Finns

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The Virgin Finland , who is considered a national personification, protects the law (Lex) (from Swedish times) against the Russian double-headed eagle (painting by Eetu Iso, 1899)

The Finns ( Finnish suomalaiset ; Swedish finnar ) are a Finno-Ugric people in Northern Europe and the titular nation of Finland . There are also Finnish minorities in neighboring countries; descendants of Finnish emigrants mainly live in North America.

Finn also means “citizen of Finland”. This article is about ethnic Finns. For other ethnic groups living in the country, see the article on Finland-Swedes and the corresponding sections in the article on Finland .

definition

Finnish family in 1901

The vast majority of Finns speak the Finnish language , which is part of the Urals language family .

The exact definition of “ethnic Finn” can vary, especially with regard to the question of the extent to which the Swedish-speaking parts of the population of Finland, the so-called Finland Swedes , can be classified as ethnic Finns. Many Finland-Swedes do not consider themselves to be an ethnic minority, but rather see themselves as "Swedish-speaking Finns" and their culture as an integral part of Finnish culture. The Finnish Statistical Office classifies the population of Finland according to citizenship, country of birth and mother tongue, but not according to ethnicity. According to the statistics office, in 2007 around 91.2% of the population were Finnish-speaking and 5.5% Swedish-speaking.

Foreign statistics often treat Finland-Swedes as a separate ethnic group from Finns. For example, the Fischer World Almanac states that 92% of Finland's population are Finns and 6% Finland-Swedes. The yearbook Harenberg Aktuell published by Meyers Lexikonverlag (last published in 2007) even spoke of 93% Finns and 6% Swedes (not Finland-Swedes), as did the yearbook published by Spiegel (last published in 2004) or the CIA World Factbook .

The exact demarcation from other Finno Ugrians is often a question of definition. In Sweden , Russia ( Karelia ) and Norway there are long-established Finnish minorities (see below) who are sometimes viewed as Finns, sometimes as separate ethnic groups. Furthermore, emigration in the last 200 years has also resulted in significant Finnish or Finnish ethnic groups in Canada and the USA , especially in the northwest of today's state of Michigan .

History of the Finns

Today's distribution of the Finnish and related Permian peoples

The linguistic relationship between Finns and Hungarians (which was still controversial at the beginning of the 20th century) is now considered undisputed; their descent from common Finno-Ugric or Ural ancestors is considered proven. The assignment of the Uralic language group to greater Ural-Altaic language and family of peoples (and thus a relationship of the Finns and Hungarians with also the Altaic group belonging to Turkic and Mongolian peoples ) is now regarded as outdated, however. It is not yet fully clear whether or how closely the Finns and Sami are actually related or whether the Sami only adopted a Finno-Ugric or Finnish-Permian language. The closest relatives of the Finns are the Karelians or - as the Karelians are often counted among the Finns themselves - the Estonians .

Etymology and Mythology

Sumble's daughter Signe is stolen from the Finns by the Danish king Gram (illustration by F. W. Heine , 1921)

At the end of the 1st century AD, the Roman historian Tacitus mentioned the Fenni and Aestii behind the Germanic tribes in his Germania , but meant the Sami (Lappen) and Balts rather than Finns and Estonians . Saxo Grammaticus ' (Danish) imperial chronicle Gesta Danorum handed down a legendary king of the Finns named Sumble (also Sumle or Sumli ), from which the country name Suomi or the popular name Suomalaiset is supposed to be derived. Finnish traditions, however, do not mention a king named Sumble or the like.

The (younger) Snorra Edda (or its prologue ) by the Icelandic poet Snorri mentioned a Norwegian king named Säming , who probably descended from the Sami and the (older) Edda (or the Völundarkviða ) told of three sons of a king of the Finns who are said to have fought against the King of Sweden. One of these sons, Wieland the blacksmith , apparently corresponds to Ilmarinen , the main hero of the Finnish national epic Kalevala . Finnish mythology and Sami mythology have influenced Nordic mythology and the North Germanic religion just as much as, conversely, Finnish and Sami mythology was influenced by North Germanic.

In some North Germanic and Old English legends, all Finns and Sami were passed down as Kvenen (Kväner) and the entire area they inhabited as Kvenland (Northern Norway, Northern Sweden, Finland). Today only members of a numerically very small subgroup of Finns in Norway are referred to as Kvenen.

