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)

In reality, what people in their ignorance call "light brown" is usually dark blond. The average German (from families with deep Central European roots at least) is dark blond, with a notable north-south gradient just like the maps show. The average Finn, according to my experience, is significantly lighter-haired; more like medium blond. Most Finns are some shade of blond, light, medium or dark, so much that dark blondes and blonds are often known as musta, i. e., black, because truly dark hair used to be rare in Finland.

Slavs are also very frequently some shade of blond – even light blond is relatively common, and in Russia, red and reddish hues too – except Southern Slavs, which align more with Southern Europeans (probably due to Mediterranean admixture). Hungary is right at the boundary: Many Hungarians are fair-haired, just like their northern neighbours, but dark hair, like in the Romanians, is not uncommon, either. At least that's my general impression. The maps are broadly correct according to my experience. (Anecdotical observations only, but anyway ...) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:39, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

@153.19.192.165 No Swedes in that list? --YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII (talk) 00:20, 9 November 2015 (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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.114.157.228 (talk) 20:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

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)

Most of the English-speakers in Ireland today are the descendants of people who switched their language from Gaelic within the past few generations. This does not parallel the situation in Finland at all: the Finland-Swedes and the ethnic Finns are descendants of two *different* ancestral groups (i.e., broadly speaking, the two groups reflect 1) the population who came to Finland from Sweden in the Middle Ages and later, and 2) the population that was already there when the other group arrived). Though there has been some intermarriage and language-shift over time, the present-day difference between the Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking populations of Finland reflects a historical difference between these two groups. (Whereas in Ireland, the present-day difference between English- and Gaelic speakers often belies their historical relationship. There are also virtually no monolingual Gaelic speakers, so the Gaelic and English speakers are less likely to be socially separated.) Additionally, even if 100% of Finland's residents believed that the distinction between ethnic Finns and Finland-Swedes was purely linguistic (not ethnic), that would not make it true. Language differences are one of the factors that serve to actualize ethnic differences: you generally associate with the people you know how to communicate with, and are thus more likely to marry and form future generations with them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavril09 (talk • contribs) 11:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Your comment mirrors 19th century national romantic thinking. Ethnicities are formed by self-identification in the process of ethnogenesis. Outside parties cannot impose a theoretical model on a people, claiming that it would represent the question of ethnicity better. --MPorciusCato (talk) 17:41, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

With all due respect, I'm not sure about the significance of self-identification here: I could identify as (e.g.) an Italian-American however much I like, but if I have no Italian ancestry, if most of my interactions are with non-Italian-Americans, and if I marry (and thus invest my resources with) a non-Italian-American, then my self-identification seems a bit hollow at best. Also, I would suspect that a great deal of people in Finland (and many other countries) don't self-identify as belonging to any ethnicity in particular, i.e. the question is not of interest to them. That does not mean that they have no ethnicity, it means that ethnicity is more than the labels one chooses to describe oneself with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavril09 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Language differences are one of the factors that serve to actualize ethnic differences: you generally associate with the people you know how to communicate with, and are thus more likely to marry and form future generations with them.

This would make sense in a situation where people are generally monolingual. But are Swedish-speaking Finns generally monolingual in Swedish? Certainly not. Just like Gaelic-speaking Irish virtually all speak English just as well, so do Swedish-speaking Finns also speak Finnish. So MPorciusCato's criticism was correct. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:10, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

