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Apr 8, 2024 · Finnish language, member of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family, spoken in Finland. Finnish did not achieve official status until 1863, and it, as well as Swedish, were designated the national languages of Finland in 1919. Learn more about the history and phonology of Finnish.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Finnish ( endonym: suomi [ˈsuo̯mi] ⓘ or suomen kieli [ˈsuo̯meŋ ˈkie̯li]) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish ).
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Finnic peoples, descendants of a collection of tribal peoples speaking closely related languages of the Finno-Ugric family who migrated to the area of the eastern Baltic, Finland, and Karelia before ad 400—probably between 100 bc and ad 100, though some authorities place the migration many centuries earlier. The major modern representatives ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Overview
- Earliest peoples
- Competition for trade and converts
- Finland under Swedish rule
- Union with Sweden
- The 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries in Finland
- The 18th century
- Autonomous grand duchy of Finland
- The era of bureaucracy
- Reforms of the Russian period
history of Finland, a survey of important events and people in the history of Finland from the time of its settlement. One of the world’s most northern and geographically remote countries, Finland forms a symbolic northern border between western and eastern Europe: dense wilderness and Russia to the east, the Gulf of Bothnia and Sweden to the west....
The first people arrived in Finland about 9,000 years ago. They probably represented several groups and tribes, including the ancestors of the present Sami. Lured by the plenitude of game, particularly fur-bearing animals and fish, they followed the melting ice northward. The first people perhaps came to hunt only for the summer, but gradually more and more of them stayed over the winter. Apparently, berries played a significant role in their diet.
Another group probably arrived some 3,000 years later from the southeast. They possibly spoke a Finno-Ugric language and may have been related to the ancestors of the present Finns, if they were not actually of the same group. Other peoples—including the ancestors of the Tavastians—followed from the southwest and central Europe, eventually adopting the Finno-Ugric tongue.
During the 1st millennium bce several more groups arrived, among them the ancestors of the present Finns. The nomadic Sami, who had been scattered over the greater part of Finland, withdrew to the north. Most other groups intermarried and assimilated with the newcomers, and settlement spread across the south of Finland. The population was still extremely sparse, but three loose unities seem to have crystallized: the Finns proper, the Tavastians, and the Karelians. These each had their own chiefs, and they waged war on one another.
Even before the beginning of the Viking Age (8th–11th century ce), Swedes had settled on the southwestern coast. During the Viking Age, Finland lay along the northern boundary of the trade routes to Russia, and the inhabitants of the area served as suppliers of furs. The Finns apparently did not take part in the Viking expeditions. The end of the Viking Age was a time of unrest in Finland, and Swedish and Danish raids were made on the area, where Russians and Germans also traded.
From the 12th century Finland was a battleground between Russia and Sweden. The economic rivalry of the powers in the Baltic was turned into a religious rivalry, and the Swedish expeditions took on the character of crusades. Finland is mentioned together with Estonia in a list of Swedish provinces drawn up for the pope in 1120, apparently as a Swedish missionary area. The first crusade, according to tradition, was undertaken about 1157 by King Erik, who was accompanied by an English bishop named Henry. Henry remained in Finland to organize the affairs of the church and was murdered by a Finnish yeoman; by the end of the 12th century, he was revered as a saint, and he later became Finland’s patron. In a papal bull (c. 1172), the Swedes were advised to force the Finns into submission by permanently manning the Finnish fortresses in order to protect the Christianization effort from attacks from the east.
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By the end of the 12th century, competition for influence in the Gulf of Finland had intensified: German traders had regular contacts with Novgorod via Gotland, and Denmark tried to establish bases on the gulf. The Danes reportedly invaded Finland in 1191 and again in 1202; in 1209 the pope authorized the archbishop of Lund to appoint a minister stationed in Finland. The Swedish king counterattacked, and in 1216 he received confirmation from the pope of his title to the lands won by himself and his predecessors from the Finns, whom they regarded as heathens. He was also authorized to establish a seat for one or two bishops in the Finnish missionary territory. In eastern Finland the Russian church attempted to win converts, and in 1227 Duke Jaroslav undertook a program of forced baptisms, designed to tie Karelia closer to Novgorod. In response the pope placed Finland under apostolic protection and invoked a commercial blockade against Russia (1229). A large force, led by Birger, a Swedish jarl (a noble ranking immediately below the king), and including Swedes, Finns, and crusaders from various countries, was defeated in 1240 by a duke of Novgorod, and the advance of Western Christendom into Russia was halted, while the religious division of Finland was sealed, with the Karelians in the Eastern sphere. The bishop of Finland, Thomas, resigned in 1245, and the mission territory was left without leadership until 1249, when the Dominicans founded a monastery in Turku.