Ethnogenesis and land acquisition

The conquest of the first Finns (illustration by Axel Gallén , 1894)

Coming from the Urals, the Finno-Permian or proto-Finnish peoples spread from the 3rd millennium BC over Northeastern Europe to Scandinavia and the Baltic States, which was accompanied by their splitting or gradual separation. First the Permier or Biarmier / Bjarmen (the ancestors of the Komi / Syrjänen and Udmurten / Wotjaken ) broke away from the family of peoples and settled on the White Sea , while the Volga Finns moved to the southwest. Then different climatic and geographical conditions and the (resulting) different way of life also led to the different development of the Sami and Baltic Sea Finns. The latter in turn divided into the ancestors of the Finns and the Estonians.

Sometime between the beginning of our era and the year 700, Finnish tribes invaded southern and western Finland. The Sami nomads (reindeer herders) were pushed to the north by the Finnish farmers. The Finnish tribe of the Tavast ( Tavastier, Tavastlander or Hämen, Hämier or Yemen ) came to Central Finland probably by land over the Karelian Isthmus , while the " real Finns " came from Estonia to southwestern Finland partly by sea via the Gulf of Finland . The Karelians following the Tavast on a slightly more northerly route settled in southeastern Finland. Usually these three main tribes are assumed ("actual Finns", Tavasten and Karelians), but occasionally only two (the "actual Finns" as a subgroup of the Tavast) or even four (the Savolaxes in Eastern Finland as a mixed people of Tavast and Karelians) .

The development of today's Finnish people did not take place until the late Middle Ages and modern times, as in Finland - in contrast to Denmark, Sweden and Norway - there was no early unification of the empire under a national kingship. The clans of the "actual Finns", the Tavast and the Karelians were in constant battle for hunting grounds, fishing grounds and arable or pasture land - against each other as well as against Swedes, Russians and Sami. Only in the struggle for self-assertion against the Swedish Crusades and the Russian reaching out to Karelia did the “real Finns” gradually begin to merge with the tavast. In the 16th century, Tavasten and Karelians ravaged each other's respective territories, then they gradually merged with one another - albeit not completely, because the Karelians who came under Russian rule developed separately. In contrast to the rest of the Finns, the Karelians also assimilated the remnants of the Permians who had also been pushed north by the Russians.

Christianization and Indo-Europeanization

Swedish influence in southern and western Finland, Russian influence in eastern Finland (14th to 18th centuries)

Christianity did not come to the Finns until the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries. A few Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German traders and missionaries had left (archaeological) traces in southern and western Finland as early as the 11th century; Finnish traders came into contact with Christianity at Swedish trading centers. In three crusades, first the “actual Finns”, then the Tavast and finally a part of the Karelians were converted to Catholicism and subjected to Swedish rule. Another part of the Karelians had adopted Orthodox Christianity in the 13th century, and in the 14th century Orthodox Russians began to evangelize from the Valaam Monastery not only in Karelia but also in Lapland. After Swedish-Russian disputes, Finland was divided in the Treaty of Nöteborg in 1323 . At the beginning of the 16th century the power of the Catholic Church was shaken by the Danish-Swedish Union Wars , which also affected Finland . When the Swedes also introduced the Reformation in Finland, Russian monks had already penetrated through Karelia and Lapland to the far north and tried to convert the Sami to the Orthodox faith.

The suppression of the Catholic opposition (secession John III. 1556/63, cudgel war 1596/97, civil war against Sigismund III. 1598/99) and the suppression of the Russian border ( treaty of teusina 1595, treaty of stolbovo 1617) secured the victory of the Evangelical -Lutheran Faith and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland . It was not until 1781 that Catholics in the Swedish part of Finland were guaranteed the freedom to practice their religion again, but from 1799 new Catholic churches were initially only built in the Russian part of Finland. Non-Christian religions remained banned until the end of Swedish rule.

  • Bishop Heinrich († 1157) became the Finnish national saint

  • The Saints Herman and Sergei evangelized by the Valaam Monastery of

  • Mikael Agricola († 1557) introduced the Reformation in Finland

Swedes did not only come to the country with the Crusades, but had settled on the south and west coasts of Finland from the 9th century. Although Finland remained under Swedish rule until 1809, there was no amalgamation of Swedes and Finns - but there was a strong mixture, initially mainly between the Swedish and Finnish nobility. The Finns were gradually "Indo-Europeanized", the gene profile of the Finns today shows a proportion of 80 percent European (especially Scandinavian) genes. Genetically and anthropologically, there are today recognizable differences between the Finns, who have mixed with the Swedes, and the Sami, originally related to the Finns, who lived largely isolated in the north of the country until the 20th century. The Christianization (and the Reformation) also culturally led to the Europeanization of the Finns, whereby in the cities of Western Finland, in addition to the Scandinavian, Western European influences dominated (in addition to Swedes, Danes and Norwegians, also Germans, English, Scots and French), while the more rural East ( Karelia) incorporated elements of Russian and Greek culture.