There are certainly concentrations of Finland-Swedes who do not speak Finnish fluently. I remember reading that they are estimated to be 40% or more of the Finland-Swede population, though that figure could be out of date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavril09 (talk • contribs) 03:41, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I've always thought that the situation with Finland-Swedes is this: Swedish-speaking inhabitants of Finland are mostly ethnic descendants of Swedes of Sweden. However, there is a considerable portion of Finnish-speaking inhabitants who also trace their ancestry, at least partially, to Swedish settlers but their families have become Finnish-speaking over the centuries. This transition could have been quite sudden. For example, my great-great-grandmother was from a very "Finland-Swede" family who are speakers of Swedish even to this day (and are proven to have originated from Sweden proper). However, when she married my great-great-grandfather, a Finnish speaker, they virtually spoke only Finnish at home causing my great-grandfather to be monolingually Finnish speaker. This was of course related to the Fennoman movement but still, it demonstrates how hard it would be to classify me and my family. We certainly have ethnic Swedish background, but have no participation whatsoever with the "Finland-Swede culture" and would consider it absurd to be regarded as being part of it. JJohannes (talk) 23:36, 22 February 2016 (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. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.114.158.174 (talk) 20:09, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Er, to me it seems rather the opposite: the Finns (well, some of them) have a hard time accepting that they were not first in Finland. But they definitely were not – a Saami substrate is clearly in evidence even in the south of Finland and Karelia, according to recent research by Ante Aikio. Instead, the thinking has lately reverted to the old consensus that the Finns (well, at least their language) came to Finland only about 2000 years ago (from Estonia or Ingria or thereabouts), as it has been realised that apparent archaeological continuity in Finland cannot be trusted and does not prove anything. Instead, some scholars now think that Indo-European-speaking people actually preceded Uralic-speaking people in Finland (Corded Ware from about 3100 BC on), and Uralic-speakers did not arrive before the 2nd millennium BC, certainly not before 2000 BC (per Petri Kallio). But since at least Heikkilä says that the Uralic-speakers, unlike the Indo-Europeans of Finland, already had Bronze-Age technology, and that this technological advantage explains why Uralic-speakers could assimilate Indo-Europeans here, I don't see how this should be embarrassing to Finns somehow, as you seem to imply. In any case, neither were the first Uralic-speakers in Finland the direct predecessor culture to the modern Finns (they were rather "Proto-Saami" than "Proto-Finns"), nor were the Indo-Europeans of Finland "Proto-Swedes" (Heikkilä implies that their language was equally akin to Baltic than to Germanic, and in any case millennia earlier than the emergence of distinctively Baltic and Germanic languages), and biologically speaking we're all mixed anyway, so any political implications cannot be read into it. (Unless you are a fanatic, ultra-nationalist idiot who insists on forcing political implications into everything, even if scholars strongly discourage it explicitly.) Note how the scholars contributing to this "new synthesis" – Petri Kallio, Jorma Koivulehto, Jaakko Häkkinen, Ante Aikio, Mikko Heikkilä – are all very much Finns themselves, not outsiders who might have some kind of anti-Finnish agenda. On the other hand, you seem to be Swedish, and moreover, I'm not sure what you're actually arguing for or against anyway. There were definitely people in Fennoscandia prior to the arrival of the Corded Ware people (who are generally thought to have been Indo-European-speaking), the archaeological record is clear enough; but they were a thin hunter-gatherer population that was completely assimilated by subsequent waves of migration (some traces of their languages may still be evident in substrate words and features found in the Saami languages). --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:40, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke Exactly. Y-haplogroup N-Tat is Asian and young. --YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII (talk) 10:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

@YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII: You mean Haplogroup N-M231?

A general reading tip is Aikio 2012 for more detail on the prehistory of Finland and the underlying methodological issues. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:25, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

@Florian Blaschke: I actually meant the (M46/Tat+, P105+) branch of it. --YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII (talk) 12:23, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

A small correction to what I said above: Aikio is ethnically Sami, and natively speaks Northern Sami in addition to Finnish, but is a Finnish citizen and hardly anti-Finnish in outlook. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:28, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

With all due respect to J. Koivulehto (who died in 2014), his research was extremely slanted towards finding an IE origin for almost any given Finnic or Sami word, and a large percentage of his proposals involve semantic (and sometimes morphological) difficulties. For example, he proposed that a Finnic word meaning "take" was from a Germanic word meaning "turn" (allegedly via the meanings "wrench" > "wrest"), that a Finnic word for "boat" was related to an IE word meaning "wood", that Sami "fall" was connected to North Germanic "meet", and so on. His usual method of arguing for these kinds of connections was to find a handful of cases of a parallel semantic development (sometimes approximate parallels) in Finnish or elsewhere, usually ~2-4 examples, and to conclude on this basis that the semantic gap entailed in his proposal was no longer a problem. But, this methodology tells us nothing (as far as I can see) about the likelihood of the alleged semantic change: it tells us that such a change *could* have happened, but it gives no compelling reason to think that it *did* happen to the words in question. Koivulehto used this methodology often enough over the course of his career that it's still unclear to me how much solid work he added to his field.

The other researchers you mention are successors to Koivulehto, and generally seem to respect and build on his work (although they seem somewhat more open to non-IE etymological proposals than he was).

All this has nothing, necessarily, to do with having a pro- or anti-Finnish agenda. Rather, the issue is the desire to come up with new advances in a field where the available evidence has (I suspect) already been "wrung dry" of almost all the solid conclusions it can yield. There are only about 40 attested Finno-Ugric languages, none of which has attested records going back more than 850 years, and most of them began to be written down within the past 500 years. Unless there are highly conservative languages in each branch of Finno-Ugric, this lack of old data means that there is a corresponding lack of clear, unambiguous comparative evidence in the Finno-Ugric lexicon. (By contrast, one of the reasons why Indo-European is so amply reconstructible is that most of its branches have been well-attested for over 1500 years, and several for at least 2500 years.) This in turn means that modern-day Finno-Ugricists will have to content themselves with "I don't know" as an answer to most remaining questions in their field (unless new methodologies of investigation/analysis are developed), and to accept that their proposals will almost always be weaker and more tentative than their predecessors'. This is not an appealing situation for people who came into the field with the hope of making new discoveries, and any trend that appears to offer a way out of this impasse will be (with all due respect to these researchers) understandably attractive, regardless of whether this trend is scientifically sound or not.

