Talk:Finns

% of Blondes

Many sources like antropologic books say that Finland and Finns haven't most % of blondes in the world. Look here: % of people with light hair (light blond, dark blond and light brown, without red) Fischer Scale 9 - 26:

Vepses - 61% Estonians - 56% Poles - 55% Northern Bielorussians - 53% Finns - 51.5% Latvians - 50% Norwegians - 50% Lithuanians - 47.5% Northern Russians - 47.5% Southern Russians - 30%

From:

1. Coon, Carleton, The Races of Europe, Chapter IX, The North.

2. Bunak, Viktor Valrievich, Origins and Ethnic History of the Russian People, various charts.

3. Dyachenko, V. D, Anthropological Composition of the Ukrainian People, various charts.

You can find it also http://dodona.proboards34.com/index.cgi?board=informative&action=print&thread=11099 and on many www in internet.

I know that we can find map of LIGHT hair colour in the internet and half of Finland are marked on the highest %, but this is map od LIGHT colour (light blond, light blond and LIGHT BROWN). So, look to the books. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.19.192.165 (talk) 11:11, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Finns have no way the highest percentual of blondes in the world and the article that is used to sustain this "thesis" is highly dubious; a risearch that shows that blondes will disappear within 200 years. At least they didn't say within 50 years as already said in articles of the same dubious credibility about the supposed disappearability of blondes in the future. It is impossible to foresee the mutation of population genes so it is bullshit. Not credible the article ---> not credible every single part of it especially when it says, without specifying from what source, that finns woul be the blondest nation. Denmark is way more blond than southern Finland that is the blondest part of Finland and i can post tons of photos of dark finns starting from "Turklike" Yari Litmanen to say one from the "center" of Finland. So I modified the article and put at least the Danes and the Swedes "blonder" than Finns —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.6.33.233 (talk) 21:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

This article does not need any dubious old reseaches about the percentage of blonds in Europe.

"i can post tons of photos of dark finns" -87.6.33.233

Really, is that so? I could also post tons of pictures of dark Swedes and Danes. Is that really your line of argument? deliriumus (talk) 16:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Bottom line is that Finnish women are HOT. I hope Finns don't sully their unique genes, we need more hot Finnish girls in the future, not less. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.13.130.104 (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

That list is somekind of slavian propaganda. It completely rules out irish, scottish and norwegian by counting out the light redheads. It also lists the grey haired slavians as blondes, witch they are not. So does it list light brown as blondes and that is not truth completely truth either, there is some light browns that have blonde in them (like my mixed finnish hair, witch started out as blonde) and then theres some that dont have (like most south europeans, who have just ligher unicoloured version of brown). I can only guess that this study has been made to identify slavians with sarmatians and finnish. If a real, honest study was to be made, you would find out that the high % of blondes in finland are because of lack of sun in northern part of the globe and migration from svea tribe from svealand, sweden. The high % amount of light haired people in finland, or higher than in sweden, is most likey because finnish came to north earlier. Even more earlier than the swedish gota tribe, witch settled below svea tribe. And who are, dark haired. And that contributes a lot to avarage hair colour of swedish. In finland, the new genes came moustly from finnish migration from karelia 1938-1946, and therefore had the light grayish slavian hair colour on them. By that, its contributing to the % amount of light haired finnish. ... In reality, avarage finnish hair colour is light brown ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.155.176.155 (talk) 01:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Could we have a modern photo?

having a stone age, shite quality pic is useless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.217.59.87 (talk) 12:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. One old picture of a Finnish family does not represent the Finns. It also makes the article look like an old anthropology article. deliriumus (talk) 15:23, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Swedish Finns

I removed the pictures of Swedish Finns since they have their own article. J.K Nakkila (talk) 17:12, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. The Swedish-speaking Finns are a subcategory of Finns. Thus, they belong to this article, also. --MPorciusCato (talk) 20:10, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

And I also like to note that this article includes the Swedish-speaking Finns, so they clearly fall under the topic of this article. --MPorciusCato (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

That is highly debatable, this article does not tell about Finns ass citizens of Finland but as ethnic group. In fact, this article just shortly mentions them and says "Finland-Swedish minority have been seen to fulfill the major criteria for a separate ethnic group: self-identification, language, social structure, and ancestry." J.K Nakkila (talk) 12:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