National feeling and nationalism

Swedish caricature of the destruction of the Swedish cultural heritage by the fennomans

The beginning of the 18th century was also the beginning of the end of Swedish rule in Finland. Charles XII. had taken over with his Great Northern War against Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland and Russia. The Swedish army was destroyed by the Russians at Poltava in 1709 , and in their counter-offensive the Russians also defeated the Finnish troops at Storkyro in 1714 . Finland was devastated, sacked and occupied. 21 years of war ruined the economy and depopulated the country: Sweden and Finland lost 200,000 soldiers alone, and a large part of the civilian population starved to death. Two decades later, a failed war of revenge led to the loss of Karelia and Old Finland . The Finnish-Swedish nobility, fearing for their livelihoods, increasingly opposed an anti-Russian orientation in Swedish politics and popular opinion in Sweden. The Anjala conspiracy tried at the outbreak of a new war in 1788 even, King Gustav III. overthrow and / or detach Finland from Sweden with Russian help.

After all of Finland fell to Russia as a result of another Russian-Swedish war in 1809, the Finnish-Swedish upper class tried to come to terms with the new Russian rule. In fact, the Russian Tsar initially guaranteed the newly established Grand Duchy of Finland the same special autonomous rights that the King of Sweden had once granted to the Grand Duchy of Finland . The connection to the Russian market resulted in the emergence of a Finnish upper middle class, whose efforts to emancipate themselves from the Finnish-Swedish elite indirectly promoted Russian politics. The publication of the national epic Kalevala raised the national feeling and led to the emergence of a national romantic Karelianism . The literary consciousness became a political one. The growing movement of Fennomaniacs (including Finnish-speaking Swedes) split into old Finns and nationalistic young women in view of the Russification policy that began in the mid-19th century . The latter accelerated the language dispute with the Finnish Swedes , which continued even after Finland gained independence from Russia. With independence in 1917, a Finnish nation state was created for the first time. Radical currents of Karelianism and fennomania gave rise to a nationalistic, irredentistic Greater Finland concept at the expense of Russia, which led to Finnish intervention in the Russian civil war and World War II .

Finns outside Finland

Tornedalen (Sweden)

The Finnish minority of the Tornedalen (Tornedalians), named after the region of the same name, live mainly in the province of Norrbotten in Sweden . In contrast to the modern Finnish immigrants called Swedish Finns, the Tornedalen are long-established residents. This group became a small minority in Sweden in the 19th century due to the demarcation between Russia and Sweden. Their language is a form of Finnish that has retained some older dialectal features and is characterized by a large number of Swedish loanwords (see Meänkieli ). At the turn of the century, the Tornedals, as well as the Sami, Roma , Sinti , Jews and Swedish-Finns were recognized as a minority in Sweden and as a protected ethnic group with cultural autonomy. There has been a great deal of assimilation during the 20th century; today the inhabitants are almost without exception bilingual or - especially in the younger generations - only monolingual Swedish. The number of speakers in Meänkieli (Tornedal Finnish) fluctuates between 30,000 and 70,000 people, depending on the counting method (active, passive command of the language, ...).

Kvenen (Norway)

According to a definition by the Swedish researcher Kenneth Hyltenstam, the approximately 10,000 Kvenen (Kvener) in Norway are “all people of the Finnish language and with a Finnish cultural background who immigrated to Norway before 1945, as well as their descendants, provided that the background mentioned is from the relevant persons is deemed relevant ". In the Middle Ages, the Kven settled in the northern coastal stretches of the Gulf of Bothnia and lived from hunting and foraging in the wilderness, traded with the Sami and other surrounding peoples and also practiced agriculture and cattle breeding. Most of them immigrated to northern Norway in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since 1902 they have not been allowed to acquire land in Norway because they were considered a security risk due to their cultural proximity to the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland. Until 1980, their language was not permitted as the language of instruction in primary schools. The ethnic group now has the status of a recognized minority, and Kven has been recognized as a separate language in Norway since 2005. There is controversy over whether to teach dialect or standard Finnish. A ten-times-a-year newspaper publishes articles in both languages ​​as well as Norwegian and Swedish.