This issue is compounded by the small size of Finno-Ugric studies as a field: there are probably no more than a few hundred people (that could be a big overestimate) working in Finno-Ugric linguistics right now, and much of the research in it is published in Finnish and Hungarian, which few people outside Finland or Hungary are able to speak or read. This is a potentially ripe climate for theories to prosper unchallenged: if more people around the world examined the work of Koivulehto and his successors, there would probably be a greater diversity of opinion around its merit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavril09 (talk • contribs) 08:56, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

So what? Even if a sizeable portion of Koivulehto's etymologies don't stand up to scrutiny – what exactly would that change? (And I think most Finno-Ugrists/Uralists like those I mention acknowledge that many of these proposals are not all that certain – these people are far from blind Koivulehto-worshippers; Koivulehto is important, but contrary to what you seem to suggest, he's not considered a god or something, in fact, Aikio is explicitly sceptical of his suggestions of early Northwest-Indo-European loans in Finnic in his linked essay, which you clearly haven't read; not sure why you think attacking Koivulehto, instead of actually engaging with the arguments of his putative "followers", achieves a lot – this smacks of the "poisoning the well" fallacy: they're blind Koivulehto-followers, so you can dismiss them and need not pay attention to them.) There are still plenty of obvious cases of old Indo-European loans in Uralic. In fact, research has moved on considerably since Koivulehto and refined the picture, despite your negativity. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I didn't say, or mean to imply, that Koivulehto was "worshiped" by present-day Finno-Ugricists. Of course, each of Koivulehto's etymologies, and those of his successors, has to stand or fall on its own merits. My doubts come from having read many of K.'s and his successors' proposals, and not finding them convincing.

As to your statement that there are obvious early-IE loans in Uralic: at least in Finnic (the main branch of Uralic I am familiar with), I have not seen a single convincing example of IE loans that predate Indo-Iranian. The often-cited words for "water" (Finnish vete- : IE *wódr) and "name" (F. nimi : IE *Hnómn) are possible examples, but not at all obvious. It could be, however, that there are more convincing examples in other branches than Finnic -- I am open to having my mind changed on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gavril09 (talk • contribs) 03:10, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

It is correct that I am a Swede. I consider a people indigenous to an area if their cultural ancestors live there in the 15th century. With this definition, Sami, Finns and Swedes are all indigenous to Finland. Also, I think both the Germanic and Baltic peoples descend from the Beaker culture. Have any traces of this culture ever been found in Finland? If not, I don’t think there were any significant number of Indo-Europeans in present-day Finland before the Middle Ages.

My idea was that agriculture reached present-day Finland approximately 2500 B.C. (not 1500 B.C. as I previously wrote). About two thousand years ago – when the cultural ancestors of the Finns are claimed to have settled there – the southern and south-western part of the country already had farmers. Having lived with agriculture for 2,500 years these would certainly have developed a culture very different from the foragers populating the rest of the country. These foragers can be considered Proto-Sami since the Sami are known to have adopted pastoralism much later. So which were the farmer living in parts of Finland 4,500 – 2,000 years ago? If the cultural ancestors of the Finns really immigrated from Estonia and Ingria that late the preceding culture might lack living cultural descendants.

2015-12-31 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.114.144.9 (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

With this definition, Sami, Finns and Swedes are all indigenous to Finland.

Well, yeah, I guess. Does anybody really contest that? The issue you brought up was a different one. Don't move the goalposts. I said that the Finns (as in Finnish-speakers) weren't the first in Finland, and they were definitely not. Aikio has shown that Saami(-speakers) must have inhabited even Southern Finland not long ago, and argues that they must be late arrivals in that essay I've linked for your convenience.

Also, I think both the Germanic and Baltic peoples descend from the Beaker culture.

Why do you think that? I don't know any scholar who agrees with you there, by the way. At least it's not a common idea. Geographically, the fit is very poor. Germanic and Baltic can be traced to Iron-Age Northern Germany and Poland, and that's only at the margin of the Beaker area. So, it's completely irrelevant whether remains associated with the Beaker culture have been found in Finland. It's just not a good reason to think there were no Indo-Europeans in Finland. In fact, there is a tendency to think that the Beaker phenomenon wasn't even primarily carried by Indo-Europeans – it seems to originate from Iberia, which was Indo-Europeanised relatively late, like Western Europe in general probably, but in the case of Iberia it's actually pretty clear. It's the Corded Ware that is usually identified with Indo-Europeans, and there is new genetic evidence that supports the link. And, lo and behold, the Corded Ware is also found in Finland, and quite early at that, about 3100 BC, in fact even earlier than in Scandinavia (about 2800 BC), as Heikkilä points out.

As fare as I'm aware, there is no evidence that (linguistic) Saami were present in Finland already in 2500 BC, and it looks increasingly unlikely. Also, Saami – like early Finno-Ugric peoples in general – were never primarily agriculturalists, but mainly foragers (this is clear from both lexicon and historiography). And as Aikio points out, there are early Germanic loanwords in Saami that are not present in Finnic and point to direct contact of early Germanic with Saami. This can only have happened in Southern Finland, as Saami was not spoken in Scandinavia before 500 AD.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cultural ancestors". I'm talking about ethnolinguistic groups.