The ethnic group concept is not as monolithic as you think. It is quite possible for a person to belong to several ethnic groups. Swedish-speaking Finns are an ethnic group, some think, but the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns also identify as Finns. The word "Finn" does not mean, in the English language "a speaker of Finnish language". Neither does word "suomalainen" mean that in the Finnish language. --MPorciusCato (talk) 18:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

In addition, if you read the discussion above, you see that the current scope of the article has been reached after extensive discussion, where your view was in a clear minority. --MPorciusCato (talk) 18:41, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

"majority of Swedish-speaking Finns also identify as Finns." this is bullshit. Do you have sources that say that those persons I deleted self identified as Finns? If not, they should be removed. J.K Nakkila (talk) 19:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Your demand is rather odd. Do you seriously doubt, for example, that a Finnish president would not have self-identified as a Finn? Please note that in current Swedish, Finn is translated as finländare. And as a proof for the self-identification of the majority: [1]--MPorciusCato (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see your point, why couldn't Finnish president self identify himself as Swedish Finn rather than Finn? The term finländare is used to describe all inhabitants of Finland, they use the term Finne to describe those who speak Finnish language [2]. Also, your source does not say anything about ethnic self identification of Swedish speakers. J.K Nakkila (talk) 18:59, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there is a difference between "finländare" and "finne". Finland-Swedes are "finländare" but not "finnar". I can't understand why it's so dangerous to say that some "finländare" are Swedes. It reminds me of the way nationalist Turks claim the Kurds are not a separate ethnic group but mountain Turks. Sounds very much like the claim that Finland-Swedes "are a subcategory of Finns".

It's also interesting to see that Tornedalians are mentioned in this article. If the article is about ethnic Finns, which I thought, it's correct but not if it's about Finnish citizens. Närking (talk) 19:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

As you see, Table 4.3 in the reference I gave above, gives the answer to the self-identification question:

Att vara finlandssvensk betyder för dig

1. att höra till en egen kultur som skiljer sig från den finska

2. både att höra till en egen kultur, men också att vara en finländare bland alla andra

82 % of the sample chose the latter one. This shows that the overwhelming majority of Swedish-speaking Finns consider that they belong to both groups: "finlandssvenskar" and "finländare". And in English, finländare means "Finn". Word finne translates as "Finnish-speaker". This has already been discussed several times and a consensus has been formed. --MPorciusCato (talk) 12:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Finland-Swedes are "finländare" (citizens of Finland), but not "finnar". Närking (talk) 21:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Again, this is article about Finns as ehtnic group, not as citizens of Finland. Culture and ethnicity aren't same things, any tatar, russian, estonian or any other immigrant could say the same thing, but they aren't same ethnic group. The Table which you referred clearly talks about cultural group, not ethnicity. Also you have still failed to provide sources to whether or not those individuals which I removed identified them selfs as Finns (as ethnic group). J.K Nakkila (talk) 15:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Please read the discussion at the "Move request". There, we have discussed in detail the concept of "Finns as an ethnic group". Swedish-speaking Finns are part of that ethnic group, unlike Sami or Tatars. Please do not mix ethnicity with language. --MPorciusCato (talk) 18:57, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

"Finland-Swedish minority have been seen to fulfill the major criteria for a separate ethnic group: self-identification, language, social structure, and ancestry". This reads in the article. J.K Nakkila (talk) 09:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