Forest fins (Sweden and Norway)

The group of Finnish forest fins who immigrated in the 16th century lives in eastern Norway (especially in Finnskogen ; dt. 'Finnenwald') and in central Sweden . In Norway the forest Finns have the status of a recognized minority , but today they are largely assimilated and speak hardly any Finnish anymore.

Finns in Russia

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Around 67,000 Finns still lived in 1989 as a minority in what was then the Soviet Union , mainly in the Saint Petersburg area and in the Republic of Karelia (2.3% of the population there). 34.5% still spoke Finnish .

The Finns have been settled in Karelia for almost 2000 years , where they lived under Swedish and Russian rule since the Middle Ages. The southern West Karelia and Eastern Salla were 1812-1940, Pechenga from 1920 to 1944/47 part of Finland.

The Finns around Saint Petersburg are descendants of immigrants who settled in these areas from 1618 until the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, when Ingermanland was a Swedish province. The Protestant Finns ( Ingermanländer , own name: Inkeriläinen ) made up the majority of the population there at the end of this period.

After the Russian reconquest, the Finns gradually became a minority again. However, due to their own denomination with Finnish as the language in worship and since the 19th century with their own schools and newspapers, their cultural identity was not threatened. After the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Lutheran Church declared its independence. In the 1930s, severe repression began. The church was smashed and the schools closed. 50,000 Soviet Finns were deported or forcibly resettled before the Second World War . Further extensive deportations followed after the war. Ingerman countries who had fled to Finland had to be extradited to the Soviet Union. After there were hardly any Finns left in the old settlement area, some were allowed to return after 1956. The largest group, however, settled in what is now the Republic of Karelia , where the Finnish language was allowed to be cultivated.

By 2002, around 30,000 Russian Finns had immigrated to Finland. The Lutheran Church, which emerged again at the end of the 1980s, has gained considerable influence and is now successfully missioning among Russians .

It happens that the term Ingrier (which actually stands for the Ischoren ) is sometimes used for the Finns in Ingermanland .

Of Finnish descent in the USA

John Morton , a descendant of the first Finnish colonists who came with the Swedes, became one of the founding fathers of the United States

As early as the middle of the 17th century, Sweden briefly founded colonies in North America ( New Sweden ), most of the few colonists are said to have been Finns. However, since the colonies were quickly lost again, only around 20,000 Swedes (and Finns) lived in the USA in 1790.

Today's Americans of Finnish descent are primarily the descendants of emigrants from the 19th and 20th centuries, although emigration from Finland decreased from 1929 onwards. However, there is no general information about how many Swedes , Woods and Tornedals were among the 1.395 million Swedes and 755,000 Norwegians who immigrated to the United States from 1820 to 1993, nor how many of the 350,000 Finnish immigrants actually Finland-Swedes or Sami were. This is why the figures for people of Finnish origin in the USA fluctuate: at the end of the 19th century it was said to have been 150,000, at the end of the 20th century between 300,000 and 660,000 - and the trend is downward. Most of the descendants of Finnish immigrants are in the US state of Michigan - but almost as many in the state of Minnesota , where most of the Swedish and Norwegian-born Americans live.