Birger Jarl decided that a full effort was necessary to bring Finland into the Swedish sphere; in 1249 he led an expedition to Tavastia (now Häme), an already Christianized area. Birger built a fortress in Tavastia and some fortifications along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland, where Swedish settlement on a mass scale began. Swedes also moved to the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. In 1293 Torgils Knutsson launched an expedition in an attempt to conquer all of Karelia and built a fortress in Viipuri. The war lasted until 1323, when the Treaty of Pähkinäsaari (Nöteborg; now Petrokrepost) drew the boundary between the Russian and Swedish spheres of influence in a vague line from the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland through the middle of Karelia northwest to the Gulf of Bothnia, and the crusades were ended, with Finland a part of the Swedish realm.
The Swedes began to administer Finland in accordance with Swedish traditions. Castles were built and taxes were collected, mainly in furs and, later, in grain, butter, and money. During the early Middle Ages, Finland was often given to members of the royal family as a duchy. Two new estates, the clergy and the nobility, evolved, with the nobility increased by transplantation from Sweden and the clergy containing a large native element. The first native bishop was appointed in 1291.
In 1362 King Haakon of Sweden established the right of the Finns to participate in royal elections and the equal status of Finland with the other parts of the kingdom. Several years later Haakon was overthrown and Albert of Mecklenburg was crowned. Albert was unpopular with the Finns, and by 1374 a Swedish nobleman, Bo Jonsson Grip, had gained titl...
Under Swedish sovereignty the Finnish tribes gradually developed a sense of unity, which was encouraged by the bishops of Turku. Study in universities brought Finnish scholars into direct touch with the cultural centres of Europe, and Mikael Agricola (c. 1510–57), the creator of the Finnish literary language, brought the Lutheran faith from Germany. As part of medieval Sweden, Finland was drawn into the many wars and domestic battles of the Swedish nobility. In 1581 King John III raised Finland to the level of a grand duchy to irritate his Russian rival, Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Dispute over the Swedish crown, combined with quarrels over social conditions, foreign policy, and religion (Roman Catholicism versus Lutheranism), led to the last peasant revolt in Europe, the so-called Club War, in 1596–97. The hopes of the Finnish peasants were crushed, and, even when Charles IX, whom the peasants had supported, became king (1604–11), the social conditions did not improve. In the course of the administrative reforms of Gustav Adolphus (Gustav II Adolf, 1611–32), Finland became an integral part of the kingdom, and the educated classes thereafter came increasingly to speak Swedish.
On its eastern frontier Finland was harassed by constant warfare, and the danger became more serious when Novgorod, at the end of the medieval period, was succeeded by a more powerful neighbour, the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1595, however, by the Peace of Täysinä, the existing de facto boundary, up to the Arctic Ocean, was granted official recognition by the Russians. By the Peace of Stolbovo (Stolbova; 1617), Russia ceded Ingermanland and part of Karelia to the kingdom of Sweden-Finland. The population of the ceded territories was of the Greek Orthodox faith, and when the Swedish government began forceful conversion to Lutheranism many fled to Russia and were replaced by Lutheran Finns. After Stolbovo, Sweden found new outlets for expansion in the south and west and developed into one of the leading powers of Europe. Though Finnish conscripts played their part in making Sweden a great power, the role of Finland in the kingdom steadily decreased in importance.