You should really read Aikio's essay that I linked. You'll find it hard to argue with, and it will clear up quite some confusion. He's very cautious and circumspect in his conclusions. And Heikkilä's presentation too. I'm not sure why you don't read the stuff I've linked too (and instead engage in gratuitous speculation). I don't do that just for decoration. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Seima-Turbino phenomenon has been connected by some with the spread of Uralic languages, at least to the western direction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmarkusp (talk • contribs) 09:02, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm. It's unclear what ethnolinguistic group could originally have been its carriers. There is no evidence that Uralic ever spread that wide in the Bronze Age. Certainly there is no trace of Uralic in Southeast Asia. So, yeah, perhaps the western direction only. My bet is on Indo-European, though, especially Indo-Iranian. They were mobile enough and the cultural attributes, place and timeframe fit. Though they are unlikely to have reached as far as Vietnam or Thailand, as well. China, perhaps. Considering the Uralic/Indo-European overlap, however, it is entirely possible that Uralic speakers were involved in the wave. It's still a mystery, though. Chance is that the Southeast Asian connection is spurious, or was only indirect, mediated through native cultures of China, without steppe people actually ever reaching Southeast Asia in person. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposal for the deletion of all the galleries of personalities from the articles about ethnic groups

Seemingly there is a significant number of commentators which support the general removal of infobox collages. I think there is a great opportunity to get a general agreement on this matter. It is clear that it has to be a broad consensus, which must involve as many editors as possible, otherwise there is a big risk for this decision to be challenged in the near future. I opened a Request for comment process, hoping that more people will adhere to this proposal. Please comment here. TravisRade (talk) 23:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

That is not an RfC and it doesn't follow the RfC process. It's just a collection of opinions and has no authority. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:17, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

The RfC was opened correctly. please comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ethnic_groups#Proposal_for_the_deletion_of_all_the_galleries_of_personalities_from_the_infoboxes_of_articles_about_ethnic_groups. Dkfldlksdjaskd (talk) 09:29, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Finns in Sweden

This article claims that there are 470K Finns in Sweden, while Sweden Finns says that the number is estimated to be 426K, that article also says that 20% of those are estimated to be Finland-Swedes, that is members of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, and not (ethnic) Finns. Resulting in there being an estimated ~340K "true" Finns in Sweden, not 470K (people are regarded as being "finländare" in Swedish government statistics if they were born in Finland or have at least one parent who was born in Finland, with no information about anyone's ethnicity; meaning that both Finland-Swedes and "true" Finns are included in the numbers). The article also claims that there are "native Finns" in Dalecarlia, but being partly Forest Finn, i.e. descending from people who migrated to that area about 400 years ago and haven't spoken Finnish for many generations, hardly qualifies anyone as a Finn... Thomas.W ^talk 17:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

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Stone-age hunter-gatherers

I have reverted an edit claiming that "The original European hunter-gatherers that populated large parts of Europe before the early farmers appeared are most similar to Finns and other extreme-northern populations", while the source says that "the Stone Age hunter-gatherers were outside the genetic variation of modern populations but most similar to Finnish individuals" (my emphasis), meaning that even though individual Finns are of a type that is similar to the Stone Age hunter-gatherers examined, they were "outside the genetic variation" of the Finnish people as a whole. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 13:04, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Point taken. I edited the text accordingly.--Velivieras (talk) 16:10, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@Velivieras: I wonder how long it takes before people start making jokes about which ones in Finland are most similar to Stone Age people, with this being a possible candidate... - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 16:43, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Hard to say whether his ancestors were fast enough for hunting or flexible enough for gathering.--Velivieras (talk) 16:59, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Aw, c'mon. You're being cruel. I'm actually pondering the mating options... Snowblindness? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:58, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

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Swedish-speaking Finns

There is a disagreement in editing this article that has been mentioned at AN/I but not yet here. The article establishes—in large part through a footnote—that it is using "Finns" as a synonym for "Finnic people" and both in the ethnic sense. However, the word is also used in English as the common term for "citizens of Finland". Swedish is also an official language in Finland, and is spoken natively by the second largest linguistic group in the country: the lead of our Finland article says: "88.7% of the population is Finnish and speaks Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages; next come the Finland-Swedes (5.3%)", which is referenced later in the article, and see also Languages of Finland. If this percentage has changed because of immigration, as stated in an edit summary reverting me, a reference is required for that change; however, while the fact that Swedish is second numerically could be easily referenced here, the underlying disagreement seems to be that this article is focused on ethnic origins. I would normally protest at the assumption that a clear distinction can be drawn between the ethnic origins of speakers of two official languages within a country, but the Swedish-speaking population of Finland are regarded in Finland as an ethnic minority or a nationality, by their own preference, so this is thorny. Nevertheless, their existence needs to be mentioned in this article: all placenames in the country have both official forms, for example. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:25, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

• "Swedish-speaking Finns" (which isn't what they call themselves; their endonym "Finlandssvenskar" means "Finland-Swedes", reflecting their own views on their ethnicity...) should be mentioned in the article as being a *native* minority in Finland, but should not be included here as Finns, since the article is about the Finnish-speaking ethnic group, not about Finnish citizens in general. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 16:02, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Thomas.W.This article is about ethnic group Finns, not about whole population of Finland. There is a clear linquistical, historical, cultural and genetical line between Swedish speaking population in Finland and Finns. In some sense you can compare it to situation in Belgium where you have Walloons and Flemish people as big ethnic groups or Britons in Hong Kong. During their history Finland Swedes have been clear to distinct themselves from Finns and still do, so in this sense one can see somekind of historical comedy in this debate. Also Finns are part of "Finnic people" but that cannot be used as a synonym. Velivieras (talk) 16:58, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Issue with the Page Finns