+ CIA Factbook lists Swedes as seperate ethnic group. J.K Nakkila (talk) 12:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep. I do not contest that Swedish-speaking Finns form an ethnic group. That is readily seen from the self-identification question I gave. However, the same ethnic group identifies as a part of larger Finnish ethnicity. There is no contradiction here. --MPorciusCato (talk) 15:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no "larger Finnish ethnicity". You don't have any sources to back your claim up. J.K Nakkila (talk) 17:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This same debate over population groups in Finland has been going on in Wikipedia since its foundation. It is remarkable how poorly the discussion here seems to reflect the actual situation in Finland as understood by the majority of people across linguistic groups. Obviously, there are minority ideas concerning the relationships between Finland's constituent populations (Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers as "nation-builders" but more widely also Sami speakers, recognised national minorities, religious groups etc. etc. could be added). How the country and its eveyday life deal with this issue clearly assumes a LINGUISTIC rather than ETHNIC subgrouping between Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers. This can be seen by the adoption of the slogan "one people, two languages" not only by the Finnish speakers but also by i.e. representatives of the Swedish speakers (like the Swedish People's party in its last celebration of the Swedish day or their language manifestation [3]). This mainstream interpretation of the situation is obvious on practically every level of today's Finnish society, on the streets, in politics, educational institutions, in the minds of the majority of the people, in terms of ideological defining of the nation (whether nations-states are justified or not is another issue), in terms of interpreting history (with the period of "national awakening"), how the educational system deals with these issues, in essence how Finland (legislation) and its people (every day life) come in terms with this issue, is clearly based on LINGUISTIC and not ETHNIC sub groups. It is unfortunate that the Wikipedia articles concerning this issue get repeatedly hijacked by people outside of the mainstream with too much time in their hands. Clarifer (talk) 14:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

This has gone too far. There is not only too much about "swedish speaking finnish" under every gategory and the total lack of other finnish minorities in those. But there is also swedish terms and translations given as they where finnish when talking about "finnish speaking finnish". This whole article is now something that swedish would be telling to brazilian in english. These arent facts anymore, they are oppinions... 1. There is no finnish tribe named "ostrobottians". That is swedish name for finnish place named "Pohjanmaa" and its translation to english is "Northernland". There is no seperate dialects there like the article says, theres just variations of one dialect and then swedish. Finnish actually call members of that tribe "pohjalainen" witch translates to "northener" and means "northern finnish". 2. Theres no finnish tribe named "tavastians", that is also swedish name for "hämäläiset". Same with the placename "tavast" and Häme". Most of the people living there dont speak swedish and they dont know what "tavast" means. If you ask their tribe name they tell you "hämäläinen" or "pirkkalainen". Yeat, theres no mentions about "Pirkka" in the article, alltought the word is swedish origin, it is far more common than tavast will ever be. 3 The whole subdivisions thing looks like something that racial extremist from sweden has put up... - "Forest Finns (Metsäsuomalaiset) of Sweden"... This is degenerating term norwegian king used. Those would be from finnish tribe "savolaiset" witch is correctly translated and explained in the linked document. - "Finnish immigrants to Sweden (ruotsinsuomalaiset)" ... That would be "Swedens Finnish" in english. No reason to degenerate them with "immigrant", just as finnish dont degenerate finlands swedish. - The whole text in the bottom is just down right bullshit. Finnish identify with their tribes in everyday life. And the charesteristics do show strongly. Aparently the guy who wrote it isnt finnish. As far as witching dialects and city dialects, that what was described happens in two cities in finland: helsinki and espoo. The rest of the finland speaks their own dialect quite freely. There hasnt been any "revitalixing", it has allways been like this and continues as such. The only reason why savolainen changes his dialect to formal finnish in helsinki is that the people in helsinki understand. He will change back to savo dialect when he talks with someone else. Aparently the foreign guy who wrote that article hasnt been outside the capital area of finland. - This list is also missing quite a few ethnic finnish groups like ingrians are. futher more it seperates the ingrians and the finnish that migrated there but writes "igrian finns" and "ingrians". Those arent seperate groups like that. Theres ingrians who are finnish tribe and then theres finnish imigrants from other tribes. Later is not an ethnoc group but rather "finnish in ingria" so it shouldnt be presented as ethnic group. Ingrians how ever, should. - Theres quite an hole in knowledge about karelian language and karelians too. First thing; Karelians are finnish as much as hämäläiset and pohjalaiset. And more finnish than swedish speaking finnish. Karelian language is finnish language, yet so far develobed that the dialects are hard for modern finnish to understand. But the language structures and bases are from same language, witch was also called finnish. the seperation to two different languages is too strong here and it is not explained. And the list is missing karelian dialects completely, theres whole lot of them, some still spoken. - Same ignorance goes on with the sami people and their language. ethnicly, they are fenno ugric people from finnish branch. genetically they share a lot of similarities with finnish. this is also overlooked a lot, instead we have some empty talk about what swedish speaking finnish call themself. Sami people where here before finnish people, but that doesnt make sami people less minority of finnish. It maybe, that historically, the sami people are actually the "fenni" taticus mentioned. Finnish and estonians might have shared other name that its more similar to suomi, zeme, hääme. - There is also no finnish tribe "norbottens". Mäenkieli is their language, but I do think they refer to themselfs as swedens finnish. - Also tis whole line "Finns are traditionally assumed to originate from two different populations speaking different dialects of Proto-Finnish (kantasuomi)." doesnt hold truth. If its someones research then present the research link and write it down as theory. As far as I know the common belief is that theres one proto-finnish, from witch languages like hungary, estonian, sami... seperated and more to modern dates: kven, karelian, finnish seperated. I checked source links there and they where about ww2. neither of them had anything to do with this and the one about heimo:s is far fetched oppinion at best. (Not all books are true, theres no superman for example.) What goes on about reconstructing and nationalism isnt true either. And the comparison to israelic tribes from ancient world is just idiotic in wiki. We want facts here, not new mysteries.