In Charles XII’s reign, Sweden lost its position as a great power. During the Second Northern War, Russians occupied Finland for eight years (1713–21), and, under the Peace of Uusikaupunki (Nystad) in 1721, Sweden had to cede the southeastern part of Finland with Viipuri as well as the Baltic provinces. Sweden’s capacity to defend Finland had weakened, and the years of hostile occupation had given the Finns a permanent feeling of insecurity.
In the course of the next Russo-Swedish War (1741–43), the Russian empress Elizabeth declared to the Finnish people her intention of making Finland a separate state under Russian suzerainty, but she failed to follow up the idea and at the peace settlement of Turku in 1743 contented herself with annexing a piece of Finland. Meanwhile, however, her original idea had found favour with some Finns. During the next bout of hostilities (1788–90), a number of Finnish officers involved themselves in the activities of Göran Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish colonel who had fled to Russia and who wanted to detach Finland from Sweden; this movement won little general support, however.
As a part of the Swedish monarchy, Finland had been accorded practically no institutions of its own, but from the middle of the 18th century the majority of officials and intellectuals were of Finnish origin. In those circles there was a growing feeling that Finland had to bear the cost of Swedish extravagances in foreign policy. The feeling was no...
The political framework of Finland under Russia was laid down by the Porvoo (Borgå) Diet in 1809. Finland was still formally a part of Sweden until the peace treaty of Hamina (Fredrikshamn) later that year, but most of the Finnish leaders had already grown tired of Swedish control and wanted to acquire as much self-government as possible under Russian protection. In Porvoo, Finland as a whole was for the first time established as a united political entity—a nation.
In recognition of Finnish autonomy, Alexander I promised to respect the religion and fundamental laws of Finland, as well as the privileges and rights of the inhabitants (that is to say, the Swedish constitution of 1772 as amended in 1789, by which the regent alone had the executive power while the consent of the Diet was required for legislation and the imposition of new taxes). The grand duke (the emperor) was not obliged to convene the Diet at regular intervals, and as a result it did not meet until 1863. From 1809 to 1863 Finland was ruled by a bureaucracy chosen by the Russian emperor, who was represented in Finland by a governor-general. Some holders of this office were Finns in the early period of the Russian regime. The highest administrative organ during the period was the Senate, which consisted of a judicial department and an economic department. The former was the country’s supreme court, while the latter became a sort of ministry. A ministerial state secretary in St. Petersburg represented Finnish affairs to the emperor.
For most Finns the “era of bureaucracy” was a time of growing prosperity, favourable economic conditions, and no warfare except during the Crimean War (in Finland, the War of Åland). At that time an Anglo-French fleet attacked the Åland Islands, the fortress of Viapori in Helsinki, and some coastal towns on the Gulf of Bothnia. On its separation from Sweden in accordance with the Treaty of Hamina, Finland had a population of more than 900,000. As elsewhere in the Nordic countries, population growth was rapid, and by 1908 the figure had exceeded 2,000,000. Most of the population lived off the land. Manufacture of wooden articles, export of timber, shipbuilding, and merchant shipping were practiced in the small coastal towns.
Despite the strongly authoritarian and bureaucratic form of government, a number of important reforms were implemented. In 1812 the emperor was induced to restore those areas of Finnish territory that Sweden had ceded to Russia by the treaties of Uusikaupunki (1721) and Turku (1743). Furthermore, in 1812 Helsinki was chosen as the capital, and the monumental buildings in its centre stem from this period. But the vast rural population and purely agrarian structure prevented the spread of liberal and national ideas to any great extent during the first part of the 19th century.
Finnish is a complex, self-morphing language. It has been ranked as a highly difficult language for native speakers of English by the U.S. Department of State. The difficulty is due not only to the grammatical structure of the language, but also pronunciation and intonation as compared to English.
- c. 5 million (2011)
Swedish is the main language of 5.2% of the population in 2022 (92.4% in the Åland autonomous province), down from 14% at the beginning of the 20th century. In 2012, 44% of Finnish citizens with another registered primary language than Swedish could hold a conversation in this language.
Feb 11, 2020 · The history of the Finnish language goes back more than three thousand years, and offers a lot of interesting insights into the human condition and world history along the way. Ancient Finnish There is a theoretical language called Sami that existed as far back as 1500 BCE.
