Finland celebrates 100 years independence today

[The Don]

Finland may have had 700 years Swedish rule and 100 years czarist Russia, but for 52K years before that, Finland looked like this:

(Note far West Finland across the water.)

Weren't there several ice ages during that period during which time Finland was completely covered by an ice sheet ?

 

[Craig B]

I think being conquered counts as "losing a war". Being able to negotiate a truce that keeps the other army out counts as a tie, more or less. OK maybe a loss with referee points, but not a knockout.

Not a knockout indeed. They were still there as a state at war's end. But they did capitulate, and they were obliged to cede their most celebrated province, their second largest city, their Border defence lines and their access to the Arctic sea. That's not a tie.

However their resistance was worthwhile, and undoubtedly saved them from the complete assimilation that Stalin evidently had in mind for them.

 

[Craig4]

I hope they all got naked and beat each other with birch branches in the sauna to celebrate. I'll be disappointed if they didn't.

 

[ddt]

What dispute was that? They had a ferocious and bloody civil war in 1918.

That has shaped politics for a long time after, with a deep divide between left and right.

They have complete autonomy. Helsinki, London and Moscow were about the only capital cities in Europe that was never occupied in WWII.

Really?

For starters, Stockholm, the capital of your next-door neighbour. A quick count gives me at least seven others.

 

[ddt]

Finland may have had 700 years Swedish rule and 100 years czarist Russia, but for 52K years before that, Finland looked like this:

(Note far West Finland across the water.)

Weren't there several ice ages during that period during which time Finland was completely covered by an ice sheet ?

There's also the slight problem that Finnish is an Uralic language and so you cannot speak of "Finland" until Finnish speaking people arrive there:

. On the basis of comparative linguistics, it has been suggested that the separation of the Finnic and the Sami languages took place during the 2nd millennium BC, and that the Proto-Uralic roots of the entire language group date from about the 6th to the 8th millennium BC. When the Uralic languages were first spoken in the area of contemporary Finland is debated.[citation needed] It is thought that Proto-Finnic (the proto-language of the Finnic languages) was not spoken in modern Finland, because the maximum divergence of the daughter languages occurs in modern-day Estonia. Therefore, Finnish was already a separate language when arriving in Finland.

Which thus would have been on the order of thousands, not tens of thousands, years ago.

 

[Porpoise of Life]

Being a Finn today is like winning the lottery. There is no 'pomp and circumstance' (which I love about England) but hey, there is endless nature and endless summer nights.

And bleak frigid winters of perpetual darkness.
Not to mention, some witch is always trying to steal your Sampo.

 

[Vixen]

Not a knockout indeed. They were still there as a state at war's end. But they did capitulate, and they were obliged to cede their most celebrated province, their second largest city, their Border defence lines and their access to the Arctic sea. That's not a tie.

However their resistance was worthwhile, and undoubtedly saved them from the complete assimilation that Stalin evidently had in mind for them.

It moved its capital to Helsinki, but the former capital Turku, still exists and remains a part of Finland. Finland has sovereignty over the Gulf of Finland, far more important strategically than the Arctic sea.

 

[Vixen]

I hope they all got naked and beat each other with birch branches in the sauna to celebrate. I'll be disappointed if they didn't.

All Finns do this at least once a week if not more.

All purpose built blocks of apartments come with a private sauna (albeit electric [Swedish-style]).

 

[Vixen]

That has shaped politics for a long time after, with a deep divide between left and right.


Really?

For starters, Stockholm, the capital of your next-door neighbour. A quick count gives me at least seven others.

'Who took part in WWII'.

 

[Vixen]

There's also the slight problem that Finnish is an Uralic language and so you cannot speak of "Finland" until Finnish speaking people arrive there:

Which thus would have been on the order of thousands, not tens of thousands, years ago.

You have fallen into the common trap of assuming language is the same as ethnicity.

They are quite separate, although linked because of geography.

 

[Vixen]

And bleak frigid winters of perpetual darkness.
Not to mention, some witch is always trying to steal your Sampo.

I was there recently in January. The snow was wonderful and the landscape breathtaking, not the horrible slippery slush we get in the UK which fills me with dread as I worry about how long it'll take me to get into work.

Winter sports - cross-country ski-ing, snowboarding, sledding - are incredibly popular and many Finns really look forward to snow.