Regarding my Edit war on the Page Finns, the User Vivieras also has part of Blame in this, since the Swedish language is spoken by 5% of the Finnish people, however, i think he wasn't aware of that, since every time i added Swedish as the languages spoken by the Finns, together with Finnish, he reverted that WhiteGuy1850 (talk) 21:01, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

• @WhiteGuy1850: This article is about Finns, the ethnic group speaking the Finnish language, not Finland-Swedes, the ethnic group in Finland who speak the Swedish language and consider themselves ethnic Swedes. As has already been pointed out to you, and is also clearly stated in the talk page section above this. - Tom | Thomas.W ^talk 21:18, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Finnish language

Well, but, Swedish must be Added to the Languages, not all Irish people speak Irish, but, Irish is added to the Languages spoken by the Irish people, there's not a Separated Page about "Gaelic Irish people" as there's One about Finland-Swedes WhiteGuy1850 (talk) 21:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

@WhiteGuy1850: "there's not a Separated Page about "Gaelic Irish people" as there's One about Finland-Swedes"

I believe you cleared up everything there yourself. I do not see the confusion. Irish is a historical and cultural language of the Irish people, as Finnish is to Finns. Ethnic Swedes in Finland are the ones speaking Swedish for the most part, but this article is not about them. --ProKro (talk) 15:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Page: Finns

I wanted to take a Doubt, the Page: Maltese people have 3 languages in the language section as spoken by such People (Maltese, English and Italian, i.e., a language which is not even One of the Official languages of Malta), so, Why can't I add the Swedish language to the Languages section spoken by the Finns, which is one of the official languages of Finland and is spoken by 5% of the population? WhiteGuy1850 (talk) 02:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@WhiteGuy1850: Taking into account whether the language is official or not in any given country would be a terrible way of determining whether it is important to any people. Fula language, for example, is not an official language in any country, yet it is undeniably the language of the eponymous people, who number in millions over a vast region that spans a number of countries. If you'd be so kind as to read up on the Maltese people, Malta and the history of the two, I'm sure you would quickly learn that Italian and Sicilian were, up until relatively recently, commonly spoken by the Maltese, with Italian still spoken by some even today. This relates to your comment on Irish and its dwindling usage elsewhere on the talk page; still spoken by some but cultural heritage of the entire group. This is simply not the case with Finns and Swedish in Finland. It is commonly spoken only by a clearly defined minority who see themselves as such - Finland Swedes, the 5% you mentioned (sometimes even as separate from Swedes themselves which would only reinforce this separation!). This would be akin to putting Turkish as one of the languages of Germans; Turkish is undeniably widely spoken in Germany but a minority language nonetheless, that of German Turks. Even if we considered Sweden-Finland period of Swedish rule over Finland as part of its Swedish-speaking heritage, this wouldn't do justice to even more recent Russian influence on Finland during the Grand Duchy of Finland; I doubt anyone would add Russian to the list. It seems that this entire confusion comes from your misunderstanding of what the article is about. ProKro (talk) 16:00, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Wiik's refugia

Why are we even considering including anything non-peer reviewed? It's well known in the scientific community that the man is absolutely bonkers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.136.213.195 (talk) 09:22, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I fully agree. Phonologists in general seem too often feeling themselves in need to demonstrate their importance. Thus, cancel, or at least, shorten the paragraph, please. 2A02:8108:9640:AC3:5508:6824:BCFA:951F (talk) 11:33, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Regions of extinct Finns

Forest Finns were mentioned only in "Kvens and Forest Finns in Norway", although the number of Forest Finns was probably higher in Sweden. Anyway, because their language is today extinct, I removed Forest Finns from that sentence, and added "and Norway" on the Forest Finns line in the section of Emigration. But, if they are assimilated to the Norwegian and Swedish culetures, and their language is today extinct, why there is "including Forest Finns" after "Norway: 15,000–60,000"? There is no "including Forest Finns" after "Sweden: 156,045–712,000" - and should not be. Besides, today in the small Finnish colonies in Argentina and Brazil there are more Finnish speaking people than in the Finnskoger of Norway and Sweden. So, I think that if the numbers are based on the users of the Finnish language, today the number of Forest Finns probably is zero. and "including Forest Finns" should be omitted on the line of Norway (after checking in the two referred documents). Eppukoo (talk) 16:32, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

My changes to the "Forest Finns" were undone by user Velivieras, commenting "They are e.g. defined as a national minority in Norway". OK, that is acceptable, because in the Forest Finns article there is: "...However, the culture of the Forest Finns lives to a various degree in Norway and Sweden, and a number of place names commemorate the Finnish origins of various areas they settled, including in the Delaware River Valley of the United States. ... The Forest Finns, who are defined as a national minority in Norway today, are a distinct group from the other Finnish groups in Scandinavia ...". Eppukoo (talk) 22:14, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

"Origins"

