The eastern half of the European Continent contains a zone of excessive linguistic intermingling along the line where Teutonic and Slavic peoples meet. From the shores of the White Sea to the Baltic and thence to the coast of the Black Sea an elongated belt of lowland was ill fitted to become the seat of a single state because nature has not provided it with strongly marked geographical boundaries which might have favored the development of nationality. Hence it is that before the eighteenth century we do not find a single nation in possession of this region. On the other hand, it is the site on which three religions met in bloody fray in modern times. At the beginning of the modern era its northern sections became the theater of wars between Protestants and Catholics, while to the south, Christians arrayed against eastern infidels were obliged to war for centuries before the danger of the invasion of central Europe by Mohammedan hordes was totally removed.
The Finns, occupying the northernmost section of this elongated belt, are linguistically allied to the Turki. Physically they constitute the proto-Teutonic substratum of the northern Russians with whom they have been merged. Their land was transferred from Sweden to Russia in 1808. Autonomy conceded by the Czar’s government provided the inhabitants with a tolerable political status, until it was rescinded by the imperial decree of February 15, 1899. The opening years of the present century marked the beginning of a policy of Slavicization prosecuted with extreme vigor on the part of the provincial administrators.
The Finnish peoples of Russia must be regarded as autochthons who have been subjected to the inroads of both Slavic and Tatar invasions. In the ninth century A.D. they formed compact populations on the European mainland directly south of Finland, where their descendants now group themselves in scattered colonies. Except in Finland they are being Slavicized at a rapid rate and the Slav population is now imposing itself on the Tatar which had once swamped the indigenous element.
Early mention of these Finns shows them divided into several tribes. The Livs and Chuds, who dwelt mainly around the gulfs of Livonia and of Finland, were the forefathers of the present inhabitants of northern Livonia as well as of Esthonia.[83] The Ingrians and the Vods inhabited the basin of the Neva. The Suomi tribes, of which the Kvens, Karels, Yams and Tavasts were the most important, occupied the Finnish territory held at present by their descendants. Every river valley of northwestern Russia was in fact a tribal homeland. The term Finnish as applied to these tribes refers to their culture, which was Asiatic throughout. Racially, however, they consist of Nordics with a strong addition of Tatar blood.
The area of Finnish speech forms a compact mass extending south of the 69th parallel to the Baltic shores. Its complete access to the sea is barred in part by two coastal strips in the gulfs of Bothnia and Finland in both of which Swedish predominates in varying percentages.[84] The group of the Aland Islands, although included in the Czar’s dominions, is also peopled by Swedes all the way to the southwestern point of Finland.[85] This broken fringe of Swedish is conceded to be a relic of the early occupation of Finland by Swedes.[86] One of its strips, the Bothnian, is remarkably pure in composition. The band extending on the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, however, contains enclaves of the Finnish element. This is ascribed to an artificial process of “fennification” resulting from the introduction of cheap labor in the industrial regions of southern Finland. Slower economic development of the provinces of the western coast, on the other hand, tends to maintain undisturbed segregation of the population.
The ties uniting Finland with Sweden are moral and cultural. Swedish missionaries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the agents through whom Christianity was introduced into Finland. Together with religion many Swedish customs and laws superseded the primitive social organization of the Finns. The relation established was virtually that of an intellectual minority gaining the upper hand over an ignorant majority. A change in the situation came about in the middle of the fourteenth century when Finland became an integral part of the Swedish kingdom and all civil and political distinctions between the two elements of its populations were abolished.
Fig. 36—View of the Lake country near Kuopi, showing the Kallavesi Sea with low islands and level shores. This is a characteristic Finnish landscape.