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Finland ain’t Scandinavia. Possibly Nordic, but def not Scandi
Scandinavia (/ˌskændɪˈneɪviə/ SKAN-di-NAY-vee-ə) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, Scandinavia most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer more narrowly to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes part of Finland), or more broadly to include all of Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.[4][c]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia
That sentence before the bold is key. I guess it’s just been rammed through by misuse like “literally” and “chomping at the bit”.
My understanding is that it wasn’t culturally Scandinavian bc they have a greater link to … Russia historically
finnish people are their own thing. their culture used to be more like inuit way back. russian/slavic culture is way younger than any sort of finnish identity. russia tried to conquer finland or parts of it a couple times. generally i don't think the two nations been on good terms since forever. the reason finland wasn't in nato wasn't necessarily that they were friendly with russia. they hold a national grudge and insisted on facing them alone at their border for the longest time, mostly as a show of force as in finland isn't afraid of russia and doesn't need help to defend itself. finland has ties to scandinavia because after the treaty of roskilde in the 16. century it became part of the swedish empire along with what is now estonia, lithuania and latvia. the finnish language is in its own family with hungarian and a few other languages mainly spoken in north siberia and far east russia. it's not related to any european language except hungarian.
Awesome, good to know but for the tldr people - I was right and Finland is Nordic not Scandi?
Also, is there any substantive difference between Finns and Lapps
technically they are not scandi. they are not really nordic either, since they are not directly related to nordic germanic people. they are like the og nordics. i think they were up there before scandinavians arrived. allegedly they were like an offshoot of the indo-european basepopulation around the black sea/caucasus that went a little earlier out from farther east and did like a long hook via far north east asia, the northern russian coastline and then ended up in what is now finland. hungarians are another wave of immigrants to europe from central asia that went off from the same basepopulation -language than fins way before, but since they were isolated from each other for a few hundred years and didn't really know about their relation to each other anyways until later on, their languages are now fairly different. anyways, the hungarians were like steppe horse warriors similar to scyths, mongols and huns and went straight west to europe with no detour to siberia.
maybe a finnish guy can chime in. this is like all the knowledge about finnish history and language i've acquired in my whole life lol. just straight up infodumped it here. maybe we should ask fins how they feel about being called scandinavians lol. i don't even know, some of my info might now be false or a bit inaccurate. this is stuff from when i was studying comparative linguistics and history.
This is what I love about slap.interesting read.
Sorry for mixing up - if Nordic is the right term.
To be honest I visit Denmark and Sweden manny times - but unlucky never made it up north to Finnland.
Heard only good things…
Traveling and meeting Finns and Swedes gave me the feeling they get along pretty fine - and sharing at least the Swedish language, and having a Schnaps at the bar after dinner culture very seriously.
Remember once at the Mystic cup I shared an room with two lady’s - since I left early and come back late - I haven’t meet them. One morning after a long night - I was waking up late and still drunk and very confused because two elf style ( pale white skin, white gown, long whit blonde hair) girls standing side by side at my bed and talking to me - and I didn’t understand a single word.
Took a while - they understood switch language once to Swedish, and then to English.
For what ever reason they thought I was a Finn, or least a Swedish.
May because the receptionist gave wrong info - I was arriving/ checking a week before with a group of Hungarian and Swedish- but had nothing to do with this guys. May also to make them comfortable to share the room with me…