Hey, don't you look at my Sampo, or I'll cast a spell and sink you in the swamp with the witch of Pohja.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

They have complete autonomy. Helsinki, London and Moscow were about the only capital cities in Europe that was never occupied in WWII.

It's pretty easy to avoid being occupied in WWII when you first have Hitler over for your birthday party and casual chats about the barbarian hordes of the USSR, and then give the Russians everything they want when the tide turns

 

[Vixen]

It's pretty easy to avoid being occupied in WWII when you first have Hitler over for your birthday party and casual chats about the barbarian hordes of the USSR, and then give the Russians everything they want when the tide turns

What did Sweden do? Nothing. I have newspaper clippings from the British Library newspaper archives which reveal Sweden was a popular place of refuge for escaping Nazis.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

... the complete assimilation that Stalin evidently had in mind for them.

I actually wonder about that. The strategic advantage is unclear at best, and it would have completely alienated Sweden, which with its neutrality had some diplomatic importance. Finland is also, like Sweden, a real mess to occupy due to its large area and relatively harsh terrain.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

What did Sweden do? Nothing. I have newspaper clippings from the British Library newspaper archives which reveal Sweden was a popular place of refuge for escaping Nazis.

As the only neutral country in Northern Europe, we accepted 120 000 refugees. We (well, Arne Beurling) cracked the SHT52, the most complex Nazi encryption system, allowing us to intercept half a million messages over three years, including ones about Operation Barbarossa (Stalin didn't listen). Immediately following the agreements with Nazi Germany w.r.t. assisting Finland and supplying the Norwegian occupation, conscription and preparations were massively ramped up until in 1943 we could tell them to buzz off. We sold steel, true, but also filled the mines with explosives in case the Nazis had any funny ideas.

It was an act of balance, but generally Sweden's position as a very difficult to invade neutral territory (in fact, the great Mannerheim himself told Hitler that trying to occupy Sweden was a terrible idea) with some concessions to the Germans allowed us to assist far more people than would have been helped if we had entered militarily. But yeah, I guess that's about the same thing as joining the Axis

 

[Craig B]

It moved its capital to Helsinki, but the former capital Turku, still exists and remains a part of Finland. Finland has sovereignty over the Gulf of Finland, far more important strategically than the Arctic sea.

Agreed. However, Finland was compelled to pay a high price for the Winter War.

I stress again, I'm not arguing that the resistance to the USSR was not worthwhile. Stalin was evidently preparing to annex Finland, and attach it to the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic.

Finland's resolute self defence made that impractical (or inadvisable), and in 1956 that SSR was demoted to the lesser status of an "autonomous Republic" within the Russian Republic, indicating abandonment of any annexation plan.

 

[Vixen]

Weren't there several ice ages during that period during which time Finland was completely covered by an ice sheet ?

That's true, but archeological geneticists believe populations going back circa 50K years continued to return. They retreated to Southern Europe and then moved back, in search of game (as Hunter-Gatherers).

With the discovery Homo sapiens do indeed have Homo neanderthalsis genes, it leads to the question: were the latter always Eurasian, as the gene is not found in African populations, but is especially strong in SE Asia (up to 4%) and next in Europe (ditto, but slightly less).

From an excerpt:

“Modern Europeans hail from three separate populations that interbred”

Until now, the only genetic traces of these people came from two Stone-Age hunter-gatherers: an 8000-year-old man found near Loschbour in Luxembourg and a 7000-year-old man found near La Brana, Spain. Together, they revealed that early European hunter-gatherers tended to have dark skin and blue eyes.

The Kostenki man’s 37,000-year-old DNA, sequenced by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, pushes the existence of this population back tens of thousands of years and shows that it extended across Eurasia (Science, doi.org/w2v).

Eske Willerslev and colleagues analysed his genetic markers and found that he was closely related to the Loschbour and La Brana hunter-gatherers, contemporary Europeans and some contemporary Siberians. “This shows some level of continuity in European populations across almost 30,000 years,” says Iosif Lazaridis at Harvard University, another proponent of the theory that Europeans are a mix of three distinct populations.

What the Kostenki team did not find was any relationship to East Asians, suggesting that by the time the man was born, the European and Asian lineages had already split from each other. By contrast, another ancient genome published just a few weeks ago, belonging to a 45,000-year-old west Siberian known as Ust’-Ishim, was related to both Europeans and Asians. That suggests the two groups parted ways between 45,000 and 37,000 years ago and makes theKostenki man the oldest European to have his genome sequenced.

