Finnic peoples

“ The Finns are the most advanced of their whole family, and are, the Magyars excepted, the only Finnic race that can claim a station among the civilized and civilizing nations of the world. Their literature and, above all, their popular poetry bear witness to a high intellectual development in times which we may call mythical, and in places more favorable to the glow of poetical feelings than their present abode, the last refuge Europe could afford them. ”

“ The spirit of nationalism that swept over the small peoples of Europe in the early nineteenth century touched faraway Finland and started the Finns on the quest of the Finnish. There as elsewhere scholars who were also patriots found that the native tongue, lost to the educated and the well-to-do, had been preserved in the songs and stories which were current among the peasants. Elias Lönnrot spent a long and busy life collecting those ancient runos from which he succeeded in building up a national epic, the Kalevala. ”

“ Thus the main body of the Finns were almost exclusively under the influence of Swedish civilisation, and there was practically no Finnish movement until after the Finns came under Russian rule. The very peculiar conditions under which Finland became incorporated into the Russian Empire, with complete internal autonomy, with a kind of ring-fence separating the Finns from the rest of the peoples of the Empire, made it possible to develop within Finland a very interesting and a now very strong national movement, which first of all fought very hard against Swedish predominance. ”

“ The Finnish tribe seems in olden times to have occupied the most extensive territory in what is to-day called Russia. It is manifestly foreign to Aryan or European stock, whence, with the Celts and Latins, Germans and Slavs, most of the European peoples have sprung. Ethnological classifications usually place the Finns in a more or less comprehensive group known variously as Turanian, Mongolian, and Mongoloid. ”

“ The other Finnic deities were tribal gods adopted in the course of migration and development. In Finland there are about 1,500,000 Finns proper, many of whom have adopted the civilization of the Swedes, their former conquerors, but are reluctant to become Russianized. The peasants of the interior still live in a very rude and simple manner. The dialect of this branch of the Finnic race is considered one of the most harmonious and softest languages spoken. ”

“ First of all, Finland is mainly populated by the Finnish people, who are composed of three Finnish tribes, who, driven there by the northern movement of the Slavs, in their turn drove the Lapps to the far North. The Finnish people of Finland are not isolated. Their territory is geographically and geologically distinct from the neighbouring Russian territory, but they themselves as a people are by no means wholly isolated. ”

“ The Karels, further removed from the Lapps, are somewhat longer-headed; the Baltic Finns, being quite free from their influence, are much more so. Moreover, all along the southwest coast of Finland the heads are much longer. Observations upon twenty-eight Finns in the lumber camps of Michigan by my friend Mr. David L. Wing, yielded an average index of only 78.9, while thirty-nine Swedes were two units lower. A portrait of one of these Finns will be found on our page of Finnic types. ”

“ For it cannot be doubted that the Finns in their mental creations of later times, after contact with more civilised peoples, did employ tropes and metaphors in their poetry merely as ornament, without intending them to be taken literally. The wide diffusion and popularity of riddles also proves that very quaint metaphors were in the mouths of the people, who used them in joke, and not in earnest. A regular law, too, of development requires a transition period between the strange beliefs they must have held before they occupied Finland, and those which they hold now. ”

“ Yet the Magyars are tall, well formed, and have handsome features. The Finns have always been feeble, unintelligent, and oppressed; the Magyars, on the contrary, occupy a distinguished rank among the conquerors of the earth, and are noted for their love of liberty and independence. As they are so immensely superior, both physically and morally, [Pg 362] to all the collateral branches of the Finnic stock, it follows that they have undergone an enormous transformation. ”

“ There is left nothing to refresh, fertilize, and energize the nation's vitality. The Finns are utterly helpless. In this sad extremity of their people the best men of Finland are exerting their utmost in the endeavor to alleviate suffering and infuse hope and inspiration among the masses. The young Finnish party has become exasperated by the humiliation that has been heaped upon the long-suffering people of their native land, and its leaders have advised active resistance. The old Finnish party has adopted the policy of passive resistance and protest. ”

“ Strolling through those beautiful dark pines and silver birch woods, he is ever by one's side; sailing or rowing over the lakes, that Finnish demon intrudes himself. Sitting quietly at meals, we know the fiend is under the table, while, as we rest on the balcony in the evening, watching a glorious sun sinking to rest an hour before midnight, he whispers in our ears or peeps into our eyes. He is here, there, and everywhere; he is omnipresent—this curse of Finland. ”

“ We cannot repeat too often that the Finn is musical and poetical to the core, indeed, he has a strong and romantic love for tales and stories, songs and melody, while riddles are to be met with at every turn, and the funny thing is that these riddles or mental puzzles often most mercilessly ridicule the Finns themselves.
No language, perhaps, is richer in sayings than the Finnish. When a Finn sees any one trying to perform some feat beyond his power, and failing, he immediately laughs and cries, "Eihän lehmä puuhun pääse" (the cow cannot climb a tree) . ”

“ This may become clearer as we proceed to explain the literary history of the Finnish national poem.
Sixty years ago, it may be said, no one was aware that Finland possessed a national poem at all. Her people—who claim affinity with the Magyars of Hungary, but are possibly a back-wave of an earlier tide of population—had remained untouched by foreign influences since their conquest by Sweden, and their somewhat lax and wholesale conversion to Christianity: events which took place gradually between the middle of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth centuries. ”

