Thoughts about the past and the present

 Policy warning. My readers may have noticed that I don't like the enthusiasm with which Finnish genetic research is looking for Finns' ethnic roots in Russia. Unlike language, which has only one root, the genetic heritage is multi-rooted. Genetically, the inhabitants of Finland are a mixture of the southern (Estonia) and eastern (Karelia, Vepsä) Baltic Finno-Ugrians, Scandinavians of different time periods, Sami and increasingly other ethnic groups. These groups, except for the last 30 years of immigration, have been intermingling for hundreds of years. This is forgotten, as was also the case in the Estonian study, which I discussed in my previous post. Geneticists in Finland and Estonia are ideologically very single-minded in their desire to find a multidisciplinary solution by simplifying things. Of course, it is necessary to find out where our language comes from, and linguistics studies that.

Things get more complicated when the Russian view of Finns' roots is added to the previous one. I am unusually well aware that, according to the Russian point of view, the Finno-Ugric peoples living in Russia are called Finns, and Finns as one of them. In reality, the linguistic and ancient genetic roots of the Baltic Finns formed a reasonably homogenous entity that differed from other Finno-Ugric people. Baltic Finnic speakers diverged from other Finno-Ugric language speakers already 1500 years before the Russia as a state was created and formed their own genetic pool.  The political problems between Russia and the West will last, and the ideology of Finnish researchers about the origin of Finns in Russia may weaken the status of the Finno-Ugric people of Russia in their own homeland. We should see the difference between the past and the present, we should not create historical illusions that create problems in the development of communities.

Kivisild 2021

 The study "Patterns of Genetic connectedness between modern and medieval Estonian genomes reveal the Origins of a major ancestry component of the Finnish population", Toomas Kivisild 2021, activates me to examine Estonia's historical connections with Finland. I thought the research was good, but there are still a few exceptions. First of all, the Finnish sample group did not take into account the prehistoric population components of Finns. The Finns by no means moved here from Estonia as a single population. Secondly, and partly due to the previous shortcoming, the study did not comprehensively deal with the uniparental y-heritage. Together, these shortcomings make it difficult to evaluate the results.  Observing the Y-heritage and its datings would have revealed shortcomings in the sample selection.

Finns in Estonia

At the beginning of Swedish rule in 1620, less than 100,000 people lived in Estonia, the small population was due to several wars. The population of Finland was 450,000 in 1650.  The situation in Estonia was difficult and there was a lot immigration from many directions, which had a great effect on the Estonian population.  

In order to get labor faster, the landlords brought new people to the villages, usually exempting the immigrants from all taxes for three years. In this way, peasants moved from less fertile areas to more profitable areas. At that time, about a third of Estonian peasants moved to new settlements. Instead of a destroyed home, they looked for a new one or stayed there, choosing more favorable agricultural lands and also more humane landlords. The conditions for movement were also free, because in some places there was not even a landlord, some of them had moved to a new mansion and did not know the conditions there.

In the second quarter of the 18th century, a large number of representatives of other nations also arrived in Estonia, who make up up to 17% of the peasants of southern Estonia. Among the foreigners, most Russian peasants, craftsmen, merchants and fishermen settled in eastern Estonia.

A large part of the "resettlement" of Estonia was carried out by Finns, who were especially numerous in Virus and Harjumaa, where they were 20% and 12% of the population, concentrated in separate villages. There were also many Finns around Põltsamaa and Tartu. They were partly settled by the state authorities of the Estonian region, partly they left Finland for military service. At first, the Swedish kings forbade the enslavement of Finnish and Swedish peasants who had moved to Estonia, because all forms of slavery were prohibited in Sweden's territory. Over time, this attitude diminished, and the newcomers also had to bear the heavy responsibility of the estate. There were also many Finnish priests in Estonia, because after the expulsion of the Poles, Lutheranism became the main religion. 

The most famous of them was Johann Forselius, whose son was Bengt Gottfried Forselius, who has also been mentioned as the father of the Estonian written language. Contrary to what the Estonian historiography claims, the Forselius family was not Swedish, but Johann was a Finnish-born priest and teacher from the Helsinki municipality. Bengt Forselius died on his way back from Stockholm, where he visited the Swedish king or his representatives. It has been suspected that the Estonian Germans drowned Forselius because they were afraid of civilizing the Estonians, which was feared to lead to the rise of nationalism. Finnish churchmen were also in Latvia, where the Finnish garrison, the Ostrobothnia Regiment, was responsible for the country's defense against the Poles and Lithuanians. A Finnish priest who was hanged in Riga because of his bad habits has remained in the history books of Riga. My ancestors also served in that garrison.

The third large group of newcomers were Latvians, who settled in large numbers, especially around Valga.

Datings

The question of when the Finnish and Estonian languages separated to different parts of the Gulf of Finland has different answers depending on the source, but it is most commonly assumed to have happened between 300-500 AD. On the basis of archaeological finds, this timing can be considered justified, because around 500 AD in Finland, new settlement centers were created in southwestern Finland and Tavastia to the current settlement areas. Later, Tavastia in particular is mentioned in both Swedish and Russian sources as a warlike people, but only the Swedes admit that they suffered losses on military expeditions to Tavastia.

Walter Lang / Homo Fennicus is my recommedation for more information about the prehistory of the Baltic Finnic migrations and languages.