literature

  • Lars Ivar Hansen and Bjørnar Olsen: Samens Historie fram til 1750 . Oslo 2004.
  • Rudolf A. Mark : The peoples of the former Soviet Union , publishing house for social sciences, 1992, ISBN 3-531-12075-1 .
  • Manfred Scheuch: Atlas on contemporary history. Europe in the 20th century. Bechtermünz Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0403-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoting from the website of the Swedish People's Party : The Swedish speaking Finns generally don't label themselves as an ethnic minority. With regards to identity, the Swedish speaking element is usually considered as an integral part of Finnish culture, although expressed in another language than Finnish. online ( memento of July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), access date May 17, 2008.
  2. ↑ Cf. Kuka on ulkomaalainen? Finnish Statistical Office, access date May 17, 2008.
  3. ^ The Population of Finland in 2007 Finnish Statistics Office, accessed May 17, 2008.
  4. ↑ Eva berie: Fischer World Almanac 2015. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014 S. 155th
  5. ↑ Heike Pfersdorff: Harenberg Aktuell 2008. Brockhaus, Mannheim 2007, p. 574.
  6. ^ Stephan Burgdorff, Hauke ​​Janssen: Jahrbuch 2005. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2004, p. 268.
  7. ↑ CIA World Factbook: Finland , accessed May 17, 2008.
  8. ^ Tacitus : Germania. Reclam, Stuttgart 2006, p. 57f.
  9. ↑ sagazorm.net: Finnish Kings - Sumble
  10. ^ Richard M. Meyer : Old Germanic history of religion. Severus Verlag, Hamburg 2013, p. 211.
  11. ↑ Jurij Kusmenko : Representation of the seeds in the Old West Scandinavian literature. Berlin 2011, p. 2 (PDF).
  12. ↑ Jurij Kusmenko : Notes in Scandinavian mythology. Berlin 2011, pp. 30-33 (PDF).
  13. ^ Wilhelm Wägner : Our prehistory , Volume 1 (Germanic legends of the gods). Neufeld and Henius Verlag, Berlin 1922, pp. 20f.
  14. ↑ a b Willi Stegner (Ed.): Pocket Atlas Völker und Sprachen. Klett-Perthes, Gotha / Stuttgart 2006, pp. 39, 41.
  15. ^ A b c Walter Markov , Alfred Anderle , Ernst Werner , Herbert Wurche: Kleine Enzyklopädie Weltgeschichte , Volume 1. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1979, p. 314ff.
  16. ^ A b Alfred Hackman: The Older Iron Age in Finland. Unikum, Barsinghausen 2013, pp. 324-330.
  17. ↑ a b c Detlev Wahl: Lexicon of the peoples of Europe and the Caucasus. Meridian-Verlag, Rostock 1999, p. 72ff.
  18. ↑ a b c d e Leo Mechelin (Ed.): Finland in the 19th century. Edlunds, Helsingfors 1899, pp. 49-59.
  19. ↑ a b Harald Haarmann : Small Lexicon of the Peoples: from Aborigines to Zapotecs. ( Google books from p. 127. ). Beck, Munich 2004.
  20. ^ Simo Heininen, Markku Heikkilä: Church history of Finland. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 12ff.
  21. ^ Simo Heininen, Markku Heikkilä: Church history of Finland. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2002, p. 52ff.
  22. ↑ The other large Finno-Ugric people, the Hungarians, had a similar experience: Their gene pool has a share of 60 percent rather “typically Slavic” R1a genes .
  23. ↑ Svante Pääbo : Genes, Language and the Settlement of the European North - On the origin of populations from a molecular genetic point of view. In: How do new qualities arise in complex systems? 50 years of the Max Planck Society. Pp. 49-56. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 200
  24. ^ Walter Markov , Alfred Anderle, Ernst Werner , Herbert Wurche: Small Enzyklopädie Weltgeschichte , Volume 1. Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1979, p. 312.
  25. ↑ Kenneth Hyltenstam, Kvenskans status. Report för Kommunal- og regionaldepartementet och Kultur- og kirkedepartementet i Norge (PDF; 955 kB) Stockholm 2003, p. 2.
  26. ↑ Hansen, p. 163.
  27. ↑ So Kehl: A memorial for the cook. In: Neue Türchen Zeitung, international edition, April 29, 2015, p. 25.
  28. ^ Ploetz Große Illustrierte Weltgeschichte, Volume 6. Ploetz, Freiburg / Würzburg 1984, p. 239.
  29. ↑ Otto Johnson: Information please! Almanac, Atlas and Yearbook 1995. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston / New York 1995, p. 832.
  30. ^ Harm G. Schröter: History of Scandinavia. CH Beck, Munich 2007, p. 61.
  31. ^ William Barnes Steveni ( Unknown Sweden. P. 164. London / Southampton 1925) thought a large part of the Swedish emigrants were Finns.
  32. ↑ Leo Mechelin (Ed.): Finland in the 19th century. Edlunds, Helsingfors 1899, p. 67.
  33. ↑ JW Bromlej: народы мира - историко-этнографический справочник (peoples of the world - historical-ethnographic words / manual). Moscow 1988, p. 481.
  34. ^ Ancestry 2000 By Angela Brittingham and G. Patricia de la Cruz (PDF)
  35. ^ American Community Survey: People Reporting Ancestry 2011