When a whole chapter is based exclusively upon ONE author, and with partly very bold assertions, the author should be named in the heading. Further, what is meant by "The genetic basis of future Finns also emerged in this area." At least I, do not see the sense.2A02:8108:9640:AC3:5508:6824:BCFA:951F (talk) 11:30, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Langs widely accepted book summarises well the history of the research and is a overview to the situation of the research at the moment. You should check it out.Velivieras (talk) 08:09, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

My edits (GanjDareh4)

I have added four academic papers about the genetic make-up and migration history. I also moved a paragraph about Y Chromosome up to the specific sentence about the Y Chromosomes among Finns. I also added two graphics from two cited papers respectively. I added the two references from for the graphics. I do not see any problems here. The included content is not controversial, and already mentioned before my edits in a less precise way. If there are more questions, please write them here. Thank you. @TylerBurden:.GanjDareh4 (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Furthermore, I deleted conent which fail WP:RS, such as from "Eupedia" (a blog). I am not sure if there must be consensus to remove WP:RS and replacing it with academic papers?GanjDareh4 (talk) 18:54, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

My first question would be this, as an apparently completely new editor how are you so obviously familiar with editing? --TylerBurden (talk) 18:57, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I have edit as anonymous editor IP since 2018. I am now trying to improve "genetic" sections which often are only about haplogroup (YDNA, MtDNA, etc.), by including academic papers according to WP:RS. Why you remove my edits and references and reincluded blog sources which are not useable? The references can be verified by reading them.GanjDareh4 (talk) 19:01, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Go ahead and remove the blogs/unreliable sources, I am more concerned with the other content. I'll have a close look at them now though. I hope your story is true and there's not socking going on here. --TylerBurden (talk) 19:04, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Good, no problem, you can read and verify the references. You can reinclude my references after you verified them, or rewrite it according to your understanding, as long the section gets improved. I will remove the Eupedia links and move the Y Chromosome section to the fiting sentence.GanjDareh4 (talk) 19:10, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Looks fine so far, altough you did include the same reference twice but that's easy to fix. Sorry about not assuming good faith, been dealing with some socks recently. I'll finish up verifying and probably restore your edits. --TylerBurden (talk) 19:14, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

No problem. Regarding my edit at Hui people, the reference (Google books) does not seem to mention Hui people, as such I think it is unrelated to the topic. But if you think it is relevant than I do not oppose it.GanjDareh4 (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

@GanjDareh4: Actually, could you do it? I was gonna undo my latest revert but there's an edit conflict with your recent edit, so if you could restore it without the duplicate reference that would be good. --TylerBurden (talk) 19:18, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Okey, I will restore the version without the dublicate reference. Thank you.GanjDareh4 (talk) 19:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you as well for being understanding and civil. As for the Hui edit, I got no issues with that. I reverted because the edit summary seemed vague and the content not obviously unrelated, but that reason seems more than fair to me. A tip would be to use descriptive edit summaries in the future, it can prevent misunderstandings like this. But again thank you for being civil and for improving the article. --TylerBurden (talk) 19:24, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you too, I will use edit summaries from now on to prevent misunderstandings.GanjDareh4 (talk) 19:26, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello @TylerBurden: did you see this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Finns&diff=prev&oldid=1072461834? I have reverted it. Please watch the page for disruptive edits as before. I am currently busy in RL.GanjDareh4 (talk) 08:51, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I have included several inline citations/quotations to make it easier to confirm for other users and to prevent such problems. :)GanjDareh4 (talk) 09:39, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Edit conflict/discussion

User Skäggdopping previously removed large amounts of sourced content and reincluded links to unreliable websites, such as Eupedia forum (see WP:RS). I have reverted his changes. His argument was "the sources do not correspond". However everything is verifiable and the changes were already discussed above. @Skäggdopping: if you continue to make disruptive edits like that one, I will report your actions if necessary. Use the talk page to explain your concerns, and if true, we will find a solution for it. Please do not reinclude unreliable links (such as the Eupedia forum), and do not remove references. Thank you.GanjDareh4 (talk) 08:59, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I have included several quotations and inline citations. Please refrain from removing large amounts of sourced content, and explain your concerns at the talk page or make correcting edits. And next time please try to read the papers before making claims. Thank you and have a nice day.GanjDareh4 (talk) 10:50, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

The edits were reverted because many of the claims couldn't be supported by the sources they were referred to. One example is that the Siberian/Nganasan admixture among Finns would be 20% on average, and then range from 15-30%? No such information could be found. And now, the average suddenly dropped to 11%? I mean, wouldn't it be better to read the studies in their entirety before writing anything? I only managed to find information about samples from ancient burials in Levänluhta that showed 30% Nganasan admixture, but these samples aren't relevant to modern populations, and especially not to modern Finns. The diagram that was added shows that Finns are actually LESS than 10% Siberian/Nganasan on average, not 11%. So again, where do these numbers come from? The samples that showed 25% are from the Saami people, as seen in the diagram, but the Saami people aren't Finns, so I don't really understand why they should be included in this article. Also, in what way are Mongolians relevant here? This section is about Finns and THEIR genes, not Mongolians. And in which study does it say that the Nganasans were the ones who brought Siberian genes to Europe? I think the consensus is that there are still too little information for anyone to draw any major conclusions. Everything points to that the West Uralic-speaking peoples most likely were overwhelmingly European genetically before they arrived in Europe, as seen in the Levänluhta samples, which by the way were most similar to modern Saami people, and not to modern Finns. Lastly, there were no issues with the sources, the only issue was how they were interpreted. Skäggdopping (talk) 11:33, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your arguments and view @Skäggdopping:. The East Asian/Siberian component range from 8% to 30%, I saw the Finns at 11% and Russians at 12%, but looking closer you seem to be right that the chart at Finns shows more like 9% here. I found another graph suggesting 8%, so we may use this estimation instead. The information about Sami is a side information as they are a minority in Finland and it may be relevant to mention them in comparison to Finns.

