradict Germans, Italians or Spanish people. In other words , I think such actions like tagging the article unreasonably without putting any effort into improving the article are in fact counterproductive and therefore I would dismiss the issues raised entirely. Thanks!--Termer (talk) 19:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the {{contradicts}} tag, as I fail to see any contradiction here. Also expanded the lead to two paragraphs, as required by the GA guide. Martintg (talk) 20:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

In the articles about Swedish people, Finland-Swedes are included. --Vuo (talk) 18:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The article Swedish people states:

Swedish speakers outside Sweden are minorities outside of Sweden with Swedish as their mother tongue who, however, might not always describe themselves as 'ethnically Swedish'.

Then in a separate section immediately following, the article states:

The Swedish-speaking Finns or Finland-Swedes form a minority group in Finland of about 265,000, comprising 5.10% of the population of mainland Finland, or 5.50 %[5] if the 26,000 inhabitants of Åland are included (there are also about 60,000 Swedish-speaking Finns currently resident in Sweden). Their inclusion in either Finns or Swedes is controversial. There are also 9,000 Swedish citizens living in Finland.

In my opinion, there is no contradiction. The article does not claim this group to be Swedes but mentioning the Swedish-speaking Finns in the article about Swedish people is prudent. In fact, we must remember that ethnicity is a fluent concept. Especially many Swedes (rikssvenskar) may consider the Swedish-speaking Finns to be Swedes, even if this were not the majority opinion among the group of Swedish-speaking Finns. On the other hand, the inclusion of all 9,000 Swedish citizens living in Finland into the group "Swedes" may not be appropriate. Many of those persons are Finns who have emigrated to Sweden, obtained the Swedish citizenship and returned to Finland, but not (yet) taken back the Finnish citizenship. Those persons may validly be claimed to be both Finns and Swedes depending on the definition. A better, yet incomplete estimate of actual Swedes (with ties to Sweden) may be made by taking the membership of Rikssvenska Olaus Petri församlingen which is the Evangelical Lutheran parish targeted for rikssvenskar dwelling in Finland. That parish has about 1,000 members[13] and until 2007, it was part of Church of Sweden.[14] Of course, not all the Swedes in Finland belong to the Olaus Petri församlingen but those who do, still retain very strong ties to Sweden. --MPorciusCato (talk) 08:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, I think that the part on genetics needs a lot of work. Clarifer (talk) 13:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

This article was nominated for good article reassessment to determine whether or not it met the good article criteria and so can be listed as a good article. The article was delisted. Please see the archived discussion for further information. Geometry guy 21:26, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The estimated amount of Finns is way too small

I have to say that the estimated amount of Finns is too small. Looks like the writer of the article has forgot that there were more Finns to move abroad than only 2 millions, plus has the writer(s) recalled that the usual amount of children in the emigrated families was usually around 6-10 children per family? We have to also keep in our mind that most people might not be aware of the fact that they might be Finns; instead they might claim themselves to be Swedes, Britons or Germans, for example. The real amount of Finns is more likely around 60 millions, when all people with Finnish origins are included.62.148.100.50 (talk) 11:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You talk about ethnic groups as if they were genetic. However, immigrants often change their ethnic identity. I have not seen anyone claim that there were tens of millions of Finnish emigrants actively self-identifying as Finns. Have you? --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

And considering "Finnish origins" as a condition for a person to be a Finn is not workable. For example Alexander Suvorov is often claimed to have had Finnish ancestors, but I would not go as far as to count him a Finn. --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with MPorciusCato and, sorry to say, find it hard to believe that the anonymous user is serious when talking about 60 millions. So if one of your great-great-grandparents was a Finn (the person's Finnish origin being 1/16), neither you, your parents, your granparent nor your great-grandparents ever set foot in Finland, nobody in your family has been speaking a word of Finnish or Swedish for the past 100 years and you couldn't even find Finland on a map, are you still a Finn? Hardly. Besides, where would you find a source for that number? Finally, there's no other population article on Wikipedia in such a vague way. JdeJ (talk) 12:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Genetics of the Swedish-speaking Finns / Finland-Swedes

I would like to point out that the sentence "cluster with Sweden" does not occur in any scientific publication. It have been clearly said that Finlandswedish samples are "closest to" the Swedish of all Finnish samples, not that they "cluster with" Sweden. All genetical research made so far have showed Increased Swedish admixture among Finlandswedes, but not to the extent that Finlandswedes would cluster with Swedish people.

"Interestingly, the county-level PCA (Figure (Figure2D)2D) and Geneland (Figure (Figure3B)3B) placed the Finnish subpopulation of Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia closest to Sweden." http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2527025 And "Here the Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnians showed no separation from their Finnish-speaking neighbours, whereas in the MDS plot of the European populations, the Finnish samples closest to the Swedes were almost exclusively Swedish-speakers (data not shown), and in the Structure analysis the Swedish-speaking Finns showed twice as large an admixture with the Sweden-dominated cluster as the other Western Finnish samples did." http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0003519 Please be advised that every Finnish, Swedish and English article on wikipedia concerning Finlandswedes have been edited by the very same person and he wants to wrongfully project Finlandswedes as an ethnical and genetical Swedish isolate. Beware of the wording! I agree that we gather ALL info on the subject, and refrain from doing own interpretations of the studies.

