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This article mostly focused on current-day Finland-Swedes. There is very little about the Finland-Swedes history. They were a significant group because of their political and cultural importance between 1600–1900.
Fred- Chess 09:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Could any other person please comment? / Fred- Chess 07:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Of course it's pure nonsense to talk about racism as Jaakko does. The administrative language of the Swedish empire was Swedish, the administrative language of the English empire was English, French in the French empire, German in the German empire and so on. There was nothin racial nor anything unusual about it. JdeJ 17:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Finland Swedes are not Finns, they are Swedes living in Finland that are citizens of Finland. Thus, this article is completely POV. For example, check this webpage by a Finland Swede, you could hardly argue that he consider himself being a Finn. Den fjättrade ankan 19:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi MoRsE, welcome to the discussion, especially since you are one of the people this article is about! (Den fjättrade ankan has apparently lived in Sweden all his/her life.) All modern scientists, including linguists and lexicologists, and lexicographers consider self-designation the most important criterion in naming groups of people. We do have to take into consideration, however, that people are not necessarily able to represent their wishes well in a foreign language. I have no idea what you're trying to say with "following your logic I could call you an native Indian". Do you agree that it is correct to call ethnic Swedes living in the USA "Swedish Americans"? Do you agree that it would be incorrect to call them "US Swedes"?
What would you estimate is the percentage of Swedish-speaking Finns that share your opinion that they would like to be called "Swedes"? Are you implying that the Swedish Assembly of Finland and the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland are not representing the wishes of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns and of all Swedish authors in Finland respectively?
BTW your unilateral page move is in violation of WP policies and will be reverted by an admin shortly. -- Espoo 01:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's any need to start talking about vandalism. MoRsE, it seems you have some good reasons to suggest that Finland-Swedes is a better name for the article. If that's the case, then we'll want to move the article correctly, with all of its history, and doing that will require administrative assistance. Since this is clearly a controversial move proposal - we've got people defending both names - we'll need to use the Requested Moves procedure to determine consensus. MoRsE, are you familiar with Wikipedia:Requested moves? If you follow the procedures there, we can have a focused discussion on whether or not to move the page, and we can consider everybody's arguments and make sure everyone has a chance to be heard, and then we'll make a decision. I've undone the "cut-and-paste" move you did, MoRsE, and let's have the discussion before we move any pages. - GTBacchus( talk) 03:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The most recent 13 entries in my admin log are a good testament to why cut-and-paste moves are a bad idea. - GTBacchus( talk) 04:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
A couple of things which I think we all could agree on:
Based on the above, I'm definately leaning towards Finland-Swedes being a different ethnic group (with ethnicity defined as different culture, in this case, language). KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
This is obviously a controversy. In the interests of trying to forge some type of agreement I've dug up some material, first an official Finnish view, second comments from the Swedish People's Party and finally, Google results for various name forms. The first of from the very offical Virtual Finland website. It recognizes that there are two views, but clearly prefers the view that Finland-Swedes are only a linguistic minority, not an ethnic minority.
The Swedish People's Party (Sfp), the leading party among Finland-Swedes/Swedish speaking Finns, appart from the very name implying that there is a separate "Swedish people" in Finland talks about Swedish culture and a separate Finland-Swedish identity in its party program (here in Swedish):
While Finland Swedes will feel themselves to be full citizens of Finland and that Finland is their 'motherland' they do have a separate identity to that of Finnish speaking Finns. Some would argue that this constitutes the basis for being an ethnic minority, wile other say it is simply a cultural and linguistic minority. So, there are different views on the topic. However, as Wikipedia is supposed to convey the most common view rather than the 'right' one I opt for letting Google decide. Searching in English but excluding all hits including the word "Wikipedia" gives the following results:
So, while I agree that the article should be called "Swedish speaking Finns" it should (a) aknowledge that there are other views and (b) be clear that while it may not be an ethnic minority, it clearly a speparate linguistic and cultural minority. KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo and others, I don't see this as a right or wrong issues, I see it as "what is the current common practice?" What matters is not if Swedish speaking Finns (who presumably call themselves "Finländare" in Swedish, for which there is not good English equivalent) are genetically different from ethnic Finns or not or if they have a different historical geographic origin from Finnish speaking Finns. What is important is how the majority of Swedish speaking Finns view themselves today. While historically Swedish speaking Finns may have viewed themselves as a separate ethnic group from the Finnish speakers, this is, generally, not the case today. Are German speaking Swiss "ethnically" different from French speaking Swiss? However, in both cases there is a very clear linguistic difference and a certain cultural difference (which is strongly linked with the linguistic difference).
So, I see no need to contact any professors for sources. Better to agree on the following:
How about it? KarlXII 08:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo and others, I'm in agreement with you. Except I do feel that enough arguments and sources have been presented above to convince me that the term "Swedish speaking Finns" is correct. No need to call any professors (I'm not sure that would necessarily be seen as more convincing than any of the above arguments/sources). So, let's settle on the following:
Are we all OK with this? Let's wait a couple of days (say, towards the weekend) and then implement the above on the related articles ( Finnish people, Swedish speaking Finns, to name a few). KarlXII 10:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, you're confusing issues that i tried hard to keep separate. I already said that we have enough sources for the naming issue but we don't have any for the ethnic, cultural, or other claims. Those latter claims are the ones we need the reputable sources for. Not the least important reason being that we can let this article's editing start to again reflect the calm surrounding this issue normally in Finland. People are upset about pakkoruotsi but nobody does anything but laugh about the kind of claims of NPOV we will encounter regularly from Swedish nationalists (and the time wasted on repeated RMs etc.) if we don't have reputable sources on ethnic, cultural, genetic, language-switching percentages, and related issues.
More specifically, i have read on at least 3 occasions in Helsingin Sanomat about research showing that there are "surprising" and statistically very significant differences in suicide rates and disease rates between Swedish and Finnish speakers in Finland despite the lack of statistically significant differences in terms of income, education, or genetic makeup between these population groups. This kind of research shows that there are clear cultural differences including more and closer family ties, greater willingness/ability to communicate (talk), and a stronger sense of responsibility for others which all result in better care, less loneliness, and basically "better vibes". I don't remember if these studies were able to or even tried to show if the stronger sense of community and better vibes and better health were due to cultural traditions or caused by the feeling of being a minority and being forced to stick up for their rights and each other.
And, once again, we cannot present "Finlander" as just another possible or even traditional name without explaining that this does not exist except in texts badly translated by non-native English speakers. -- Espoo 11:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo:
Regards KarlXII 13:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo: I'd like to draw some conclusions. So, do we decide on the following:
OK? KarlXII 15:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, that "Swedish-speaking Finns" is the best term was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move. This move was exceptionally well supported by reputable sources, a majority of votes (all 5, in fact), and even participation and voting by professional experts on the topic, which is very rare on WP. There also already was a long explanation in the article explaining why it's the best term before this newest claim of violation of NPOV started. Obviously the supporters of this claim did not take seriously the arguments presented in the requested move. They perhaps didn't even bother to read them because their haphazard edits of the article showed that they hadn't bothered to read that either.
Obviously, we could have just reverted the unsupported changes and refused to respond to the accusations here on the talk page in any way except to demand sources for the wild claims. I however find it's better to take everyone seriously who bothers to state their case even when they don't supply reputable sources. The only source they provided is the same one you just listed too, which only has information in Swedish (which i don't understand) and is apparently written by an amateur with a private theory. He doesn't present this theory even on his Finnish pages, but what he writes in Finnish about family names shows that he is not an expert nor interested in unbiased reporting of historical research.
As for the rest of your proposed point #1:
- Finland-Swedes is an incorrect or at least outdated spelling for Finland Swedes
- We cannot say that finländare exists or is used in English because it isn't. We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles). We can say that this means "Finlander" but we should point out that this is term is not used in well-edited English texts. In fact, i can try to find some reputable source that says what is in fact the case, that this is an outdated term that labels its user as ignorant. You're right that when used by uninformed English speakers it should not be labeled as "bad" English, and i was specifically referring to texts written by non-native speakers. In that context, even linguists speak about "bad" English although they also use that term only on talk pages, as i did too. I was obviously not proposing use of that terminology in the article. When native speakers use a form that used to be called "bad" or "wrong" by linguists and still are by school teachers, modern linguists explain that that is unscientific because all "rules" and "correct English" are exclusively statistically more common and that they are continuously replaced by forms once considered incorrect once these become more common. This does not apply to people trying to use a foreign language though. Even if most Finns (both Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking Finns) and Swedes used the term “Finlander” in trying to speak and write English (very few do), WP should not say that this is an acceptable form if it is not used in carefully edited English texts (which even in Finland of course follow usage in English-speaking countries).
Your point #2: We already have enough reputable sources (and I found some more) to claim that Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns, but we have no reputable sources that support other claims. We have private claims by two participants in this discussion that the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns don’t think of themselves as ethnic Finns and even don’t think of themselves as Finns and even think of themselves as Swedes. These are private opinions that are clearly incorrect as to their claims of representing the views of “most” and “all” Swedish-speaking Finns etc. and apparently represent an extremely small minority. I’m not sure what WP policy is on theories and opinions presented by extremely small groups of people. It would seem that these opinions cannot be presented in WP unless they have some kind of reputable source to back them up. I’m pretty sure that these people cannot find any serious researcher employed at any major institution that would back these claims. Obviously private pages written by amateur historians and other blog-like sources do not qualify as reputable sources. The only thing that might seem to suffice is if there were some kind of private organisation that printed material with these wild claims; then we could quote those eccentric claims and put them into the correct perspective by saying that the organisation has X number of members and that the Swedish Assembly of Finland has said Y and Z about these claims. -- Espoo 10:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo, I think you are being a bit too dogmatic/absolute on a couple of topics:
KarlXII 12:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, it seems you're again misunderstanding things i wrote or i'm writing them badly. I never said anything that contradicted what you're saying above. I have no idea why you think i'm being "dogmatic/absolute". It seems that you didn't realise that most of my post was not dealing with your comments but with the opinions of the people who started this debate without anything except incorrect personal claims and theories about what Swedish-speaking Finns are and consider themselves to be. I feel responsible for dealing with their comments in a mature way even if they've disappeared.
I never said "Finland Swedes" doesn't exist in English nor that it isn't fairly common. Nevertheless, i think it has never been as common in texts written by native English speakers as in English texts written by Finns and Swedes, and i think that many times native English speakers especially in the USA used it only because they copied the usage in English by Finns and Swedes although it was/is illogical according to the naming usage in use in the USA. I believe the term was even rarer in carefully edited texts by native English experts who weren't just rephrasing things they'd heard non-native speakers say about this exotic topic. I have no idea where i was "being black and white". I was simply pointing out that i agree with your proposal "we'll set 'Swedish speaking Finns' as the norm thoughout Wikipedia" because that "was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move". Nothing new in your proposal or my agreement, and definitely nothing dogmatic or black and white, just an attempt to defend our decision despite being against the wishes of the ghost participants in this discussion. Most of the rest of my post was also trying to point out that you and i agree on almost everything, but that we have to deal with the people who started this debate and have now disappeared and will suddenly appear again sometime in the future with the same claims and the same lack of reputable sources to back up their claims.
You know much more than me about the frequency of usage of "finländare" in Swedish and i specifically said "We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles)." Perhaps i remembered incorrectly or maybe the claims to that effect by others were wrong, but once again, nothing dogmatic in my post.
I also agree with most of your third point now because i seem to have convinced you to drop the previous idea of saying that although Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns "this has not always been the case and that there is a debate/controversy about their origins compared to the Finnish speaking population". Since we have no reputable sources for these claims, we cannot put them into an encyclopedia. The same problem is with "appear to be very few consistent genetic differences". As long as we have no reputable source for that, we can't add it. On the other hand, http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenruotsalaiset claims that the genetic makeup is 80% identical and no one has removed that claim, so we can probably copy it here. In fact, there are quite a few other interesting things in the Finnish WP article, and since most Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish fluently, we can be pretty sure that there is nothing in that article that the majority of them would disagree with. I will start to transfer info from there and provide any sources that i have. You may want to do similar translation and copy work from the Swedish article. If we run into serious disagreements, we can ask for comments exclusively by Swedish-speaking Finns (and no Swedes) on the relevant talk pages. -- Espoo 23:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
This problematic issue indeed. "Swedish-speaking Finn", although the term was proposed by a Finland-Swedish institution itself is erranous. a "Finn" refers to Fenno-Ugrian, in Finland context that is Finnish-speaking individual. A study which found "considerable" different genetic differences between Finns and Finland-swedes (referred in the biology section) used the term "Swedes on mainland Finland". Culture, heritage and linguistics have clearly tied Finland-Swedish minority to Sweden (Tarkiainen, 2008). To apply the term Swedish-speaking Finn to Osterbotnian person who lives and breath Swedish culture and shares genetic history with Swedish( Hannelius, 2008) is simple flawed. The term simply erases history.
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
09:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm editing the parts of the History section which discusses the 'ethnic' background of the Swedish speaking population of Finland, mainly because it is not properly sourced.
The first source, written by a Finnish professor in Japan about the situatin of Koreans in Japan has several shortcomings which means it's not a sufficient source for the claims made:
The second source, which unfortunately is only in Finnish and Swedish but gives a much more serious/academic impression, only deals with cultural (ie not the 'ethnic' issues means here).
Therefore I am removing the text referring to the Swedish speaking population descending from Finnish speakers. KarlXII 10:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
As for the switching between languages, this appears to have been a two-way street, so it's not necessarily so that most Swedish speakers have orginiated from Finnish speakers (or vice versa). This is from the Swedish and Finnish language source mentioned above:
As far as I know it was also quite common for Swedish speaking families to switch to Finnish during the nationalist period during the early 19th century. KarlXII
Espoo,
Gotta go, so I only have time for some comments:
KarlXII 15:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII,
I neither used the figure 80% nor did i say the document contained it. I specifically said i'd replace it with "most" because the document can be interpreted as saying even more than 80%. Please tell me what part of the following explanation and quote from the document you didn't understand:
More importantly, it contains the important sentence "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes", which definitely would defend use of the 80% figure, even though the source for that precise number is missing in the Finnish WP article. (I will simply write "most", which i hope you will agree is OK.)
You may be right that i should find a better way of introducing the second source than by using the word "educated", but the fact that something on such a central topic is publicly stated by a professor of political science means that this is most likely not just a personal opinion but an opinion based on the extensive research of many experts on the topic. Very many "less informed people" in both population groups in Finland (and in Sweden) say completely racist and stupid things about the other population group because they are not educated enough and therefore believe too much junk that they hear and read. If we find a quote from another well-informed person saying something that contradicts the current quote, we can of course add that, but i'm afraid we won't find anybody professor of any discipline that would say something like that. You're right that a political science professor is not the best expert to quote on this topic, but political science is also concerned with this topic, and no political science professor would state something on this topic without having read more on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will... -- Espoo 16:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo, thank's for your respons. Unfortunately I'm not 100% clear here,
KarlXII 23:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII,
Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.
As for the second quote, you're right that we can and do need to find a better source than a statement by a political science professor, but it's completely irrelevant where he presented this statement or the fact that most of the lecture is about a different minority in a different country. And your derogatory comments about some professors in general are not really relevant either. Obviously, if this one's a crackpot, we can find statements by other highly educated people that will say completely different things. We can then remove this quote or, if it represents the opinion of a notable small group of crackpots or of well-informed people, we can have it in addition to the majority opinion. In any case, as i already said, a political science professor knows more about research results on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will. Much of the article now consists of unsupported claims added by people with much less knowledge about this subject and much less intellectual integrity and, most importantly, much more anonymity than this quote from a respected member of the international scientific community. Unless you have clear proof that this professor is talking nonsense, his statement is more reliable than most of what is in WP in general and than much of what is in this article.
I'd estimate that 90% of everything in most WP articles could be in principle removed by saying the content is not verifiable or at least has no source provided. The general practice is however not to remove any info without a source unless the info is disputed. It makes absolutely no sense starting the verification process by removing some of those parts of the 10% or so of WP that do have a source on the basis that they have "less good reputable sources". Even if a political science professor isn't the best expert on this topic, he's still better than none. And his statement does not contradict in any way the other reputable sources provided. Unless you can find a reputable source that contradicts this member of the international scientific community, there is no reason to doubt the reputation of the person or of the scientific verifiability of his statement.
The specific reasons i believe we should leave this quote until we find a better one by separate experts on genetics and genealogy and linguistics is because this quote specifically mentions these other aspects and also the reciprocity of the situation. He specifically points out that "many Finnish speakers can list among their ancestors more Swedish speakers than Finnish speakers", which will stop wild claims from the other side that Finnish speakers didn't inherit any genes from Swedish speakers. In the current situation of nearly identical genotypes, the average amount of genes inherited by the majority from the minority is obviously much smaller than the other way around, but there are many exceptions to the rule.
The rest of the quote is similarly important and informative, providing an insight not elsewhere in the article: "Many Finns simply adopted [the] Swedish language as their first language during the [period of] Swedish rule, but [for] centuries, many families and individuals used both languages." -- Espoo 10:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo,
KarlXII 22:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm sorry but i can't really think of doing anything except repeating my first paragraph above and ask you to say what you don't understand in it:
Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns ... are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.
Well, let me try to rephrase it simply: The experts are saying that the genes of the two groups are now more or less identical. Since this is the result of intermarriage between 2 originally separate and probably genetically different population groups of which one was much smaller, this is only possible if the small group's genes were "diluted" so much by the big group's genes that the original differences are now statistically insignificant. It of course also implies that the genes of the small group spread out throughout Finland in smaller amounts but very extensively and homogeneously. (The only way that two groups that are now genetically identical could have inherited similar amounts of genes from each other is if the groups were about equal in size.) I'm no expert on statistics or genetics and don't know what "statistically significant" means in numbers, but i'd guess that this means that the Swedish-speaking Finns have apparently inherited more than perhaps 95% of their genes from the originally distinct majority. -- Espoo 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo,
Regards KarlXII 10:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The very next reference is in English: "Since the population genetic, ecological and socioeconomic circumstances are equal..." -- Espoo 10:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
LOL! Are you serious? Your remark is referring to a sociocultural study and is not further validated b any genetic or medical reseach. BTW the study found out that Finland-Swedes live considerably longer and happier life than Fenno-Ugrians of Finland.These researchers have missed the study by Hannelius (2008) which found out that Finland-Swedes cluster with Swedes, not with Finns.
Podomi (
talk)
10:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Is it actually necessary to provide a translation for the term suomenruotsalaiset or finlandsvenskar. I am not a English speaker myself, but I think that they sometimes adopt foreign ethnonymes in English without translating them. Would it be possible to talk just about "the Finlandsvenskar" in English Wikipedia. That would avoid all the POV problems in tranlation. Oh, well, I do not know if this makes any sense, it is just a suggestion...-- 130.234.75.19 13:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Is the current name of the article, Swedishspeaking Finns, correct English?-- 130.234.75.164 11:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Den fjättrade ankan keeps moving the article Sweden Finns to "Finnishspeaking Swedes" and "Finnish-speaking Swedes". I think this is wrong as it for instance excludes a large number of Sweden Finns that happen to be Finnish citizens. We could benefit from some more opinions at Talk:Sweden Finns. -- Jniemenmaa 11:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
In the newish section of the article about naming, there is a sentence that states that some Swedish speaking Finns would prefer to be known as "svenskspråkiga Finnar". I believe that is completely rubbish as use of such a term does not make sense in the Swedish language (especially in finlandssvenska) as finne/finnar refers specifically to a Finn or Finns who speak Finnish as their mother tongue. There is no equivalent distinction in the English language (i.e. the word "Finn" in English includes all Finns regardless of language, the equivalent Swedish would be finländare). I think it should be removed. Certainly as one myself, I know of no Finland Swede who would call themselves this. 94pjg 02:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little baffled here. The article is quite clear that
"...the Finnish Government Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, which has consulted other English experts, recommends ([7]), the following use: "Finland Swede should be used about persons, Finland-Swedish as the adjective, and Finland Swedish for the version of Swedish that is spoken in Finland"."
Despite this, there is an unsourced argument for why the term "Swedish-speaking Finns" should be used instead. Most likely this is WP:OR. I realize this is probably due to some underlying debate about whether or not this group are actually Finns who speak Swedish or actually 'Swedes' who happen to live in Finland. Regardless of this, it would see pretty clear to me that if a Finnish government institute has looked into the specific matter and recommends "Finland Swedes" then that is what the article should be called. Of course other variants should be mentioned in the intro. Cheers Osli73 ( talk) 11:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Seems like the sources claiming that Finnish Swedes/Finnish speaking Finns genetically are ethnical Finns not Swedes come just from the finnish side. Generally I think the article promotes just one point of view(i.e. finnish), it should be more balanced in my opinion. Why don't we see any info reagrding genetical research about the subject coming from Sweden or any third-party country? Also I haven't heard any Fenno-Swede calling himself/herself svenskspråkiga Finnar, I agree with 94jpg - seems like this term makes no sense. I believe Finlandssvenskar is the most used term.
By the way, I'd like to state that even if that reserach is correct, it doesn't mean that most of Finnish Swedes ancestors were ethnical Finns. Genetical studies about Finnish people say that up to 50% of their genotype is also Germanic. Probably, there were some Finnish people among Finnish Swedes ancestors but the thesis that they make vast majority does seem to be very doubtful and generally unprovable. Der_Ritter 15:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Janke, I do not say that Fenno-Swedes are Swedish, as I remember from talks to Finnish Swedes, they really don't consider their nationality Swedish, but they do say that their ethicity does differ from Finnish people of Finland... They call themselves Finnish by nation, but Swedisth by mother tongue and claim to have different heritage and traditions from Finnish people. So it seems like that people do belong to a separate ethnic group to my mind. And yes, I've met just one who was calling himself a Swede rather than a Finn...(actually this one was a Finnish Swede from Big Helsinki area). Der_Ritter 17:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Interesting piece on this here (in Swedish though): http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?l=sv&s=2209 94pjg 22:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
This whole article and discussion revolves under false claims of genetic similarity with Finns and Fennoswedes. Rarely do we see any references. Unfortunately it looks like this site was hijacked by a group political activist with grudges to Swedish people in Finland. Furtunately, I´ve managed to to bring valid, scientific studies on the etníc origins of Finland-Swedes. Not that it is the most important issue, genetics, but since its the information here has been so twisted I see its importance regarding to the definition of "Swedish-speaking Finns". I am about to read the most current academic source of Swedish-minority in Finland (Kari Tarkiainen, Sveriges Österland) and will update the page as I progress with my "studies". Podomi ( talk) 10:00, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
This article is about Swedish-speaking finns. Translated into Swedish this would be Finlandssvenskar. Finlandssvenskar is an ethnic group in Finland, but as far as I am concerned the inhabitants of Åland are not considered as Finlandssvenskar, yet this article considers the Ålanders as swedish-speaking finns. This would be accurate on the basis that they are citizens of Finland and that they speak swedish. We have to keep in mind that Åland is an autonomous part within the finlandic borders. The dialects resembles the most the swedish ones spoken on the swedish side north of Stockholm (Roslagen). Finnish speaking finns normally consider them as Ålanders and not finns or finlandssvenskar for that matter. Among Swedes (In Sweden, Åland and in Finland) there is no notion: svensktalande finländare - Swedish-speaking finns so why inventing this notion on en.wiki? It would be more accurate to use the swedish notion, "finlandssvenskar", i.e finland swedes, to avoid this article to be an expression of original research. Nirro ( talk) 22:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
94pjg ( talk) 15:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
How many percent of the Swedish-speaking Finns/Finland-Swedes might be willing to denote their own group "svenskar" either in Finland or outside? Clarifer ( talk) 14:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
We do refer to ourselves as "svenskar" often, at least in Finland or within certain contexts where it's clear it doesn't mean anything to do with Sweden. I suppose you could argue we mean it as a shortening of finlandssvenskar. It's perhaps fair to say it was even more used in the past when there was far less contact with Sweden (i.e. no Swedish tv channels or internet) and thus less room for confusion with "rikssvenskar". But people certainly use it today still, i.e. if a new family moves in next door, you might ask "are they svenskar" or say my doctor is "svensk" and not mean to be referring to anyone from Sweden at all. Confusing perhaps, but in the context it makes sense. I guess you could make a comparison with the fact that there are institutions etc called Svenska handelshögskolan or indeed Svenska folkpartiet. Again, in their context they make sense and it's clear they don't refer to the country of Sweden in any way. 94pjg ( talk) 00:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
There are some errors below the article, in the box of ´´Diaspora´´. Faroe Islands and the Netherlands must be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haettman1986 ( talk • contribs) 09:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I´ve recently noticed lot of myth of the genetics of Finland-Swedes and attempts to question their etnic status. Historical experiences are probably influencing Fennoman Finnish posters too much and hence the speaking of differences between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers is sensitive issue for Fenno-Ugrians of Finland (Finns). So far, I haven't managed to tap into a study which would say Finland-Swedes do not differ from Finns. Claiming that Finland-swedes and Finns are genetically identical on the basis of one socioanthropologic study is dubious to say the least.
Now, here´s some facts.
1) A a recent study (Hannelius, 2008) the author found that The Ostrobotnian Finland-Swedes stood out from their neighboring Fenno-Ugrians and formed a seperate genetic cluster with Swedes.
2) In this study "significant" genetic differences were found among Finland-Swedes and Finns.
"Table 1 shows the distibution ADA (Adenosine deamiase) phenotypes in three samples each from Finland-Swedes (population 1, 2, 3,) and Finns (4,5,6). Brief preliminary reports of these data have been presented elsewhere. The ADA2 gene frequency is about 0.6 in the Swedish population investigated in Finland and 0.10 in the Finns.|Adenosine deaminase polymorphism in Finland (Swedes, Finns, and Lapps), the Mari republic (Cheremisses), and Greenland (Eskimos). A W Eriksson, M Kirjarinta, J Fellman, M R Eskola, and W Lehmann.
3) Again, This study found "considerable" differences with Swedes on Finnish mainland and etnic Fenno-Ugrians.
According to this data we fairly well postulate following conclusion:
-Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic population within Finland. They are an etnic minority.
Podomi ( talk) 10:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
The studies I presented addressed Ostrobotnians, "Swedes on Finnish mainland"/Nylanders and Ålanders. Your point is valid, though. The studies established strict criteria for ancestry (All grandparents must be belong to the identified etnicity). However, the point was to study Finland-Swedes not Half Finland-Swedes and Finns. Bi-lingual marriages between the etnic lines Finland-Swedes and Finns have been on a rapid increase in the past few decades. Previously they were very rare exception. One doesn't need but to look for old Finland-Swedish newspapers wedding announcement to discover that. What would be a purpose of studying Africans and Finns if the African individuals sampled would constitute half-Africans, Half-Finns? Mainstream Finland-Swedes from every region of the country differ from Finnish mainstream. The difference of a Swedish-speaker and a Finn indegious to Swedish-speaking coast is obviously smaller. However Finnish mainstream do not originate from Swedish-speaking coast. Here´s another study addressing morphological differences between Finland-Swedes and Fenno-Ugrian Finns."Social background adult body-height and health".
"Body height among the Swedish-speakers minority was taller than among the Finnish-speaking minority" [10] 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 12:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed some irrelevant info from the "Biological origins" sub-title. The only reliable study is actually the recent one in which Finland-Swedish sub-population (Ostrobotnian reference population) was screened through genome-wide SNP scans for the first time ever, (2008). I also inroduced some earlier studies (Virtanen & Knowles et. al..etc) however, in terms of population genetics the old methodologies (blood groups and ABH antinges..etc) are no longer in usage for their lack of credibility. So, basically the only good piece of info we have is the most recent study.
Podomi ( talk) 13:03, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Finland-Swedes are genetically considerably different from Finns. I´ve recently noticed lot of myths revolving around the genetics of Finland-Swedes and more or less poor attempts to question their etnic status. Historical experiences are probably influencing Fennoman Finnish posters too much and hence the speaking of differences between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers is sensitive issue for Fenno-Ugrians of Finland (Finns). So far, I haven't managed to tap into a study which would say Finland-Swedes do not differ from Finns. Claiming that Finland-swedes and Finns are genetically identical on the basis of one socioanthropologic study is dubious to say the least.
Now, here´s some facts.
1) A a recent study (Hannelius, 2008) the author found that The Ostrobotnian Finland-Swedes stood out from their neighboring Fenno-Ugrians and formed a seperate genetic cluster with Swedes.
"Clear East-West duality was observed when when the Finnish individuals were clustering using Geneland. Individuals from the Swedish-speaking part of Ostrobotnia clustered with Sweden when a joint analysis was performed on Swedish and Finnish autosomal genotypes.|Ulf Hannelius: Population genetic association and Zygosity testing on preamplified Dna"
2) In this study "significant" genetic differences were found among Finland-Swedes and Finns.
"The difference between the distribution of ADA phenotypes in the Finland-Swedes and in Finns is significant". "Table 1 shows the distibution ADA (Adenosine deamiase) phenotypes in three samples each from Finland-Swedes (population 1, 2, 3,) and Finns (4,5,6). Brief preliminary reports of these data have been presented elsewhere. The ADA2 gene frequency is about 0.6 in the Swedish population investigated in Finland and 0.10 in the Finns.|Adenosine deaminase polymorphism in Finland (Swedes, Finns, and Lapps), the Mari republic (Cheremisses), and Greenland (Eskimos). A W Eriksson, M Kirjarinta, J Fellman, M R Eskola, and W Lehmann.
3) Again, This study found "considerable" genetic differences with Swedes on Finnish mainland and etnic Fenno-Ugrians from Finland.
"Among Alanders and Swedes on the Finnish mainland the frequency (around 20%) was comparable to Swedish values but considerably higher than among Finns (13-14%).|ABH secretion polymorphism in Icelanders, Aland Islanders, Finns, Finnish Lapps, Komi and Greenland Eskimos: a review and new data. AW Eriksson, K Partanen, RR Frants, JC. Pronk, PJ. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3752918
Based on this data we can reach following conclusion:
-Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic population within Finland. Finland-Swedes differ genetically from Finns and represents seperate, germanic genetic entity among Fenno-Ugrian population. They are an etnic minority. Podomi ( talk) 12:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
It matters to me that Finland-Swedes are genetically distinct from the Finnish-speaking group because I view population and etnicities in relation to others. Language alone does not make etnicity, ancestry does. At the time of multiculturalism I consider it a richness that Finland comprises different etnicities which differ from the mainstream.
Finland: two languages, two etnicities. Wasn´t that the way they once expressed it?
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
09:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
There are plenty of Finnish poster who care about genetics hence they do everything to make Finns and Finland-Swedes appear genetically similar; twisting sources, giving false arguments without references, lying...etc. I just wanted to correct the misunderstandings. Ofcourse culture including linguistics is much more important definer of identity than population genetics, however they are important as well. They reveal heritage in relation to others. 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 12:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It´s largely a myth that studies have shown no differences between Finland-Swedes and Finns. The studies today are even showing a great deal of differences between East and West Finns. Whether previous studies claiming that Finns and Finland-Swedes do not differ exist or not they´ve been debunked. In the 70´s Nevanlinna showed that Finns are 25% Assian which has been totally refuted. In his methodology also Swedes would have been 25% Asian.
Some Finnish scientist have probably been politically motivated with old grudges to make Finland-Swedes look similar with Finns. The first genome wide SNP scan (Hannelius, 2008) which tested Finland-Swedes in Österbotten (50% of all Finland-Swedes) showed that they clustered genetically with Swedes not with Finns.
Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic, Swedish extension in Finland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 08:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Podomi ( talk) 07:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, I admit that the studies which are speaking of "Significant" and "Considerable" differences among Finland-Swedes and Finns are speaking in a Northern European context, not global.´
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
12:27, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed the list of historical population components, as it was unreferenced and the aggressive POV-pusher Podomi disturbed it by removing repeatedly parts he personally found disagreaable.--
130.234.5.137 (
talk)
10:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed some irrelevant info under the "Biological origins" sub-title. The only reliable study is actually the recent one in which Finland-Swedish sub-population (Ostrobotnian reference population) was screened through genome-wide SNP scans for the first time ever, (2008). I also inroduced some earlier studies (Virtanen & Knowles et. al..etc) however, in terms of population genetics the old methodologies (blood groups and ABH antinges..etc) are no longer in usage for their lack of credibility. So, basically the only good piece of info we have is the most recent study. Podomi ( talk) 13:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
After browsing this discusion I cannot be but amazed, the prevailing logic seems to be or atleast was that since the Swedish minority in Finland does not genetically differ from Finns the term "Swedish-speaking Finn" is legitimate. As the studies clearly indicate this is simply false. a Sample which represents 50% of all Finland-Swedes already showed their belonging in a genetic cluster with Swedes, not Finns (Hannelius, 2008). Rest of the 50% will be screened soon. I am going to take these studies to Wikipedia administration along with other historical sources. Proper title for this site would be "Swedish minority in Finland" or "Finland-Swedes" (see, Irish-Scotts), not "Swedish-speaking Finn". Finland-Swedes are Swedish extension in Finland, these are culturally, linguistically and by heritage different from the Fenno-Ugrian languages speaking Finns and thus have very little to do with them.
I did some changes. To the intoductionary part. I felt that the text did really not answer the question of who are Swedish-speaking Finns, when did they first appeared, where and for what?. The stuff is basic mainstream Finnish history taught in the principle courses of high-school history. However, i backed everything with sources from 2008. I reckon the information does not really fit the views of most Finnish wikipedia editors, but I really cannot help. I still feel the intro is not good. But this is a good start. Politics, philosophic views of nationality should not be debated in the opening paragraph. It should serve for quick, easy and convinient information of a given topic.
Podomi ( talk) 16:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
This article about Swedish-speaking Finns has been hijacked by extremists. So far, there´s been one single scholar who has questioned the existance of the first Swedish crusade to Finland. The big philosophic question is should wikipedia article´s introductionary paragraph cover the voice of a every single dissident? Should we be obligated to include the opinion of 1% scholars in an introduction section? I definitely wouldn´t worry too much if we´d only stick in the interpretations of the remaining 99% of historians has agreed upon and in which the source I´ve recently used also belongs (Kari Tarkiainen). Erik and bishop Henrik have been historical individuals, that´s a fact. Hence, I remove the speculation part of first crusade, if someone feels that this constitutes a great misdemour he or she shall re-edit it and include the concern which the one single historian has presented. Podomi ( talk) 13:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Another issue which slightly concerns me is the unnecessary emphasis put on the language shifts. Í´ve personally never encountered a source which would have implied that even Finnish farmers would have adopted Swedish language, this has happened only through intermarriage between the linguistic groups which have been extremely rare atleast if church´s records are to be believed (Kari Tarkiainen, 2008). I think the language shifts receives too much weight. Lot of these myths are derivived from false interpretation of a book by Olavi Linnus (Linnus, 1935). He correctly assessed that 25% of aristocratic class in Finland has come from Sweden, they´ve come from Sweden in an era when church record has been kept. About 48% of aristocratic class are "foreign", this are overwhelmingly from Germany and from Germans in the Teutonic Ritterschaft in Baltics. Few families from Switzerland, France, Scottland and Russia, but mostly German. In sweden the "foreign" component among aristocracy is about 45%. The remaining share is of "Finnish origins" according to Linnus. Now, here comes the trick, or rather three tricks. First, the "Finnish origins" does not imply etnicity but everyone who has been in Finland before the time when church records were established. This category includes many Finland-Swedish families, such as the Count family Creutz from Pernå. Second, aristocrats and upper classes represents actuallly only few percent of Finland-Swedes, not a good reference class to base arguments upon. Third, only 55% of Aristocrat class today are Swedish-speaking Finns. 45% of aristocrats as most of the tradional upper-classes, "estate" families, (clerics, bourgeoise) are Finnish-speaking. The fact that many of these people have once had a good competence in Swedish does not make them Fennoswedes. Fennoswedes are an etnic class, you don´t become a Swedish-speaking Finns, you only born as a Swedish-speaking Finn.
Podomi ( talk) 13:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Third, issue which bugs me is that I´ve been referred as pusher of source manipulations and POV, or whatever, misdemours. I´d like to see an example of one manipulation I´ve done. I believe that this is actually due to Nevanlinna´s study from 1980 which I used in order to back an argument that Finland-Swedes are descended from Swedes. The founding population of Finland-Swedes are Swedes, not Finns. Thus they are descended from Swedes as Nevanlinna address, according to his research based on nucleus genetic markers (blood groups) Finland-Swedes have Finnish admixture at the rate of 60%, still does not mean they are descended from both Finns and Swedes, because they haven't. Nevanlinna reckoned that every 1/10 marriage of a Finland-Swedes has been cross-lingual, in a period of nine genration this would have turned to 60% of Finnish admixture. Yet, they have not decended from Finns and nowhere does Nevanlinna claims so. Now, here comes the trick, I could have chosen not to introduce the Nevanlinnas´source, why? Because, blood-groups are no longer used in population genetic studies and they haven't been that for about 30 years why? They are inaccurate, or rather estimations of admixture rates becomes inaccurate. Based on blood-markers Nevanlinna estimated Finns to carry Asian admixture at the rate of 25-30% while Guglielmino who studies the same material reckoned the asian influence upon Finns as 10%. Unlike Nevanlinnas estimations, Guglielmos interpretations based on blood group analysis is supported by latest genome wide SNP scand done upon Finns. I could say that the only thing we know about Finland-Swedes is that Ostrobotnians (50% of Finland-Swedes) cluster genetically with Swedes. Despite, I personally reckon Nevanlinna to be a complete whackjob with completely outdated methods for population genetics I still introduced his study, why?....hmmmmm....good question actually.....
Podomi ( talk) 13:42, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 14:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
"However, this does not mean that Swedes would have inhabited only settled areas that were completely unpopulated. Indeed, it is probable that no such areas were available. We can assume that the rest of the coastal area was inhabited by Finns at the time when the Swedish settlers arrived in the country. Our assumption is based on place names: the Swedish place names on the coast include numerous Finnish substrate names— incontrovertible proof of early Finnish settlement."
"Another indication of older Finnish settlement is evidenced by the fact that native speakers of Finnish named so many different types of places in the area that the substrate nomenclature seems to consist of names referring to village settlement rather than to names of natural features."
"This seems to support our conception that there was a large population of native speakers of Finnish in the archipelago and that it remained Finnish-speaking for a longer period than was previously believed."
.......none of them. One can as well conclude that the Finns there have retreated from the completely alien group to them. Like I said, the biologic origin of Finland-Swedes are already discussed. It´s hardly not relevant to the topic Finland-Swedes that there has been also Finnish-speakers in the coast. 128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
This article mostly focused on current-day Finland-Swedes. There is very little about the Finland-Swedes history. They were a significant group because of their political and cultural importance between 1600–1900.
Fred- Chess 09:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Could any other person please comment? / Fred- Chess 07:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Of course it's pure nonsense to talk about racism as Jaakko does. The administrative language of the Swedish empire was Swedish, the administrative language of the English empire was English, French in the French empire, German in the German empire and so on. There was nothin racial nor anything unusual about it. JdeJ 17:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Finland Swedes are not Finns, they are Swedes living in Finland that are citizens of Finland. Thus, this article is completely POV. For example, check this webpage by a Finland Swede, you could hardly argue that he consider himself being a Finn. Den fjättrade ankan 19:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi MoRsE, welcome to the discussion, especially since you are one of the people this article is about! (Den fjättrade ankan has apparently lived in Sweden all his/her life.) All modern scientists, including linguists and lexicologists, and lexicographers consider self-designation the most important criterion in naming groups of people. We do have to take into consideration, however, that people are not necessarily able to represent their wishes well in a foreign language. I have no idea what you're trying to say with "following your logic I could call you an native Indian". Do you agree that it is correct to call ethnic Swedes living in the USA "Swedish Americans"? Do you agree that it would be incorrect to call them "US Swedes"?
What would you estimate is the percentage of Swedish-speaking Finns that share your opinion that they would like to be called "Swedes"? Are you implying that the Swedish Assembly of Finland and the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland are not representing the wishes of the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns and of all Swedish authors in Finland respectively?
BTW your unilateral page move is in violation of WP policies and will be reverted by an admin shortly. -- Espoo 01:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think there's any need to start talking about vandalism. MoRsE, it seems you have some good reasons to suggest that Finland-Swedes is a better name for the article. If that's the case, then we'll want to move the article correctly, with all of its history, and doing that will require administrative assistance. Since this is clearly a controversial move proposal - we've got people defending both names - we'll need to use the Requested Moves procedure to determine consensus. MoRsE, are you familiar with Wikipedia:Requested moves? If you follow the procedures there, we can have a focused discussion on whether or not to move the page, and we can consider everybody's arguments and make sure everyone has a chance to be heard, and then we'll make a decision. I've undone the "cut-and-paste" move you did, MoRsE, and let's have the discussion before we move any pages. - GTBacchus( talk) 03:58, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The most recent 13 entries in my admin log are a good testament to why cut-and-paste moves are a bad idea. - GTBacchus( talk) 04:41, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
A couple of things which I think we all could agree on:
Based on the above, I'm definately leaning towards Finland-Swedes being a different ethnic group (with ethnicity defined as different culture, in this case, language). KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello everyone,
This is obviously a controversy. In the interests of trying to forge some type of agreement I've dug up some material, first an official Finnish view, second comments from the Swedish People's Party and finally, Google results for various name forms. The first of from the very offical Virtual Finland website. It recognizes that there are two views, but clearly prefers the view that Finland-Swedes are only a linguistic minority, not an ethnic minority.
The Swedish People's Party (Sfp), the leading party among Finland-Swedes/Swedish speaking Finns, appart from the very name implying that there is a separate "Swedish people" in Finland talks about Swedish culture and a separate Finland-Swedish identity in its party program (here in Swedish):
While Finland Swedes will feel themselves to be full citizens of Finland and that Finland is their 'motherland' they do have a separate identity to that of Finnish speaking Finns. Some would argue that this constitutes the basis for being an ethnic minority, wile other say it is simply a cultural and linguistic minority. So, there are different views on the topic. However, as Wikipedia is supposed to convey the most common view rather than the 'right' one I opt for letting Google decide. Searching in English but excluding all hits including the word "Wikipedia" gives the following results:
So, while I agree that the article should be called "Swedish speaking Finns" it should (a) aknowledge that there are other views and (b) be clear that while it may not be an ethnic minority, it clearly a speparate linguistic and cultural minority. KarlXII 10:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo and others, I don't see this as a right or wrong issues, I see it as "what is the current common practice?" What matters is not if Swedish speaking Finns (who presumably call themselves "Finländare" in Swedish, for which there is not good English equivalent) are genetically different from ethnic Finns or not or if they have a different historical geographic origin from Finnish speaking Finns. What is important is how the majority of Swedish speaking Finns view themselves today. While historically Swedish speaking Finns may have viewed themselves as a separate ethnic group from the Finnish speakers, this is, generally, not the case today. Are German speaking Swiss "ethnically" different from French speaking Swiss? However, in both cases there is a very clear linguistic difference and a certain cultural difference (which is strongly linked with the linguistic difference).
So, I see no need to contact any professors for sources. Better to agree on the following:
How about it? KarlXII 08:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo and others, I'm in agreement with you. Except I do feel that enough arguments and sources have been presented above to convince me that the term "Swedish speaking Finns" is correct. No need to call any professors (I'm not sure that would necessarily be seen as more convincing than any of the above arguments/sources). So, let's settle on the following:
Are we all OK with this? Let's wait a couple of days (say, towards the weekend) and then implement the above on the related articles ( Finnish people, Swedish speaking Finns, to name a few). KarlXII 10:38, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, you're confusing issues that i tried hard to keep separate. I already said that we have enough sources for the naming issue but we don't have any for the ethnic, cultural, or other claims. Those latter claims are the ones we need the reputable sources for. Not the least important reason being that we can let this article's editing start to again reflect the calm surrounding this issue normally in Finland. People are upset about pakkoruotsi but nobody does anything but laugh about the kind of claims of NPOV we will encounter regularly from Swedish nationalists (and the time wasted on repeated RMs etc.) if we don't have reputable sources on ethnic, cultural, genetic, language-switching percentages, and related issues.
More specifically, i have read on at least 3 occasions in Helsingin Sanomat about research showing that there are "surprising" and statistically very significant differences in suicide rates and disease rates between Swedish and Finnish speakers in Finland despite the lack of statistically significant differences in terms of income, education, or genetic makeup between these population groups. This kind of research shows that there are clear cultural differences including more and closer family ties, greater willingness/ability to communicate (talk), and a stronger sense of responsibility for others which all result in better care, less loneliness, and basically "better vibes". I don't remember if these studies were able to or even tried to show if the stronger sense of community and better vibes and better health were due to cultural traditions or caused by the feeling of being a minority and being forced to stick up for their rights and each other.
And, once again, we cannot present "Finlander" as just another possible or even traditional name without explaining that this does not exist except in texts badly translated by non-native English speakers. -- Espoo 11:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo:
Regards KarlXII 13:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo: I'd like to draw some conclusions. So, do we decide on the following:
OK? KarlXII 15:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, that "Swedish-speaking Finns" is the best term was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move. This move was exceptionally well supported by reputable sources, a majority of votes (all 5, in fact), and even participation and voting by professional experts on the topic, which is very rare on WP. There also already was a long explanation in the article explaining why it's the best term before this newest claim of violation of NPOV started. Obviously the supporters of this claim did not take seriously the arguments presented in the requested move. They perhaps didn't even bother to read them because their haphazard edits of the article showed that they hadn't bothered to read that either.
Obviously, we could have just reverted the unsupported changes and refused to respond to the accusations here on the talk page in any way except to demand sources for the wild claims. I however find it's better to take everyone seriously who bothers to state their case even when they don't supply reputable sources. The only source they provided is the same one you just listed too, which only has information in Swedish (which i don't understand) and is apparently written by an amateur with a private theory. He doesn't present this theory even on his Finnish pages, but what he writes in Finnish about family names shows that he is not an expert nor interested in unbiased reporting of historical research.
As for the rest of your proposed point #1:
- Finland-Swedes is an incorrect or at least outdated spelling for Finland Swedes
- We cannot say that finländare exists or is used in English because it isn't. We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles). We can say that this means "Finlander" but we should point out that this is term is not used in well-edited English texts. In fact, i can try to find some reputable source that says what is in fact the case, that this is an outdated term that labels its user as ignorant. You're right that when used by uninformed English speakers it should not be labeled as "bad" English, and i was specifically referring to texts written by non-native speakers. In that context, even linguists speak about "bad" English although they also use that term only on talk pages, as i did too. I was obviously not proposing use of that terminology in the article. When native speakers use a form that used to be called "bad" or "wrong" by linguists and still are by school teachers, modern linguists explain that that is unscientific because all "rules" and "correct English" are exclusively statistically more common and that they are continuously replaced by forms once considered incorrect once these become more common. This does not apply to people trying to use a foreign language though. Even if most Finns (both Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking Finns) and Swedes used the term “Finlander” in trying to speak and write English (very few do), WP should not say that this is an acceptable form if it is not used in carefully edited English texts (which even in Finland of course follow usage in English-speaking countries).
Your point #2: We already have enough reputable sources (and I found some more) to claim that Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns, but we have no reputable sources that support other claims. We have private claims by two participants in this discussion that the majority of Swedish-speaking Finns don’t think of themselves as ethnic Finns and even don’t think of themselves as Finns and even think of themselves as Swedes. These are private opinions that are clearly incorrect as to their claims of representing the views of “most” and “all” Swedish-speaking Finns etc. and apparently represent an extremely small minority. I’m not sure what WP policy is on theories and opinions presented by extremely small groups of people. It would seem that these opinions cannot be presented in WP unless they have some kind of reputable source to back them up. I’m pretty sure that these people cannot find any serious researcher employed at any major institution that would back these claims. Obviously private pages written by amateur historians and other blog-like sources do not qualify as reputable sources. The only thing that might seem to suffice is if there were some kind of private organisation that printed material with these wild claims; then we could quote those eccentric claims and put them into the correct perspective by saying that the organisation has X number of members and that the Swedish Assembly of Finland has said Y and Z about these claims. -- Espoo 10:06, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo, I think you are being a bit too dogmatic/absolute on a couple of topics:
KarlXII 12:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII, it seems you're again misunderstanding things i wrote or i'm writing them badly. I never said anything that contradicted what you're saying above. I have no idea why you think i'm being "dogmatic/absolute". It seems that you didn't realise that most of my post was not dealing with your comments but with the opinions of the people who started this debate without anything except incorrect personal claims and theories about what Swedish-speaking Finns are and consider themselves to be. I feel responsible for dealing with their comments in a mature way even if they've disappeared.
I never said "Finland Swedes" doesn't exist in English nor that it isn't fairly common. Nevertheless, i think it has never been as common in texts written by native English speakers as in English texts written by Finns and Swedes, and i think that many times native English speakers especially in the USA used it only because they copied the usage in English by Finns and Swedes although it was/is illogical according to the naming usage in use in the USA. I believe the term was even rarer in carefully edited texts by native English experts who weren't just rephrasing things they'd heard non-native speakers say about this exotic topic. I have no idea where i was "being black and white". I was simply pointing out that i agree with your proposal "we'll set 'Swedish speaking Finns' as the norm thoughout Wikipedia" because that "was already decided in this article's successful and very recent requested move". Nothing new in your proposal or my agreement, and definitely nothing dogmatic or black and white, just an attempt to defend our decision despite being against the wishes of the ghost participants in this discussion. Most of the rest of my post was also trying to point out that you and i agree on almost everything, but that we have to deal with the people who started this debate and have now disappeared and will suddenly appear again sometime in the future with the same claims and the same lack of reputable sources to back up their claims.
You know much more than me about the frequency of usage of "finländare" in Swedish and i specifically said "We can say that this term is apparently used in Finland Swedish but not in Swedish (as far as i remember the discussions and other WP articles)." Perhaps i remembered incorrectly or maybe the claims to that effect by others were wrong, but once again, nothing dogmatic in my post.
I also agree with most of your third point now because i seem to have convinced you to drop the previous idea of saying that although Swedish-speaking Finns today usually consider themselves to be ethnic Finns "this has not always been the case and that there is a debate/controversy about their origins compared to the Finnish speaking population". Since we have no reputable sources for these claims, we cannot put them into an encyclopedia. The same problem is with "appear to be very few consistent genetic differences". As long as we have no reputable source for that, we can't add it. On the other hand, http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenruotsalaiset claims that the genetic makeup is 80% identical and no one has removed that claim, so we can probably copy it here. In fact, there are quite a few other interesting things in the Finnish WP article, and since most Swedish-speaking Finns speak Finnish fluently, we can be pretty sure that there is nothing in that article that the majority of them would disagree with. I will start to transfer info from there and provide any sources that i have. You may want to do similar translation and copy work from the Swedish article. If we run into serious disagreements, we can ask for comments exclusively by Swedish-speaking Finns (and no Swedes) on the relevant talk pages. -- Espoo 23:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
This problematic issue indeed. "Swedish-speaking Finn", although the term was proposed by a Finland-Swedish institution itself is erranous. a "Finn" refers to Fenno-Ugrian, in Finland context that is Finnish-speaking individual. A study which found "considerable" different genetic differences between Finns and Finland-swedes (referred in the biology section) used the term "Swedes on mainland Finland". Culture, heritage and linguistics have clearly tied Finland-Swedish minority to Sweden (Tarkiainen, 2008). To apply the term Swedish-speaking Finn to Osterbotnian person who lives and breath Swedish culture and shares genetic history with Swedish( Hannelius, 2008) is simple flawed. The term simply erases history.
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
09:36, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm editing the parts of the History section which discusses the 'ethnic' background of the Swedish speaking population of Finland, mainly because it is not properly sourced.
The first source, written by a Finnish professor in Japan about the situatin of Koreans in Japan has several shortcomings which means it's not a sufficient source for the claims made:
The second source, which unfortunately is only in Finnish and Swedish but gives a much more serious/academic impression, only deals with cultural (ie not the 'ethnic' issues means here).
Therefore I am removing the text referring to the Swedish speaking population descending from Finnish speakers. KarlXII 10:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
As for the switching between languages, this appears to have been a two-way street, so it's not necessarily so that most Swedish speakers have orginiated from Finnish speakers (or vice versa). This is from the Swedish and Finnish language source mentioned above:
As far as I know it was also quite common for Swedish speaking families to switch to Finnish during the nationalist period during the early 19th century. KarlXII
Espoo,
Gotta go, so I only have time for some comments:
KarlXII 15:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII,
I neither used the figure 80% nor did i say the document contained it. I specifically said i'd replace it with "most" because the document can be interpreted as saying even more than 80%. Please tell me what part of the following explanation and quote from the document you didn't understand:
More importantly, it contains the important sentence "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes", which definitely would defend use of the 80% figure, even though the source for that precise number is missing in the Finnish WP article. (I will simply write "most", which i hope you will agree is OK.)
You may be right that i should find a better way of introducing the second source than by using the word "educated", but the fact that something on such a central topic is publicly stated by a professor of political science means that this is most likely not just a personal opinion but an opinion based on the extensive research of many experts on the topic. Very many "less informed people" in both population groups in Finland (and in Sweden) say completely racist and stupid things about the other population group because they are not educated enough and therefore believe too much junk that they hear and read. If we find a quote from another well-informed person saying something that contradicts the current quote, we can of course add that, but i'm afraid we won't find anybody professor of any discipline that would say something like that. You're right that a political science professor is not the best expert to quote on this topic, but political science is also concerned with this topic, and no political science professor would state something on this topic without having read more on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will... -- Espoo 16:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo, thank's for your respons. Unfortunately I'm not 100% clear here,
KarlXII 23:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
KarlXII,
Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns, so-called Finland Swedes, are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.
As for the second quote, you're right that we can and do need to find a better source than a statement by a political science professor, but it's completely irrelevant where he presented this statement or the fact that most of the lecture is about a different minority in a different country. And your derogatory comments about some professors in general are not really relevant either. Obviously, if this one's a crackpot, we can find statements by other highly educated people that will say completely different things. We can then remove this quote or, if it represents the opinion of a notable small group of crackpots or of well-informed people, we can have it in addition to the majority opinion. In any case, as i already said, a political science professor knows more about research results on this topic than almost all WP editors ever will. Much of the article now consists of unsupported claims added by people with much less knowledge about this subject and much less intellectual integrity and, most importantly, much more anonymity than this quote from a respected member of the international scientific community. Unless you have clear proof that this professor is talking nonsense, his statement is more reliable than most of what is in WP in general and than much of what is in this article.
I'd estimate that 90% of everything in most WP articles could be in principle removed by saying the content is not verifiable or at least has no source provided. The general practice is however not to remove any info without a source unless the info is disputed. It makes absolutely no sense starting the verification process by removing some of those parts of the 10% or so of WP that do have a source on the basis that they have "less good reputable sources". Even if a political science professor isn't the best expert on this topic, he's still better than none. And his statement does not contradict in any way the other reputable sources provided. Unless you can find a reputable source that contradicts this member of the international scientific community, there is no reason to doubt the reputation of the person or of the scientific verifiability of his statement.
The specific reasons i believe we should leave this quote until we find a better one by separate experts on genetics and genealogy and linguistics is because this quote specifically mentions these other aspects and also the reciprocity of the situation. He specifically points out that "many Finnish speakers can list among their ancestors more Swedish speakers than Finnish speakers", which will stop wild claims from the other side that Finnish speakers didn't inherit any genes from Swedish speakers. In the current situation of nearly identical genotypes, the average amount of genes inherited by the majority from the minority is obviously much smaller than the other way around, but there are many exceptions to the rule.
The rest of the quote is similarly important and informative, providing an insight not elsewhere in the article: "Many Finns simply adopted [the] Swedish language as their first language during the [period of] Swedish rule, but [for] centuries, many families and individuals used both languages." -- Espoo 10:47, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo,
KarlXII 22:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm sorry but i can't really think of doing anything except repeating my first paragraph above and ask you to say what you don't understand in it:
Why are you still talking about 80%? It's not in the article, so we don't need to find the source or hearsay that this claim in the Finnish WP article is (perhaps) based on. As i already pointed out, we have the statement by the committee of experts saying "Swedish-speaking Finns ... are also genetically Finns and not Swedes". Don't you understand what that means? That means Swedish-speaking Finns are genetically more or less identical to the Finnish-speaking Finns. If a small minority group's genotype is more or less identical to the majority's, that means that most of the minority's genes are inherited from the majority. We don't need a percentage; it's enough to say "most" to stop the wild claims of Swedish-speaking Finns being Swedes.
Well, let me try to rephrase it simply: The experts are saying that the genes of the two groups are now more or less identical. Since this is the result of intermarriage between 2 originally separate and probably genetically different population groups of which one was much smaller, this is only possible if the small group's genes were "diluted" so much by the big group's genes that the original differences are now statistically insignificant. It of course also implies that the genes of the small group spread out throughout Finland in smaller amounts but very extensively and homogeneously. (The only way that two groups that are now genetically identical could have inherited similar amounts of genes from each other is if the groups were about equal in size.) I'm no expert on statistics or genetics and don't know what "statistically significant" means in numbers, but i'd guess that this means that the Swedish-speaking Finns have apparently inherited more than perhaps 95% of their genes from the originally distinct majority. -- Espoo 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Espoo,
Regards KarlXII 10:09, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
The very next reference is in English: "Since the population genetic, ecological and socioeconomic circumstances are equal..." -- Espoo 10:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
LOL! Are you serious? Your remark is referring to a sociocultural study and is not further validated b any genetic or medical reseach. BTW the study found out that Finland-Swedes live considerably longer and happier life than Fenno-Ugrians of Finland.These researchers have missed the study by Hannelius (2008) which found out that Finland-Swedes cluster with Swedes, not with Finns.
Podomi (
talk)
10:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Is it actually necessary to provide a translation for the term suomenruotsalaiset or finlandsvenskar. I am not a English speaker myself, but I think that they sometimes adopt foreign ethnonymes in English without translating them. Would it be possible to talk just about "the Finlandsvenskar" in English Wikipedia. That would avoid all the POV problems in tranlation. Oh, well, I do not know if this makes any sense, it is just a suggestion...-- 130.234.75.19 13:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Is the current name of the article, Swedishspeaking Finns, correct English?-- 130.234.75.164 11:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Den fjättrade ankan keeps moving the article Sweden Finns to "Finnishspeaking Swedes" and "Finnish-speaking Swedes". I think this is wrong as it for instance excludes a large number of Sweden Finns that happen to be Finnish citizens. We could benefit from some more opinions at Talk:Sweden Finns. -- Jniemenmaa 11:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
In the newish section of the article about naming, there is a sentence that states that some Swedish speaking Finns would prefer to be known as "svenskspråkiga Finnar". I believe that is completely rubbish as use of such a term does not make sense in the Swedish language (especially in finlandssvenska) as finne/finnar refers specifically to a Finn or Finns who speak Finnish as their mother tongue. There is no equivalent distinction in the English language (i.e. the word "Finn" in English includes all Finns regardless of language, the equivalent Swedish would be finländare). I think it should be removed. Certainly as one myself, I know of no Finland Swede who would call themselves this. 94pjg 02:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm a little baffled here. The article is quite clear that
"...the Finnish Government Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, which has consulted other English experts, recommends ([7]), the following use: "Finland Swede should be used about persons, Finland-Swedish as the adjective, and Finland Swedish for the version of Swedish that is spoken in Finland"."
Despite this, there is an unsourced argument for why the term "Swedish-speaking Finns" should be used instead. Most likely this is WP:OR. I realize this is probably due to some underlying debate about whether or not this group are actually Finns who speak Swedish or actually 'Swedes' who happen to live in Finland. Regardless of this, it would see pretty clear to me that if a Finnish government institute has looked into the specific matter and recommends "Finland Swedes" then that is what the article should be called. Of course other variants should be mentioned in the intro. Cheers Osli73 ( talk) 11:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Seems like the sources claiming that Finnish Swedes/Finnish speaking Finns genetically are ethnical Finns not Swedes come just from the finnish side. Generally I think the article promotes just one point of view(i.e. finnish), it should be more balanced in my opinion. Why don't we see any info reagrding genetical research about the subject coming from Sweden or any third-party country? Also I haven't heard any Fenno-Swede calling himself/herself svenskspråkiga Finnar, I agree with 94jpg - seems like this term makes no sense. I believe Finlandssvenskar is the most used term.
By the way, I'd like to state that even if that reserach is correct, it doesn't mean that most of Finnish Swedes ancestors were ethnical Finns. Genetical studies about Finnish people say that up to 50% of their genotype is also Germanic. Probably, there were some Finnish people among Finnish Swedes ancestors but the thesis that they make vast majority does seem to be very doubtful and generally unprovable. Der_Ritter 15:20, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Janke, I do not say that Fenno-Swedes are Swedish, as I remember from talks to Finnish Swedes, they really don't consider their nationality Swedish, but they do say that their ethicity does differ from Finnish people of Finland... They call themselves Finnish by nation, but Swedisth by mother tongue and claim to have different heritage and traditions from Finnish people. So it seems like that people do belong to a separate ethnic group to my mind. And yes, I've met just one who was calling himself a Swede rather than a Finn...(actually this one was a Finnish Swede from Big Helsinki area). Der_Ritter 17:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Interesting piece on this here (in Swedish though): http://www.kotus.fi/index.phtml?l=sv&s=2209 94pjg 22:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
This whole article and discussion revolves under false claims of genetic similarity with Finns and Fennoswedes. Rarely do we see any references. Unfortunately it looks like this site was hijacked by a group political activist with grudges to Swedish people in Finland. Furtunately, I´ve managed to to bring valid, scientific studies on the etníc origins of Finland-Swedes. Not that it is the most important issue, genetics, but since its the information here has been so twisted I see its importance regarding to the definition of "Swedish-speaking Finns". I am about to read the most current academic source of Swedish-minority in Finland (Kari Tarkiainen, Sveriges Österland) and will update the page as I progress with my "studies". Podomi ( talk) 10:00, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
This article is about Swedish-speaking finns. Translated into Swedish this would be Finlandssvenskar. Finlandssvenskar is an ethnic group in Finland, but as far as I am concerned the inhabitants of Åland are not considered as Finlandssvenskar, yet this article considers the Ålanders as swedish-speaking finns. This would be accurate on the basis that they are citizens of Finland and that they speak swedish. We have to keep in mind that Åland is an autonomous part within the finlandic borders. The dialects resembles the most the swedish ones spoken on the swedish side north of Stockholm (Roslagen). Finnish speaking finns normally consider them as Ålanders and not finns or finlandssvenskar for that matter. Among Swedes (In Sweden, Åland and in Finland) there is no notion: svensktalande finländare - Swedish-speaking finns so why inventing this notion on en.wiki? It would be more accurate to use the swedish notion, "finlandssvenskar", i.e finland swedes, to avoid this article to be an expression of original research. Nirro ( talk) 22:18, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
94pjg ( talk) 15:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
How many percent of the Swedish-speaking Finns/Finland-Swedes might be willing to denote their own group "svenskar" either in Finland or outside? Clarifer ( talk) 14:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
We do refer to ourselves as "svenskar" often, at least in Finland or within certain contexts where it's clear it doesn't mean anything to do with Sweden. I suppose you could argue we mean it as a shortening of finlandssvenskar. It's perhaps fair to say it was even more used in the past when there was far less contact with Sweden (i.e. no Swedish tv channels or internet) and thus less room for confusion with "rikssvenskar". But people certainly use it today still, i.e. if a new family moves in next door, you might ask "are they svenskar" or say my doctor is "svensk" and not mean to be referring to anyone from Sweden at all. Confusing perhaps, but in the context it makes sense. I guess you could make a comparison with the fact that there are institutions etc called Svenska handelshögskolan or indeed Svenska folkpartiet. Again, in their context they make sense and it's clear they don't refer to the country of Sweden in any way. 94pjg ( talk) 00:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
There are some errors below the article, in the box of ´´Diaspora´´. Faroe Islands and the Netherlands must be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haettman1986 ( talk • contribs) 09:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
I´ve recently noticed lot of myth of the genetics of Finland-Swedes and attempts to question their etnic status. Historical experiences are probably influencing Fennoman Finnish posters too much and hence the speaking of differences between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers is sensitive issue for Fenno-Ugrians of Finland (Finns). So far, I haven't managed to tap into a study which would say Finland-Swedes do not differ from Finns. Claiming that Finland-swedes and Finns are genetically identical on the basis of one socioanthropologic study is dubious to say the least.
Now, here´s some facts.
1) A a recent study (Hannelius, 2008) the author found that The Ostrobotnian Finland-Swedes stood out from their neighboring Fenno-Ugrians and formed a seperate genetic cluster with Swedes.
2) In this study "significant" genetic differences were found among Finland-Swedes and Finns.
"Table 1 shows the distibution ADA (Adenosine deamiase) phenotypes in three samples each from Finland-Swedes (population 1, 2, 3,) and Finns (4,5,6). Brief preliminary reports of these data have been presented elsewhere. The ADA2 gene frequency is about 0.6 in the Swedish population investigated in Finland and 0.10 in the Finns.|Adenosine deaminase polymorphism in Finland (Swedes, Finns, and Lapps), the Mari republic (Cheremisses), and Greenland (Eskimos). A W Eriksson, M Kirjarinta, J Fellman, M R Eskola, and W Lehmann.
3) Again, This study found "considerable" differences with Swedes on Finnish mainland and etnic Fenno-Ugrians.
According to this data we fairly well postulate following conclusion:
-Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic population within Finland. They are an etnic minority.
Podomi ( talk) 10:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
The studies I presented addressed Ostrobotnians, "Swedes on Finnish mainland"/Nylanders and Ålanders. Your point is valid, though. The studies established strict criteria for ancestry (All grandparents must be belong to the identified etnicity). However, the point was to study Finland-Swedes not Half Finland-Swedes and Finns. Bi-lingual marriages between the etnic lines Finland-Swedes and Finns have been on a rapid increase in the past few decades. Previously they were very rare exception. One doesn't need but to look for old Finland-Swedish newspapers wedding announcement to discover that. What would be a purpose of studying Africans and Finns if the African individuals sampled would constitute half-Africans, Half-Finns? Mainstream Finland-Swedes from every region of the country differ from Finnish mainstream. The difference of a Swedish-speaker and a Finn indegious to Swedish-speaking coast is obviously smaller. However Finnish mainstream do not originate from Swedish-speaking coast. Here´s another study addressing morphological differences between Finland-Swedes and Fenno-Ugrian Finns."Social background adult body-height and health".
"Body height among the Swedish-speakers minority was taller than among the Finnish-speaking minority" [10] 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 12:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed some irrelevant info from the "Biological origins" sub-title. The only reliable study is actually the recent one in which Finland-Swedish sub-population (Ostrobotnian reference population) was screened through genome-wide SNP scans for the first time ever, (2008). I also inroduced some earlier studies (Virtanen & Knowles et. al..etc) however, in terms of population genetics the old methodologies (blood groups and ABH antinges..etc) are no longer in usage for their lack of credibility. So, basically the only good piece of info we have is the most recent study.
Podomi ( talk) 13:03, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
Finland-Swedes are genetically considerably different from Finns. I´ve recently noticed lot of myths revolving around the genetics of Finland-Swedes and more or less poor attempts to question their etnic status. Historical experiences are probably influencing Fennoman Finnish posters too much and hence the speaking of differences between Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers is sensitive issue for Fenno-Ugrians of Finland (Finns). So far, I haven't managed to tap into a study which would say Finland-Swedes do not differ from Finns. Claiming that Finland-swedes and Finns are genetically identical on the basis of one socioanthropologic study is dubious to say the least.
Now, here´s some facts.
1) A a recent study (Hannelius, 2008) the author found that The Ostrobotnian Finland-Swedes stood out from their neighboring Fenno-Ugrians and formed a seperate genetic cluster with Swedes.
"Clear East-West duality was observed when when the Finnish individuals were clustering using Geneland. Individuals from the Swedish-speaking part of Ostrobotnia clustered with Sweden when a joint analysis was performed on Swedish and Finnish autosomal genotypes.|Ulf Hannelius: Population genetic association and Zygosity testing on preamplified Dna"
2) In this study "significant" genetic differences were found among Finland-Swedes and Finns.
"The difference between the distribution of ADA phenotypes in the Finland-Swedes and in Finns is significant". "Table 1 shows the distibution ADA (Adenosine deamiase) phenotypes in three samples each from Finland-Swedes (population 1, 2, 3,) and Finns (4,5,6). Brief preliminary reports of these data have been presented elsewhere. The ADA2 gene frequency is about 0.6 in the Swedish population investigated in Finland and 0.10 in the Finns.|Adenosine deaminase polymorphism in Finland (Swedes, Finns, and Lapps), the Mari republic (Cheremisses), and Greenland (Eskimos). A W Eriksson, M Kirjarinta, J Fellman, M R Eskola, and W Lehmann.
3) Again, This study found "considerable" genetic differences with Swedes on Finnish mainland and etnic Fenno-Ugrians from Finland.
"Among Alanders and Swedes on the Finnish mainland the frequency (around 20%) was comparable to Swedish values but considerably higher than among Finns (13-14%).|ABH secretion polymorphism in Icelanders, Aland Islanders, Finns, Finnish Lapps, Komi and Greenland Eskimos: a review and new data. AW Eriksson, K Partanen, RR Frants, JC. Pronk, PJ. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3752918
Based on this data we can reach following conclusion:
-Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic population within Finland. Finland-Swedes differ genetically from Finns and represents seperate, germanic genetic entity among Fenno-Ugrian population. They are an etnic minority. Podomi ( talk) 12:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
It matters to me that Finland-Swedes are genetically distinct from the Finnish-speaking group because I view population and etnicities in relation to others. Language alone does not make etnicity, ancestry does. At the time of multiculturalism I consider it a richness that Finland comprises different etnicities which differ from the mainstream.
Finland: two languages, two etnicities. Wasn´t that the way they once expressed it?
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
09:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
There are plenty of Finnish poster who care about genetics hence they do everything to make Finns and Finland-Swedes appear genetically similar; twisting sources, giving false arguments without references, lying...etc. I just wanted to correct the misunderstandings. Ofcourse culture including linguistics is much more important definer of identity than population genetics, however they are important as well. They reveal heritage in relation to others. 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 12:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
It´s largely a myth that studies have shown no differences between Finland-Swedes and Finns. The studies today are even showing a great deal of differences between East and West Finns. Whether previous studies claiming that Finns and Finland-Swedes do not differ exist or not they´ve been debunked. In the 70´s Nevanlinna showed that Finns are 25% Assian which has been totally refuted. In his methodology also Swedes would have been 25% Asian.
Some Finnish scientist have probably been politically motivated with old grudges to make Finland-Swedes look similar with Finns. The first genome wide SNP scan (Hannelius, 2008) which tested Finland-Swedes in Österbotten (50% of all Finland-Swedes) showed that they clustered genetically with Swedes not with Finns.
Finland-Swedes represent seperate Germanic, Swedish extension in Finland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.213.160.2 ( talk) 08:05, 11 July 2008 (UTC) Podomi ( talk) 07:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, I admit that the studies which are speaking of "Significant" and "Considerable" differences among Finland-Swedes and Finns are speaking in a Northern European context, not global.´
212.213.160.2 (
talk)
12:27, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed the list of historical population components, as it was unreferenced and the aggressive POV-pusher Podomi disturbed it by removing repeatedly parts he personally found disagreaable.--
130.234.5.137 (
talk)
10:21, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I removed some irrelevant info under the "Biological origins" sub-title. The only reliable study is actually the recent one in which Finland-Swedish sub-population (Ostrobotnian reference population) was screened through genome-wide SNP scans for the first time ever, (2008). I also inroduced some earlier studies (Virtanen & Knowles et. al..etc) however, in terms of population genetics the old methodologies (blood groups and ABH antinges..etc) are no longer in usage for their lack of credibility. So, basically the only good piece of info we have is the most recent study. Podomi ( talk) 13:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
After browsing this discusion I cannot be but amazed, the prevailing logic seems to be or atleast was that since the Swedish minority in Finland does not genetically differ from Finns the term "Swedish-speaking Finn" is legitimate. As the studies clearly indicate this is simply false. a Sample which represents 50% of all Finland-Swedes already showed their belonging in a genetic cluster with Swedes, not Finns (Hannelius, 2008). Rest of the 50% will be screened soon. I am going to take these studies to Wikipedia administration along with other historical sources. Proper title for this site would be "Swedish minority in Finland" or "Finland-Swedes" (see, Irish-Scotts), not "Swedish-speaking Finn". Finland-Swedes are Swedish extension in Finland, these are culturally, linguistically and by heritage different from the Fenno-Ugrian languages speaking Finns and thus have very little to do with them.
I did some changes. To the intoductionary part. I felt that the text did really not answer the question of who are Swedish-speaking Finns, when did they first appeared, where and for what?. The stuff is basic mainstream Finnish history taught in the principle courses of high-school history. However, i backed everything with sources from 2008. I reckon the information does not really fit the views of most Finnish wikipedia editors, but I really cannot help. I still feel the intro is not good. But this is a good start. Politics, philosophic views of nationality should not be debated in the opening paragraph. It should serve for quick, easy and convinient information of a given topic.
Podomi ( talk) 16:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
This article about Swedish-speaking Finns has been hijacked by extremists. So far, there´s been one single scholar who has questioned the existance of the first Swedish crusade to Finland. The big philosophic question is should wikipedia article´s introductionary paragraph cover the voice of a every single dissident? Should we be obligated to include the opinion of 1% scholars in an introduction section? I definitely wouldn´t worry too much if we´d only stick in the interpretations of the remaining 99% of historians has agreed upon and in which the source I´ve recently used also belongs (Kari Tarkiainen). Erik and bishop Henrik have been historical individuals, that´s a fact. Hence, I remove the speculation part of first crusade, if someone feels that this constitutes a great misdemour he or she shall re-edit it and include the concern which the one single historian has presented. Podomi ( talk) 13:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Another issue which slightly concerns me is the unnecessary emphasis put on the language shifts. Í´ve personally never encountered a source which would have implied that even Finnish farmers would have adopted Swedish language, this has happened only through intermarriage between the linguistic groups which have been extremely rare atleast if church´s records are to be believed (Kari Tarkiainen, 2008). I think the language shifts receives too much weight. Lot of these myths are derivived from false interpretation of a book by Olavi Linnus (Linnus, 1935). He correctly assessed that 25% of aristocratic class in Finland has come from Sweden, they´ve come from Sweden in an era when church record has been kept. About 48% of aristocratic class are "foreign", this are overwhelmingly from Germany and from Germans in the Teutonic Ritterschaft in Baltics. Few families from Switzerland, France, Scottland and Russia, but mostly German. In sweden the "foreign" component among aristocracy is about 45%. The remaining share is of "Finnish origins" according to Linnus. Now, here comes the trick, or rather three tricks. First, the "Finnish origins" does not imply etnicity but everyone who has been in Finland before the time when church records were established. This category includes many Finland-Swedish families, such as the Count family Creutz from Pernå. Second, aristocrats and upper classes represents actuallly only few percent of Finland-Swedes, not a good reference class to base arguments upon. Third, only 55% of Aristocrat class today are Swedish-speaking Finns. 45% of aristocrats as most of the tradional upper-classes, "estate" families, (clerics, bourgeoise) are Finnish-speaking. The fact that many of these people have once had a good competence in Swedish does not make them Fennoswedes. Fennoswedes are an etnic class, you don´t become a Swedish-speaking Finns, you only born as a Swedish-speaking Finn.
Podomi ( talk) 13:24, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
Third, issue which bugs me is that I´ve been referred as pusher of source manipulations and POV, or whatever, misdemours. I´d like to see an example of one manipulation I´ve done. I believe that this is actually due to Nevanlinna´s study from 1980 which I used in order to back an argument that Finland-Swedes are descended from Swedes. The founding population of Finland-Swedes are Swedes, not Finns. Thus they are descended from Swedes as Nevanlinna address, according to his research based on nucleus genetic markers (blood groups) Finland-Swedes have Finnish admixture at the rate of 60%, still does not mean they are descended from both Finns and Swedes, because they haven't. Nevanlinna reckoned that every 1/10 marriage of a Finland-Swedes has been cross-lingual, in a period of nine genration this would have turned to 60% of Finnish admixture. Yet, they have not decended from Finns and nowhere does Nevanlinna claims so. Now, here comes the trick, I could have chosen not to introduce the Nevanlinnas´source, why? Because, blood-groups are no longer used in population genetic studies and they haven't been that for about 30 years why? They are inaccurate, or rather estimations of admixture rates becomes inaccurate. Based on blood-markers Nevanlinna estimated Finns to carry Asian admixture at the rate of 25-30% while Guglielmino who studies the same material reckoned the asian influence upon Finns as 10%. Unlike Nevanlinnas estimations, Guglielmos interpretations based on blood group analysis is supported by latest genome wide SNP scand done upon Finns. I could say that the only thing we know about Finland-Swedes is that Ostrobotnians (50% of Finland-Swedes) cluster genetically with Swedes. Despite, I personally reckon Nevanlinna to be a complete whackjob with completely outdated methods for population genetics I still introduced his study, why?....hmmmmm....good question actually.....
Podomi ( talk) 13:42, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 14:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
"However, this does not mean that Swedes would have inhabited only settled areas that were completely unpopulated. Indeed, it is probable that no such areas were available. We can assume that the rest of the coastal area was inhabited by Finns at the time when the Swedish settlers arrived in the country. Our assumption is based on place names: the Swedish place names on the coast include numerous Finnish substrate names— incontrovertible proof of early Finnish settlement."
"Another indication of older Finnish settlement is evidenced by the fact that native speakers of Finnish named so many different types of places in the area that the substrate nomenclature seems to consist of names referring to village settlement rather than to names of natural features."
"This seems to support our conception that there was a large population of native speakers of Finnish in the archipelago and that it remained Finnish-speaking for a longer period than was previously believed."
.......none of them. One can as well conclude that the Finns there have retreated from the completely alien group to them. Like I said, the biologic origin of Finland-Swedes are already discussed. It´s hardly not relevant to the topic Finland-Swedes that there has been also Finnish-speakers in the coast. 128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:02, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:25, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
128.214.30.138 ( talk) 15:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)