Theres also metions of uralic a whole lot w/o sources. I hae read the sources of that thinking. There was also theory about finnish being mongols there. They where made by elitistic rasists whitout any attempts to do anything more than raise votes from similar people. In reality, theres no Uralic language group. There is fenno-ugric, and the ugric part still exist near ural mountains. And it is common thesis that finns where spread all the way from ural to finland and baltic at one point.

The genetic thing is wildy generalixed. It basicly tells that "finnish are like europeans". and that is not true. The unnessesary part of swedish speaking finns is again present. Alltought that maybe good but I would like to see similar from other finns aswell or no zero research like that.

With all the definitions, they are just waste of space and untrue. It is only the politics when you start typing swedish words in 10:s here. The term for swedish speaking finns is "suomenruotsalainen" but because its long the finnish speakers usually shorten it to "ruotsalainen". When theres a fear that it gets mixed with swedish coming from sweden, we say "ahvenanmaalainen" (place name for åland) or "rantaruotsalainen" (eng. coastalswedish)". Swedish say "finlandsvensk" when they mean this minority, when swedish moves to finland he still says he is "svensk" or "swedish". So that kind of leaves the "finland swedish" all to the minority. It cant be that repulsive to use that name, we "suomalaiset" have been using stupid swedish name "finnish" for years now.

I'm between two here. Either this needs to be fixed completely by someone who knows about finland. Or this needs to be deleted completely because its missleading in so many ways and completely untrue in another.

If you insist on making "swedish view on finnish" article. Please do so in swedish wiki. In english speaking one, write it so that the finnish speaking areas have finnish names with english translation and the swedish speaking area has swedish name with english translation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.155.176.155 (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Highly exaggerated numbers

Quite certainly there are not 8 million Finns in the world. Not even if you include Kvens, Ingrians and Tornedalians. I don't have sources on that, but I think it is obvious. Try adding up all the regional estimates (that also seem to be quite high) mentioned in the article and you will not get 8 million. 62.78.213.135 (talk) 16:09, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I changed the number to 6.5 million, which is near 4.8 + 0.5 + 0.7 for Finnish speaking in Finland, Sweden and (ethnic Finns? in) USA. The different figures differ in definitions, so a real number is hard to get without a good source. --LPfi (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Karelians, Kvens and Tornedalians

Kvens and Tornedalians are said to be of "Finnish descent", which seems dubious, as they (at least the Tornedalians) have lived in the respective area before Finland existed as a country, or the area where they might have come from was regarded as part of Finland (as a part of Sweden). I do not know how to rephrase, though.

All Karelians are counted as Finns in the main fact box. In the article Karelians in the historic province of Karelia are said to be counted as Finns. The Russian Karelia is much larger than what belonged to the historic province, and the population was resettled in Finland when the area was seeded to the USSR, so counting the Karelians should have some other rationale (the Karelian language is close enough to Finnish to be counted as a dialect, but I think counting them as Finns is at least disputed).

--LPfi (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

New montage

I changed the montage to this one but it was noted to me, that before such a big change it should be discussed here on the talk page. I did the new image based on the image used on the article British people. So does anyone oppose changing the image or have some suggestions, questions or corrections to the montage itself? Jontts (talk) 05:13, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

File:32 Finns.png Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:32 Finns.png, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests January 2012 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 18:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Genetic uniqueness of Finns

I added to the end of the lede which states that Finns are genetically "strikingly different" to other Europeans. They are actually not. They derive from the same pool, however, they often stand out from clusters because Finns are thmeselves so genetically heterogeneous (as already stated in body of article). These features are thus due to drift, bottleneck etc in the the prehistory of Finnish population demography; however, they are no more distant to Europeans than other Europeans are amongst themsleves. Slovenski Volk (talk) 06:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There is a difference between "different" and "separate". Finns are not genetically separate, but have higher internal differences than the rest of Europe combined. This is completely expectable in distributions like this, since it's the exact same thing with human genetics in general: Africans have more internal variety than the rest of humanity combined. Waves of migration tend to distribute homogeneous genes widely, so the distribution is not "random". --vuo (talk) 15:03, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

5 million 500 thousand finns in finland

Swedes aren't Finns, Russians aren't Finns, Somalis aren't Finns. Nationality is not the same thing as ethnicity, which this page apparently ignores. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.189.66.225 (talk) 08:38, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

OH HEY LOOK WHAT I FOUND RIGHT IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH "They are also used to refer to the ethnic group historically associated with Finland or Fennoscandia, and they are only used in that sense here." WIKIPEDIA? LYING THROUGH IT'S TEETH? NOOOOO THAT ISN'T POSSIBLE!64.189.66.225 (talk) 08:39, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Word for them in Swedish

I want to point out that the same words are used Swedish and Finland-Swedish. The later is simply the easternmost dialect of Swedish. However, far from everyone here in Sweden is aware of Finland’s Swedish-spoken minority. Those which are not may refer to both as “finnar” (singular “finne”).

2013-12-31 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

Demographics of Finland

There is a separate article on demographics of Finland. Someone has been adding a lot about Somalis in Finland etc., which is distinct topic, and that needs to be removed and moved to the demographics article as appropriate. Somalis in particular retain their ethnic identity and cannot be considered "Finns". Finland is a multiethnic country and should be considered as such. --vuo (talk) 14:57, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

The problem with this article is that it refers to Finland Swedes as being "Finns", which they have never been, are not and will never be. The Finland Swedes are a Swedish minority living in Finland, i.e. they are Swedes. I do not understand why there are pictures of Swedish people in the article's infobox and the oft-recurring references to Swedish people, which belong to another ethnic group than the Finns. --JasonGarrick (talk) 03:11, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Yours is a fringe interpretation of the situation in Finland. Most people in Finland (in both language groups) today see the situation analogically to Ireland: there is an Irish nation (Irishmen) who speak Gaelic and English. The difference between Finland and Ireland is of course that whereas language shift turned Ireland almost completeley English-speaking, Finland remained Finnish-speaking for the most part. To state that Finland's Swedish speakers of today are Swedes is like saying that today's English-speaking Irishmen are in fact Englishmen. Some of course are, most are not. Clarifer (talk) 07:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

'Finns' is not the same as 'Baltic Finns'

'Finns' to 'Baltic Finns' is the same as e.g. 'Germans' is to 'Germanic peoples'. (The relevance of such linguistically oriented categorization of peoples is in itself debatable). Clarifer (talk) 09:05, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Nationalist wishful thinking?

The idea of the ancestors of the Finns having gotten there less than two thousand years ago sounds like a nationalist pipedream of the “we were here first” type. (If so, it would have been made up by Scandinavians wanting to be descended of the first inhabitants of Fennoscandia.) Contrary to popular belief hunter-gatherers were not stupid. If there were any accessible land able to support them they would have gradually spread into it. For this reason I think present-day Finland was populated by Cro-Magnons within a few centuries after the ice melted away. A later wave of farmers reached the same area about 1500 BC. It was in the encounter between these two that the Finnish people came into existence. Eventually, the last Cro-Magnons interbred with their farmer neighbours resulting in the different Arctic peoples of Europe.

2015-01-03 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.