Shall we gather here all the info we have on the subject before collapsing into an edit war? (if there has to be a paragraph on this in the text in the first place). Clarifer (talk) 09:04, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

How about we provide some hard figures about Finns Y haplogroup levels. Eg N3 ___ %, R1a ___%. Instead of making blasé statements like 'Fins are genetically unique' and 'Fins are 90% European'. They both mean nothing. Hxseek (talk) 06:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The recent additions into this paragraph seem such that they require more accurate foot notes. It would be important to know how old the population studies based on blood markers or ABH antigens are. Seems like they stem from the 1980s. A lot more is known today. Clarifer (talk) 07:14, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Genetics section's map

Hello. This "genomic map" is highly inaccurate (it is at odds with the current peer-reviewed scientific literature on the subject), and as such, I have removed it from the section. Please visit the image's Wikimedia Commons Talk page [15] for further information on the accuracy concerns, and for supporting citations. Thanks Peer Gynt (talk) 08:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Who I am?

I agree with Hxseek this nonsense of DNA importance who we are is going too far as being the main point of find out our roots of kin. I take an example of my mother´s kin. Her father and mother were both being born at St.Petersburg in 1893 and 1896 respectively. Both to Finnish parents who were the second generation of Petar (St.petersburg) Finns (Pietarin suomalaiset) living in Vyborskij Storona ie. Viipurin puoli (Viipuri´s side) of Petar ie north of Bolshoi Neva (Suur Neva) called Great Neva in English, north of Vasilij Ostrov (Vassilin saari) where most of the English speaken society in St.Petersburg were living, as 90 per cent of all Petar Finns. My mothernal grandfather came from large Karelian kin whose ancesters appeared to Swedish map and citizens of Kingdom of Sweden only in 1617 after Peace of Stolbova. Before that year they lived in Muscovite Russia, a heritager of former Velikoi Knjäz Novgorod in so called Vatja Fifth at Karelian villages Suistamo and Salmi. According to old family tales, having lived there at least before 1323 the Treaty of Nöteborg (Pähkinäsaaren rauha) where Karelia was divided between Novgorod and Sweden. The members of same blood kin have lived at least same ages as far north as Vuokkiniemi and also Kainuu. In 1721 they dissapeared from Finland´s map again to become part of Imperial Russia living in Aunus kuvernmentti (Gubernaja) up to 1812. Then with Imperial Ukaza (Order) when so called "Old Finland" was incorporated to "New Finland" they become part of The Grand Duchy Of Finland again and appeared to Finnish statistics again. My grandmother (own kin Sivonen) had two elder sisters, both married with Russian men working in admistrative positions inside the Imperial Russian Adminstration. And one younger brother. All spoked fluent Russian but were all eduacated in Finnish Lutherian school and whole family were Lutherian by religion. My grandfather never, despite been born in Petar (St.Petersburg), learned to speak fluent Russian, and spoked it with strong Karelian Finnish acsent. Both had Finnish as their home language, but the surrounding Russian main language demanded them also to speak it in daily life. They were married in Petar just before World War One and lived there to spring 1921. Both had internal passport of Grand Duchy of Finland as they were so called "Legal St.Petersburgers", from 1914 Petrograders. Up to August 1914 St.Petersburg was the second largest "Finnish" town after Helsingfors, with its 62.000 Legal Finns. But there were over 30.000 non legal Finns working in annual bases in a city with population of 1.500.000 inhabitants. They just simply crossed the internal border between the Grand Duchy of Finland and Russian Northern Ingermanland which was nearly 90 percent populated by ethnic Finns, the Ingermanlanders of which also 9.000 lived inside the admistrative borders of City of St.Petersburg. In addition there were also over 50.000 Estonians living in St.Petersburg. Making it the largest Baltic Finnish town. They formed over 10 per cent of the St.Petersburg population being the largest minority in the city after Russians. The whole surrounding contry side was mainly populated by ethnic Finnish Ingermanlanders, nearly 250.000 in number. The Russian were only majority by little margin at Siestarjoki, Hatsina and Pietarhovi, but all the country side was Finnish with large Ingermanlander villages. Similar situation than in Helsingfors where it was surrounded by Finland´s Swede country side to the borders of Helsingfors. When moving to Republic of Finland in 1921, one legally the other not, they become with their old Grand Duchy passports automaticly citizens of Finland. My father´s kin coming from Western Finland is well known in family records through church books up to 1400´s. They main thing to be a Finn is between one´s ears, not in his / her DNA.

In 1920 both sisters of my grand mother with their children decided to stay in Soviet Russia with their husbands and did not move to Finland. The tought was lost in 1936 and since then nothing have been heard of them. So, according this DNA vouhotus, both must be originated from Ursula clan U5 haplodite which is going as heritage to their female children. This means that every Russian with paternal Finnish N3 or maternal U5 haplodite can be identified despite their Russian names and Russian language they speak today.

If these DNA tests being reliable in terms of statistical viewpoint you must to test 1012 persons to get 96.3 per cent reliability to present 500.000 people. When looked the number of tested people it is not possible to provide reliable results, only assumptions and estimates or so called mutu (I feel) method.

What about the custom to take wives of abroad? In my family kin among known relatives are known women from Bessarabia, Argentina, Sweden, and some members live in Russia, Sweden, Canada and United States of America. Where they should be classified? Ausland Finnische peharps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.115.5 (talk) 15:55, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Finlandians

Isn't that analogous to the New Russia? They have Russians (ethnic ~), Greater Russians (WTF?) and "Ruslandians" (Members of the Community, Russian Federation subjects, I mean, citizens), I am told --88.74.164.127 (talk) 07:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Finnish Brazilian

I checked some books published by Sirtolaisuusinstituutti, none of them give such a large emigration flow to Brazil, that it can create 90,000 Finnish Brazilians (unless all grandchildren with at least 1 Finnish grandfother/mother are counted, which is (a) also questionable and (b) hardly makes them Finnish by identity or ethnicity). So, I've removed that section from the "top 10" list. Alex —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.232.254.217 (talk) 15:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)