To your second argument, Nganasans are used as proxy, as best fit population. It is not said that they or a population identical to them, migrated into Finland, but that the East Asian/Siberian component found among Finns/Sami is best represented by contribution from a Nganasan-related population. The people arriving at Finland did probably not have 100 to 90% Nganasan-related ancestry, but lower percentage, as they admixed with local groups there and during their journey.

The reference about Mongolian affinity among Finns clearly mentions Finns, I also included a inline citation for this statement. As such it is relevant.

I think I understand your concerns and will try to rewrite the controversial parts respectively to your arguments. Thank you for your productive input. I am sure we will improve the section.GanjDareh4 (talk) 12:10, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you @Skäggdopping:! I have reworded the paragraph of your concern. I have seemingly mixed up another paper, as I could also not find the 11%/15% I claimed before. If I find the paper with this estimation I will reinclude it, but for now thank you very much and take my apologize. I have also changed the headline of this discussion. If there is still a problem, please let me know.GanjDareh4 (talk) 12:26, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@GanjDareh4: I did see the edit yes, but assumed good faith and figured they may have spotted something I did not which is what appears to have happened here and figured you would see it and be able to address any issues which I can see you have also done. So all appears to be well unless @Skäggdopping: has any other issues with the content? --TylerBurden (talk) 17:35, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello @TylerBurden:, @Skäggdopping: the user turned out to be a sock of a LTA. I have reverted and corrected as far as reliable and useful the papers were. Only to let you know.Whhu22 (talk) 13:37, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 8 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} 19:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

---

Finns → Finnish people – Title should unambiguously define the specific scope of the article. The term Finns has the potential to encompass various communities, including Finnic peoples, Baltic Finnic peoples, or the entirety of Finnish citizens. I'm uncertain about the prevailing nomenclature in reliable English sources for this particular ethnic group (which is the focus of this article): whether it's Finnish people or Finns. Both terms seem to be equally prevalent, but it would be prudent to opt for an alternative and unambiguous name. Should my suggestion gain support, a possible course of action could involve retargeting Finns to Finn. However, this matter can be deliberated separately at a later time. P. S. It's worth highlighting that in analogous instances, a preference for unambiguous titles is evident. For example, Turkish people and Turks redirect to Turk; similarly, Indian people and Indians redirect to Indian, and so forth. Whitekocher (talk) 13:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support per WP:PRECISE. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:26, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
• Comment: At least the Swedish Wikipedia makes a distinction between sv:Finnar (ethnic Finns) and sv:Finländare (citizens of Finland). This article is about the ethnic group, but would "Finnish people" mean the nationality? JIP | Talk 21:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

  "Nationality" does refer to the group of ethnic Finns. Hence, Finnish people refers to both the nationality and ethnic group (technically nationality and ethnic group are two different things, but in this specific case most people of Finnish nationality are of 'Finnish ethnicity'). The citizens of Finland would be called just that, or more likely Finnish citizens. estar8806 (talk) ★ 01:24, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Support - per nom and WP:PRECISE. estar8806 (talk) ★ 01:19, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. The term Finns is well established and used specifically for ethnic Finns and natives of Finland. Using Finns as a synonym for Finnic peoples would just make things confusing. It is a bit like using the term Germans for Germanic peoples - wrong.

Skäggdopping (talk) 16:32, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I am not native speaker of English, but I cannot see risk to mix the term Finns with eg. Finnic peoples. If there is a problem, it is more with the latter. To me the term Finns excplicitly means the ethnic group. Finnish people might easily mix up with Finnish citizens, people living in Finland etc. Velivieras (talk) 10:36, 12 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Per two opposes above, unless some good solution for preventing confusion between ethnicity and citizenship is presented I don't see how this would be an improvement. ″Finnish people″ implies a general article rather than one about the specific ethnic group Finns. --TylerBurden (talk) 18:31, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Vandalism by user:Vofa

A vandal is currently trying to manipulate sourced content in this article. While claiming to have "polished language", he removed large amounts of sourced content.[4] Particularly he removed any mention of Siberian geneflow and moved those related citations elsewhere. 38.135.53.189 (talk) 08:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I would advice against calling them a vandal, WP:AGF and all that, but it would be good if @Vofa could better explain their edits and both of you stop edit warring. TylerBurden (talk) 16:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Hello! I’ll start by saying that it takes two users to edit war. I did polish the language and removed or moved unnecessary citations which were used a lot of times incorrectly e.g sources often did not contain text to support the claim, even vaguely. Certain claims were presented as facts, without any such claims present in the references/citations. As for the total population of the Finns, I recounted the vague estimates present in the Infobox. I would like for my version to be restored, and the page to become protected. Vofa (talk) 18:53, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