“ It was won by the Finns, and Swedish and Finnish gained equal rights in public life. The Finnish movement rapidly developed and during the last thirty years its progress has been most extraordinary, and so the Swedes, who were once predominant, find themselves being elbowed out of the land in which they were masters. The new Finnish literary language is in spirit, though not in structure or vocabulary, Scandinavian. ”

“ The Finns are a very ancient people. It is claimed, too, that they began earlier than any other European nation to collect and preserve their ancient folk-lore. Tacitus, writing in the very beginning of the second century of the Christian era, mentions the Fenni, as he calls them, in the 46th chapter of his De Moribus Germanoram. He says of them: "The Finns are extremely wild, and live in abject poverty. They have no arms, no horses, no dwellings; they live on herbs, they clothe themselves in skins, and they sleep on the ground. ”

“ If the Finns in heathen were convinced of the soul’s eternal life, of punishment and prosperity in another world, no real conclusions can be drawn from it today. What one can find out indirectly through their philosophy, language, and old literature may be obtained in the writings of old Finnish philosophy. ”

“ History.—It was probably at end of the 7th or beginning of the 8th century that the Finns took possession of what is now Finland, though it was only when Christianity was introduced, about 1157, that they were brought into contact with civilized Europe. They probably found the Lapps in possession of the country. The early Finlanders do not seem to have had any governmental organization, but to have lived in separate communities and villages independent of each other. ”

“ The beliefs of the ancient Finns, as described in the Kalevala, in the world as a divided egg, of which the white is the ocean, the yolk the sun, the arched shell the sky, and the darker portions the clouds; and of the Polynesians that the universe is the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, at the tapering bottom of which is the root of all things, are to us so grotesque that it is not easy to regard them as explanations seriously invented by the human mind. ”

“ With the exception of these two characteristics of the Ugrian languages, the chief beauties of the Finnish verse admit of an apt rendering into English. The structure of the sentences is very simple indeed, and adverbs and adjectives are used sparingly.
Finnish is the language of a people who live pre-eminently close to nature, and are at home amongst the animals of the wilderness, beasts and birds, winds, and woods, and waters, falling snows, and flying sands, and rolling rocks, and these are carefully distinguished by corresponding verbs of ever-changing acoustic import. ”

“ All beings were persons. The Sun, Moon, Stars, the Earth, the Air, and the Sea, were to the ancient Finns, living, self-conscious beings. Gradually the existence of invisible agencies and energies was recognized, and these were attributed to superior persons who lived independent of these visible entities, but at the same time were connected with them. The basic idea in Finnish mythology seems to lie in this: that all objects in nature are governed by invisible deities, termed haltiat, regents or genii. These haltiat, like members of the human family, have distinctive bodies and spirits ”

“ They are a grave, solid people, who understand a joke even less than the Scotch, while such a thing as chaff is absolutely unintelligible to them. Life to the Finns seems a serious matter which can be only undertaken after long thought and much deliberation. They lose much pleasure by their seriousness. They sing continually, but all their music is sad; they dance sometimes, but the native dances are seldom boisterous as in other lands. They read much and think deeply, for unlike the Russians, only 25 per cent. of whom can read, in Finland both rich and poor are wonderfully well educated ”

“ In literature, art, education, politics, commerce, industry, and social reform Finland is as much alive as any of the Scandinavian States from whom she first derived her culture. In many ways indeed she is the most progressive country in Europe, and it is her proud boast that she is "Framtidsland," the land of the future. Lutheran in religion, non-Slavonic in race, without army, court, or aristocracy, and consequently without the traditions which these institutions carry with them, she presents the greatest imaginable contrast to the Empire with which she is irrevocably linked. ”

“ By no means, for Finland is the refuge of a great body of aborigines driven forth from Great Russia by the advent of the Slavs, just as also all along the isolated peninsulas of the Baltic and in the Valdai Hills north of Tver. But in Finland, in contradistinction to these other places of refuge, the Finns were crowded in together against the Lapps. Especially in the north we see clear evidence of intermixture. The Russian Lapps are very much less broad-headed than their pure Scandinavian fellows, by reason of such a cross. ”

“ They are nearer to Russia, and the Russian influence is distinctly seen. They are not so cleanly or so highly educated as the rest of the country, but they are musical and artistic.
One must remember the word Finn implies native [172] peasant; the upper classes are called Finlanders. Until lately the two spoken languages of Finland represented two parties. The Finns were the native peasants who only spoke Finnish, the Radical party practically—the upper classes who spoke Swedish among themselves were known as Svecomans, and roughly represented the Conservatives. ”

“ Petersburg itself stands on what was formerly Finnish territory. When what was left of Finland was finally absorbed by Russia in 1809, special privileges were granted by Alexander I. to the Finns, which his successors confirmed, and which are highly valued by the people.
The upper classes speak Swedish and Finnish; and the lower classes chiefly Finnish. Finnish is upheld by many Finns from patriotic motives, and there is a considerable modern literature in both languages. Translations of most standard works by English and other authors are published in Finnish. ”

“ The people to whom we apply the name, call themselves “Samlash.” The Danes and Norwegians term them “Finns;” and the Swedes and Russians style them “Laps.” The people whom we know as Finns—and who are not Laplanders in any sense—have received the appellation of Finns erroneously. These Finns have for a long period been making progress, as colonists, in the territory once occupied by the true Finns, or Laplanders; and have nothing in common with these last people. They are agriculturists, and dwell in fixed settlements; not pastoral and nomadic, as the Laplanders eminently are. ”

“ So far as regards their moral character, the Finns have as little cause for reproach as any other people. ”