The ancient Finns and their culture, once shrouded in mystery, are now the subject of a scholastic revival movement. The Finn people and their culture have endured ethnographic blunderings, improper ethnic grouping and an overall cultural identity crisis. The first such identity crisis came with the interpretations of the Icelandic sagas, which mistakenly labeled the Finn people as the Lapps. The Finn and the Lapp cultures, which at various periods have occupied the same spatial areas, are two distinctly different cultures. The Finn culture at various times has also been associated with the Swedes, Scandinavians and even Russian cultures.
While these assumptions were far from accurate, a German anthropologist who attempted to categorize all of the Earth's human inhabitants into five neat categories perpetrated the worst ethnic miscalculation. Johann Blumenbach in De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, published in 1775, lumped the Finns in with the Mongols based on skin color. Scholars accepted this random classification until anthropologists uncovered the true origins of the Finn culture.
The first people to inhabit the area of present-day Finland were indeed the Lapps, but about two thousand years ago a group of nomads wandered into Lapp-occupied territory. These people were the Finno-Ugrians, who are thought to have originated from an area between the Ural Mountains and the Volga River. In a series of movements, these Finno-Ugrian tribes settled in central and northeastern Europe. Estonia became the settling spot of a few tribes, with Hungary becoming the home of other tribes. Two other tribes, identified as the Tavasts and the “Proper Finns,” crossed the Baltic Sea and settled in present-day central Finland. Yet another tribe, the Karelians of the Lake Ladoga region settled in the area of present-day St. Petersburg in Russia.
Finn culture has been difficult to define, because of the scant physical evidence, but the most successful attempts at determining the genesis of Finn culture originate in determining linguistic differences. Finno-Ugrian linguistics is separated from most of the rest of Europe in that the Finn language is not a member of the Indo-European language family. The best linguistic tool for disseminating Finn linguistics is the examination of Finn ethnonyms. Ethnonyms deviate from culture to culture when place names and proper nouns are no longer sufficient to describe topographical areas and their relation to a culture. Researchers can retrace the separation of ethnonyms to ascertain the distinguishing features of cultures and when such cultures deviated from a previous linguistic-cultural system.
In recent years, with the country of Finland successfully entering the Information Age, Finn culture has experienced a rebirth. Modern Finnish colleges and universities have devoted entire academic departments to the understanding and exploration of the ancient Finn language. With each successive attempt to understand the linguistic features of the Finn language, a better understanding of the overall culture will most likely follow.
Eloise Engle, The Finns in America, Lerner Publications Company: Minneapolis, pp. 8.
Riho Grunthal, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura, http://www.helsinki.fi/jarj/sus/julkaisut/ct/ct51grunthal.html, Julkaisut Publications: Helsinki, Finland, web page.
Written by Gary Kaunonen, 2002