You did remove text that is supported by the sources, though. They talk about the East Eurasian/Siberian genetic component and you removed all mention of that. The version should not be restored. Finncle (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Are you associated in any way with the account that reverted my edits? Would like to know! I would also request direct quotations of any text that might include anything about your claim. Vofa (talk) 19:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

A bit of a strange suggestion. No, I have nothing to do with it. Instead, I'm interested in Finns. Finncle (talk) 19:16, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I sincerely hope that you are here to make a Wikipedia! On contrary, it is a bit strange that you bring up genetics which in itself is a questionable branch of human biology. Thus, seemingly repeating what the new user said. Vofa (talk) 19:32, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Well of course I bring it up because it interests me and you made changes to it that made the article worse. Finncle (talk) 19:38, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Quite a bold claim you made! Check out my new comment. Vofa (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

About the quotations. I'll mention some. Översti 2019 says: Finns are also genetically distinct from their neighboring populations and form outliers in the genetic variation within Europe. This genetic uniqueness derives from both reduced genetic diversity and an Asian influence to the gene pool, and Salmela 2023 says the following for example: Niinpä meillä on perimää enimmäkseen lännestä mutta kymmenisen prosenttia myös kaukaa idästä; sitä on saatu niin jääkaudenjälkeisiltä metsästäjä-keräilijöiltä, nuorakeraamikoilta, varhaisilta maanviljelijöiltä kuin pronssikauden Siperiastakin. Suomalaisten geneettistä omaleimaisuutta korostaa se, että Suomessa pieni väkiluku ja erilaiset pullonkaulailmiöt ovat johtaneet geneettiseen satunnaisajautumiseen, joka on heilautellut monien geenimuotojen yleisyyksiä muuhun Eurooppaan verrattuna and Tämä komponenttikoostumus on suomalaisilla varsin samanlainen kuin virolaisilla ja balteilla; vain siperialaistyyppistä komponenttia on Baltiassa vähemmän, 0–5 % (9,14). Länsi- ja Keski-Eurooppaan sekä Skandinaviaan verrattuna Suomessa (ja Baltiassa) on pienempi osuus varhaisten maanviljelijöiden perimäkomponenttia (KUVA 3) ja enemmän metsästäjä-keräilijäkomponenttia (9,15). Nämä erot saavat suomalaiset näyttämään geneettisesti omaleimaisilta verrattuna keskieurooppalaisiin. Lamnidis 2018 says: This model, however, does not fit well for present-day populations from north-eastern Europe such as Saami ... and Finns: they carry additional ancestry seen as increased allele sharing with modern East Asian populations and also shows that Finns have Siberian-like ancestry. Qin 2015 says that Russian and Finnish populations show ~13% Asian ancestry.These support the text that Finns being outliers has to do with differences in admixture, which includes increased East Eurasian component. Salmela 2023, when talking about the differences between Western and Eastern Finns, says: ...Itä-Suomessa myös itäisen – eli siperialaistyyppisen – perimäkomponentin osuus on isompi, which means that Eastern Finns have higher Siberian admixture. Finncle (talk) 19:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Despite the differences, the IBS analysis points out that Western and Eastern Finns share overall a largely similar genetic foundation. Vofa (talk) 19:57, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

It seems like a questionable and a bold claim, I would like for you to define Asian and „Asian/Siberian admixture“ in your words. Furthermore, the authors name should be stated when the paragraph starts. Vofa (talk) 19:38, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

If something is bold, it is going against the consensus and studies about this topic for no reason. Finncle (talk) 19:44, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Can you clarify? Vofa (talk) 19:47, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

But is it the consensus? Amongst whom? Where? The concept of race has been definitely disproven in 2016, supported by popular consensus. It has been dismissed in serious academic circles long before. Could you share a little more about the „topic“ please? Vofa (talk) 19:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the concept of race. In population genetics, the small East Eurasian-like component in Finns is a long-known basic fact shown in many studies. You simply removed all text about it with no explanation other than to claim that the studies don't support it, even though they do, as the quotations, for example, show. You should give a good reason for removing the text, otherwise at least I'm ready to move on. Finncle (talk) 19:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

These studies are not based on science, and are highly questionable/controversial. I’m curious how they conducted their „studies“ if any. I’d like to see a reference for those. Science disproves the concept of race. Vofa (talk) 20:14, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

There's actually nothing controversial about them, and like I said, they have nothing to do with the concept of race. These are science too. Since no good reason has been given for deleting the text about the scientific concensus, I think this discussion is done, at least when it comes to population genetics. I didn't really pay attention if you made other changes. Finncle (talk) 20:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I will disagree and reminder that the dispute is still ongoing. I did make changes that did not touch genetics. Vofa (talk) 07:28, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Always assume good faith. Vofa (talk) 18:56, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

You seem quite new, you seem to have some experience with editing, do you have any accounts that we do not know about? Vofa (talk) 19:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC)