Talk:Scandinavians

Untitled

you should include the finns in the list — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.13.235 (talk) 08:17, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I found it rather confusing as clicking on "Nordic" results on a page that has Finland listed? mwe 85.156.251.13 (talk) 19:04, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Finns are not Scandinavians. Their language is totally unrelated to Scandinavian. Lindatavlov (talk) 06:05, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, they are, since scandinavian is merely a geo expression, not an ethno-linguistic one. The Ogre (talk) 16:28, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

If you have no knowledge of Scandinavia, I advise you to stay out of this discussion. Scandinavia is not "merely a geo expression", it's a cultural, linguistic and ethnic region. The Scandinavians are an ethnic group in the same way as Germans in Germany, Austria and other ethnically German nations. They have common ancestors, a common language (in Scandinavia it's a dialect continuum in the same way as German), common culture, religion and every other aspect that constitutes an ethnic group. There has been a Scandinavian nationalist movement (if the norsemen could be an ethnic group, how can their descendants some hundred years later not be an ethnic group, even if they still share the same language and culture to a much larger extent than what is the case in many other European nations?). If Scandinavian was "merely a geo expression", there couldn't be an article on Scandinavian languages (the article does not deal with languages in Scandinavia). Lindatavlov (talk) 13:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Finns are definitely not Scandinavians, they are not even Indo-European! In fact, Persian, Kurdish and Hindu are more closely related to the Scandinavian languages than is Finnish. True, Finland has much common history with Scandinavia, but that does not make them Scandinavians! --Oddeivind (talk) 18:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Now you are confusing language with ethnicity. Finnish is not an Indo-European language, that is true, but you make a big mistake if you think there is such a thing as an Indo-European race or an Indo-European ethnicity. You make an additional mistake when you confuse states with people, there is no such thing as "one state, one people". There are Swedes and Norwegians who speak Sápmi, a non-Scandinavian language, just as there are Swedes (and some Norwegians) who speak Finnish (Meänkieli. Likewise, hundreds of thousans of Finns speak Swedish Finland Swedes. Last but not least, please do not confuse the way Scandinavia is used in Swedish and Norwegian with its use in English. In English, it is often taken to include Iceland and Finland. JdeJ (talk) 18:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

"Race" is a rather unclear conception, although the Finnish are probably genetically more closely related to Scandinavians than are for instance the Persians. Ethnicity, as far as I understand the concept, refers to a feeling of common decent. It is also more vague than for instance the concept of "nation", which is itself used to refer to anything from a state (as in the UN) to an ethnic group, although most often when the ethnic group has a political agenda. When it comes to the Samis, they would probably not have been considered belonging to the Scandinavian ethnic group around 1900 (althogh they live in Scandinavia). Today the bordeline between Samis and ethnic Norwegians and Swedes are more unclear. Anyway, ethnicity is one thing, geography quite another. It is often the case that outsiders have a wrong/unclear understanding. In fact, there is a separate term for the NORDIC countries, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. This term is often confused with the narrower term Scandinavia.

Sorry about all the digressions in the argument over... --Oddeivind (talk) 19:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I am Swedish myself, so I fully understand you. However, it is we in Scandinavia who have a confused view of the English term. In Swedish, and propably in Norwegian, the different between Skandinavien and Norden is quite clear. Not so in English, the most common English usage is to use Scandinavia for what we would call Norden. This usage has become so established that it is by far the most common and we make a mistake if we try to insist on English usage following our usage. I definitely think our usage is more logic :) but we have to admit that it is not normal English usage. JdeJ (talk) 20:24, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

There is a Scandinavian ethnic group[1] Lindatavlov (talk) 14:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

"all Danes are part of the Scandinavian ethnic group"Hutchinson Country Facts —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lindatavlov (talk • contribs) 14:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

"Once overwhelmingly ethnically Scandinavian, Sweden has experienced significant immigration from many different countries"[2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lindatavlov (talk • contribs) 14:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Iceland is not part of Scandinavia (as a geographical term), but Icelanders are nevertheless ethno-linguistically Scandinavian. Icelandic could not be a Scandinavian language (as opposed to Finno-Ugric Finnish language) if "Scandinavian" was "merely a geo expression" and not an ethno-linguistic concept. This proves you are wrong, so stop beating the dead horse and please return to Portugal, since you obviously have no knowledge of Scandinavia. Lindatavlov (talk) 14:08, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Map

Perhaps a map more akin to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nordiska_spr%C3%A5k.PNG would be more appropriate. The current one (Scandinavia_location_map_definitions.PNG) deals with geography, not ethnicity. There would be no need for different colours for different countries though. I don't know if there are any areas to the north with Sami majorities but they should be discluded. Pollodiablowiki (talk) 04:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Who are the Scandinavians this article is about?

I think this article is confusing and possibly NPOV, by not having a good definition of what it is about. The article says:

"Scandinavians are a group of Germanic peoples, inhabiting Scandinavia, which includes Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. [...] Scandinavians were known as Norsemen during the Middle Ages. [...] Scandinavians may in a modern context also be used to refer to the inhabitants of the three Scandinavian countries"

This is how the subject is defined. Now, "a group" seems to mean a subset of the population. Then we have to sets of statistics, where seemingly all population of Finland is counted in one of them, and an approximate number of Swedish speakers in the other. For Sweden the numbers are the same in both sets. For USA and Australia we have a sum of people with some of the main ancestors from a Scandinavian country. It seems people with a Swedish mother and a Norwegian father are counted twice (regardless of ethnic background or ethnic identity).

Here obviously different criteria are used for different countries. The problem is that the article hasn't decided whether it is about people in or from a certain area (the definition of which varies between parts of the article without clear notice), people speaking North Germanic languages, people speaking Continental Scandinavian languages or people that are ethnically Scandinavian (by some unmentioned, probably varying, definition).

This is a mess, but without clearing it up I cannot see how the article can provide useful information about "Scandinavians". See also the articles about Scandinavia, the Nordic countries and North Germanic languages, where some of the issues are treated more clearly.

--LPfi (talk) 12:48, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:North Germanic peoples which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:18, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

The Sámi and Finns are peoples of their own

The inclusion of the Sámi and Finns here is not only wrong and insensitive, but colonialist, outdated and racist. The reason that we have a separate article on the Sámi people, defined as "an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway and Sweden, northern parts of Finland, and the Kola Peninsula within the Murmansk Oblast of Russia," is precisely because they are a people of their own, and not part of the Scandinavian ethnolinguistic group (also sometimes referred to as North Germanic in specialist scholarly usage). The Sámi living (mostly in the periphery of) what is now called Scandinavia were in the past the victims of a policy of forced assimilation whereby they were forced to speak Scandinavian languages and which sought to destroy their own culture; the inclusion of them as Scandinavians is a legacy of that policy, and not recognised by anyone today.

The same goes for the Finns. As it was pointed out above in the discussion by Oddeivind, "Finns are definitely not Scandinavians." They are a people of their own, which is why we have the article on the Finns, defined as "a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland". The term Scandinavians (and Scandinavian language) is used in contrast to the Finnish ethnicity/language/identity, and refers exclusively to the Swedish element in Finland.

The term Scandinavians is not the same as Scandinavia, in the same sense that the article on Finns refers to a specific ethnic group ("a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland") but not every citizen of Finland (such as its Scandinavian/Swedish-speaking population or recent immigrants who are not of Baltic Finnic ancestry). While the vast majority of people in Scandinavia belong to the ethnolinguistic group called Scandinavians, not everyone does, particularly not indigenous peoples with their own identities, languages and a history of attempted forced Scandinavian assimilation. --Petter Jakobsen (talk) 15:53, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hi Petter Jakobsen! I sympathise with these political sensitivities. But the reality is that, however we might wish the situation to be, the word Scandinavia is often used in English to refer to the whole Nordic area, and correspondingly the word Scandinavian is sometimes used to refer to all the inhabitants of the area. These short Oxford dictionary entries for Scandinavia and Scandinavian witnesses this: 'A cultural region consisting of the countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark and sometimes also of Iceland, Finland, and the Faroe Islands'; 'A native or inhabitant of Scandinavia, or a person of Scandinavian descent'. In English Wikipedia, at least, this Wikipedia article needs to reflect this reality. But it would make sense to give readers guidance on the politics of the different senses of the term Scandinavians. Could we reinstate the following text, but this time with some discussion and references?

Sometimes included based on geographic definitions (inhabitants of Continental Scandinavia): * Finno-Ugric peoples ** the modern Sami ** the modern Finns

 : Alarichall (talk) 16:24, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

But this is not the article on Scandinavia, but on Scandinavians (cf. Finns vs. Finland), so sources regarding imprecise use of "Scandinavia" in some English sources aren't that relevant here. There is a long tradition also in English of predominantly using "Scandinavian (language) and Scandinavians when referring to the ethnolinguistic group that is predominantly known as such. It would be better to have a more nuanced discussion of the Sámi people and Finns and their position within and relationship to Scandinavia in the article on Scandinavia itself. The Sámi people isn't even limited to Scandinavia but also live in Russia, so it would be wrong to describe them as Scandinavian in a blanket way; the only Sámi who could be described as Scandinavian in some way would be "Sámi people in Scandinavia" as opposed to all Sámi people. There are numerous other articles on ethnolinguistic groups, such as Finns, but also English people where they are described as "an ethnic group native to England who speak the English language", which clearly excludes people of African or Indian ancestry who live "in England." Just like England or Finland are the articles that would naturally describe all demonymic use of those names, possible demonymic use of Scandinavian as opposed to the ethnolinguistic group would belong in Scandinavia rather than Scandinavians. --Petter Jakobsen (talk) 16:36, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps we could include something about "culturally Scandinavian" groups, such as Sámi people who speak Scandinavian languages on account of Scandinavian assimilation policies in the 19th/20th centuries, while noting that this usage is politically highly sensitive and rejected by most Sámi. --Petter Jakobsen (talk) 16:43, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I was quoting the meaning of 'Scandinavia' because, as the Oxford dictionaries say, Scandinavian often means 'inhabitant of Scandinavia', so to understand one word we need to understand the other. Yes, sometimes English-speakers only mean the North-Germanic-speaking ethnolinguistic group; but sometimes they mean any inhabitant of the Nordic world. (Potentially including Sámi people who live in Scandinavia some or all of the time, ethnically Danish people in Schleswig-Holstein, Finns in Russian Karelia, Swedish-speakers in Estonia, etc.) The key thing to understand is that the noun Scandinavian has multiple meanings, and Wikipedia needs to represent them rather than ignore them. If someone searches for 'Scandinavian', they need to land on a page that helps them work out where they really want to go.

(Also, it sounds like the entry for English people might need some work!! The idea that people of African or Indian ancestry who live in England aren't English is pretty problematic... I'm glad we don't have a full article on Scandinavians but basically a disambiguation page instead.) Alarichall (talk) 17:24, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Adding the 'culturally' and/or (as in the previous version) geographically Scandinavian people with a warning would be great! Are you happy to do that edit? Alarichall (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Petter Jakobsen! I've done some further editing, and added references. I recommend the Knut Helle reference -- you should be able to see the whole discussion on Google Books -- if you're in doubt about what I've said above about what Scandinavian means in English. But it would be good to add further references to this interesting and fraught topic. Alarichall (talk) 22:20, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not quite happy with the first sentence, because it treats what I understand to be, at best, a (recent, possible) minority/alternative use of the term (and only outside the Nordic countries themselves, and that is problematic for several reasons) as its primary meaning, rather than the other way round. I've not really seen any sources, in any language, that described the Sámi specifically as Scandinavians. Within Sámi studies and the Sámi community Scandinavian(s) would be viewed exclusively as an ethnolinguistic/cultural term referring specifically to the North Germanic majority population, their language and their culture. It would be viewed as relevant for the Sámi only in the context of how those Sámi who lived in the affected countries (unlike those living in Russia) were linguistically assimilated into that culture through e.g. the school system that banned Sámi languages and made Scandinavian languages mandatory, i.e. in contrast to Sámi (language/identity/culture/ethnicity).

I understand the dominant, traditional use of "Scandinavians" in English to be the same group that is called Scandinavians within Scandinavia and the Nordic countries themselves, i.e. the North Germanic* ethnolinguistic group. For instance, the article White Anglo-Saxon Protestant discusses Scandinavians/Scandinavian Americans, but it's clearly not Sámi immigrants that are meant, and the cited source in fact discusses the shared Germanic ancestry of the English and Scandinavians at length.

(*North Germanic is a specialist term used in niche scholarly contexts such as genetic linguistics, the term Scandinavian is probably a hundred or a thousand times more common when referring to the North Germanic peoples of Scandinavia; Scandinavian laypeople usually wouldn't think of themselves as North Germanic unless they were specialists in some relevant humanities field) --Petter Jakobsen (talk) 01:18, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

I do see where you're coming from, but it's hard to respond effectively to this without some scholarly sources to draw on. Citing the usage in this or that Wikipedia entry isn't really going to get us where we need to get. I've searched in scholar.google.com and haven't found thorough discussions of the English semantics of the noun Scandinavian yet. I've changed the lead to include citations of three major English dictionaries, but I think that someone doing a decent study of the meaning of the noun Scandinavian in English would be helpful. I might try and do one in the summer! If you can find any good discussions of this problem, that would be really helpful. It would also be good, as you imply, for the article to explain how North Germanic/Finnic/Sami terminology works -- but skandinav is surely not a common term, and I see the Scandinavian-language Wikipedias don't have entries for that word (probably wisely...). Alarichall (talk) 17:32, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Issues and suggested solutions

This article reads like a dictionary entry. It speaks volumes that virtually all sources used in this article are from dictionaries. Pay in mind that Wikipedia is not a dictionary.

Out of the various "Scandinavian" concepts mentioned here, the only one notable enough to have its own article is North Germanic peoples. We do not have separate articles for inhabitants of Africa, the Americas or other important regions of the world. I fail to see then how the inhabitants of the region of Scandinavia, which isn't even clearly defined, is notable.

I suggest that the content of this article be merged into a section on demographics at the Scandinavia article, and to make this article a redirect to North Germanic peoples, per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Krakkos (talk) 08:38, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

These are sensible points, and perhaps it would be good to get rid of this troublesome article (and redirect to Scandinavia). As it stands, I think we should think of it basically as being a disambiguation page (even though technically speaking it isn't). Alarichall (talk) 13:10, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the article reads like a bloated disambiguation page. Indeed the article is troublesome. It may not be necessary to delete it altogether however, as the edit history might me useful to preserve. Krakkos (talk) 11:00, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Right: turning this article into a simple redirect to Scandinavia, keeping the edit history and talk page, seems good. I wonder if Petter Jakobsen, as someone who's recently commented on this article, would agree? Alarichall (talk) 11:50, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

No objections to this idea, and I've prepared the way by cleaning up Scandinavia and moving information from Scandianvians, so I'll make this page into a redirect. Alarichall (talk) 15:48, 8 February 2020 (UTC)