The latest study also further narrows when early humans interbred with their now-extinct cousins, the Neanderthals. The recent study of Ust’-Ishim narrowed these encounters down to sometime between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago (New Scientist, 25 October, p 7). Calculations based on the Kostenki man’s genome now suggests they took place about 54,000 years ago.

This article appeared in print under the headline “The ancestry clues in the oldest European genome”:

12 November 2014
Oldest European genome illuminates diverse ancestry
By Catherine Brahic

EUROPEANS are a mixed bunch – a hybrid of ancient hunter-gatherers and early farmers with elements of Native American thrown in. How did this strange genetic cocktail come to be? The DNA from the fossilised bones of a 37,000-year-old man found in southern Russia – the oldest European genome sequenced so far – provides new clues for teams trying to crack this mystery.

According to the leading proposal, modern Europeans hail from three separate populations that migrated into the continent at different times and then interbred (see map). If this theory proves correct, the so-called Kostenki man belonged to the very earliest of these populations – a group of hunter-gatherers who left what is now the Middle East perhaps as early as 40,000 years ago.

 

[Vixen]

As the only neutral country in Northern Europe, we accepted 120 000 refugees. We (well, Arne Beurling) cracked the SHT52, the most complex Nazi encryption system, allowing us to intercept half a million messages over three years, including ones about Operation Barbarossa (Stalin didn't listen). Immediately following the agreements with Nazi Germany w.r.t. assisting Finland and supplying the Norwegian occupation, conscription and preparations were massively ramped up until in 1943 we could tell them to buzz off. We sold steel, true, but also filled the mines with explosives in case the Nazis had any funny ideas.

It was an act of balance, but generally Sweden's position as a very difficult to invade neutral territory (in fact, the great Mannerheim himself told Hitler that trying to occupy Sweden was a terrible idea) with some concessions to the Germans allowed us to assist far more people than would have been helped if we had entered militarily. But yeah, I guess that's about the same thing as joining the Axis

Finland was never part of the Axis, but yeah, they 'owed' Germany for the Jaakari (Jaegar) military training that saw off the Bolsheviks in 1917, so it was very hush-hush. Finns were shocked when a bunch of German troops suddenly turned up at Finnish ports in order to approach Leningrad from that direction. These are the decisions of the Generals (in this case, Mannerheim, whom you should remember was a member of the Russian czarist Imperial Army ['the Whites'] so of course, he was vehemently anti-'Red'].

The Finns wanted back Karelia and they never crossed the old Mannerheim line. They had their own army and never collaborated with the Germans, apart from one battalion, together with another 'Nordic' panzer battalion made up of an assortment of Norwegians, Estonians [who feared and loathed the Russians], Swedes and a sundry motley crew of fascist mercenaries from all over Europe].

No Finn with any self-respect EVER. saluted a German officer.

ETA: You do know, most of the Nazi war criminals who fled to South America, did so via Sweden?

Being 'neutral' when war crimes are going on is not good.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Being 'neutral' when war crimes are going on is not good.

Better to join the war criminals.

Then we have quaint details like the Einsatzkommando Finland, of course, participating in the "anti-Partisan" (Jew-killing) operations of Nazi Germany in the northern USSR, and "selecting" people to be "handed over" to the Germans for "special treatment" (or whatever euphemism they used). But you're right, the finnish officers in EK Finland were just proud patriots, not at all collaborators with the Germans

 

[ddt]

As the only neutral country in Northern Europe, we accepted 120 000 refugees.

Amongst which Willy Brandt.

And provided extensive humanitarian aid abroad.

Dutch famine 1944-1945:

As many as 22,000 may have died because of the famine [...] The famine was alleviated by the liberation of the area by the Allies in May 1945. Prior to that, bread baked from flour shipped in from Sweden,

Raoul Wallenberg:

Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (born 4 August 1912, death date unknown)[note 1] was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat and humanitarian. He is widely celebrated for saving tens of thousands[1] of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian Fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings designated as Swedish territory.[1]

White Buses:

"White Buses" was an operation undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country. Although the operation was initially targeted at saving citizens of Scandinavian countries, it rapidly expanded to include citizens of other countries.

All told, an operational staff of about 300 persons removed 15,345 prisoners from mortal peril in concentration camps; of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 were non-Scandinavian (Polish, French, etc.)