Moi👋
Sono un sudcoreano affascinato dalla storia finlandese antica e medievale, in particolare dall’etnogenesi delle prime tribù finlandesi.
Poiché ci sono così pochi documenti scritti prima delle crociate svedesi, le mappe e le informazioni storiche che trovo online (su Google o YouTube) sono davvero incoerenti. Quindi, sono davvero curioso di sapere cosa imparano effettivamente i finlandesi sull’argomento a scuola, o qual è il consenso generale tra i nerd della storia locale!
Ho due domande principali:
- L’estensione del territorio di Häme (Tavastia).
Approssimativamente da dove fino a dove si estendeva il territorio storico di Häme? La sfera culturale o territoriale della tribù Häme comprendeva aree come Pirkanmaa (Birkaland), l’antico centro di Vanaja e l’Ostrobotnia meridionale?
Basandosi sulle regioni moderne, la mia ipotesi è che la loro influenza potrebbe aver coperto Kanta-Häme, Päijät-Häme, Pirkanmaa, parti di Keski-Suomi ed Etelä-Savo. Questo è geograficamente e storicamente accurato? Perché Pirkanmaa (Birkaland) ha ricevuto un nome separato se originariamente faceva parte della sfera Häme?
- Le origini del popolo Savo
Lo storico popolo Savo è considerato fin dall’inizio un antico gruppo etnico distintamente separato? Oppure è più accurato vederli come a "tribù mista" formato dalla graduale fusione degli Häme (Tavastiani) in espansione verso est e dei Karjala (Kareliani) che si spostano verso ovest?
Qualsiasi approfondimento locale, contesto archeologico o anche solo ciò che ricordi dalle tue lezioni di storia sarebbe molto apprezzato.
Grazie!
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1ssfgaz
di Sensitive-Box-372
13 commenti
[deleted]
No one knows.
Hell, the savonians are so different from other finns that they were probably planted by ancient aliens at some point. I’ve been living in Kuopio for 15 years and I still get surprised by how difficult it is trying to wrangle a straight yes/no answer out of them for simple questions, to such a degree that I have often pondered on how quantum mechanics has been invented in Savonia untold decades ago: nothing is black/white or yes/no, but most things can be vaguely answered by a committed yet long-winded version of a non-reply which amounts to “definitely maybe”. What you do with that information is wholly up to you.
About origins of eastern finnish people: run this through a translator: [Mistä suomalaisten perimä on peräisin?](https://www.duodecimlehti.fi/duo17794)
TLDR: eastern finnish people are genetically more distinct from western finnish people than germans are from british.
History major here.
The word ”border” doesen’t actually exist in the ancient times. There wasn’t Kings who had clear Nations with borders there. Border as we understand the word in our time is kinda modern concept. We don’t know how people in ”Häme” or ”Savo” area called themselfs or what they thought about ones identity.
It is anachronistic to inject concepts like borders to ancient Finland. Even to people of 14th century the border of Nöteborg treaty was virtually non-existent.
According to the source of your first pic (I can send you the text in a picture format if you want to):
1) Häme region and the Tavastian people lived in the [Kokemäenjoki river drainage basin](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokem%C3%A4enjoki#/media/Tiedosto:Kokem%C3%A4enjoki_drainage_basin_map.svg), and additionally around the big lake of[ Päijänne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A4ij%C3%A4nne). So thats roughly the area. Modern dialect borders reflect this as well. You could add the Satakunta county to your list too.
2) Historical Savo people / Savonians are told to be Karelians that started to inhabit the inland Eastern Finnish lakeland. No exact timeline is given, but roughly during the Middle ages.
I’d forget all these strict borders shown in the pictures you attached, just keep in mind basically all the major populated areas and farming were in a very close proximity to navigable waterways.
Hey! I study history in university and this topic has particularly interested me.
First of all, none of those maps are correct, because we don’t have good data from the period and also the Finnic tribes didn’t have strict borders. Infact, their living boundaries were very fluid and constantly changing. Tavastian dudes also typically “owned” hunting lands outside populated village areas. It’s not possible to draw a border anywhere before Sweden and Novgorod started actually drawing borders.
But here’s answers to your two questions:
1: Tavastia’s (Häme) “realm” changed in size depending on what period we are talking about. It used to be very large before the iron age (although the borders could not possibly be drawn), but when the Karelian tribe was “formed”, they started taking living space in the east and also expanded west, and Tavastians were slowly pushed more and more to West Finland. Before the Swedish expansion the Tavastia/Karelia “border”, as far as I know, was around lake Päijänne. Lakes were pretty good natural borders when it actually came to needing them.
To the north, we also can’t draw a border, because the contemporary people didn’t have them. They taxed Laplanders and owned hunting areas to the north of their actual villages, and the change from the villages to wilderness is too gradual for a border. To the west, a border is often drawn between Finns proper and Tavastians, but this is kinda anachronistic and Finns are kinda just glorified Tavastians with more Baltic and Germanic influence than the rest.
2: Traditionally Savonians have seen to be born somewhere close to the year 1300. Ethnically they are mainly Tavastian but their culture is more Karelian. Savonian identity mainly started to form in the 19th century though, as did the identities of all tribes. But you’re right that in medieval times Savonians were basically just a mix between Tavastia and Karelia.
Long story short.
Finland was populated by Finnic tribes that modern linguistic analysis suggests came from Estonia via sea (due to the shared substrate of germanic and baltic loanwards that appear both in Estonian and Finnish). In early medieval times FInland was a collection of tribes with a high “Viking/Swedish” presence on the coasts, which is still very strong as (excluding the big cities for the most part) you could go from Helsinki to Oulu via boat speaking Swedish at evey port.
After Sweden defeated Novgorod (Slavs run by other Viking), Sweden won rights on Eastern Finland and sent a bunch of colonizers East to claim the territory (cfr. the Castle in Savonlinna) and put a Finnish/Swedish foothold there.
So basically modern definitions of “people” vaguely refer to a population substrate that is now long gone, especially due to the internal migration that happened, amplified by the fact taht Finland was very very very very scarcely populated until the 1800s so the effect got amplified.
Just as a tidbit:
The place name “häme” is same word as “sámi”, just undergone a regular linguistic shift.
Baltic immigration pushed the sámi people north, but this (and many other place names) stayed.
Originally I’d say Savonians were the Karelians that ended up on the Swedish side of the border as Sweden and Russia expanded into today’s Finland.
After this new tribe had emerged, they started moving north and settling the areas of today’s Savo with slash-and-burn agriculture, which was a very good adaptation for settling conifer forested areas and because of that Savonians had very high proliferation rates compared to other Finnish tribes. These areas were also very much supplemented from emigration, mostly from Tavastia, but there were also Bothnians and Karelians. The Savonian culture was such good at settling these forests that Savonians also settled a lot of Bothnian and Tavastian forest areas where locals had been living next to them for a 1000 years without settling them themselves. Eventually the Swedish crown also saw this efficicency and that’s where the Finnskågs came from.
Finnish pre-historic times end around year 1300.
No one knows.
There were most likely family houses, not any kind of dominions in any meaningful way. Even villages were rare.
People hunted, fished, etc. They exchanged pelts with vikings (mostly) and other merchants who happened to stop by and got other riches that way.
Finns were most likely good bowyers and also skillful in constructing traps of various kinds to trap the animals.
What we do know from archeology is that Finns had unique ceramics and jewellery compared to Slavic people, vikings etc.
[Nature experiences and live archaeology](https://kierikki.fi/en/)
[The story of Finland’s ancient tombs: relics in museums – A museum is a place of cultural and knowledge heritage](https://museo.fi/en/suomen-muinaisten-hautojen-tarina-muinaisjaannokset-museoissa/)
Linguistically (and this is coming from a translation major who has studied just a little bit of Finnish linguistics, not a linguist) Savo dialects are part of the Eastern Finnish dialects. All I’ve ever really been taught has been that there’s Western Finns, Eastern Finns, and Northern Finns, and Savo is part of the Eastern Finns. Karelians are their own ethnic group and you have to be careful with your sources because there’s Karelians the ethnic group and regions along the Finland/Russia border and then there’s North Karelia and South Karelia also known as Finnish Karelia, which are regions of Finland inhabited mainly by Finns, with an ethnic minority of Karelians and the Finns in the Karelian regions speak the Karelian dialects, which are also Eastern Finnish dialects. The Sami peoples are also not Finns ethnically, yet another ethnic minority in Finland, Lapland is more theirs despite being legally part of Finland and having a bunch of Northern Finnish dialects.
Finns came from the Ural mountains through Mongolia and Russia way back in the day, my theory is that the Eastern dialects just kinda stuck around to the lakes when they got there and the Western dialect speakers kept going further west and the Northern dialect speakers kept going to the north. That would be reasonable because that is largely how the Uralic languages are thought to have separated, people pass through a place and leave some behind, people decide to break off into different directions and wander for a bit but eventually settle still kinda close by and then people break off from the people settling into that spot more and keep wandering further.
None of these tribes functioned as a single political entity with defined borders, like we think of a modern state. At most they formed tribal confederations or alliances based on kinship, which can be assumed from the fact that Norse and Novgorod chronicles mention military campaigns against Finnish tribes, with real organized resistance from the Finns.
So any depictions of iron age borders in Finland you see on maps are vague estimates based on archeological discoveries.
It’s really hard to say anything concrete about them, as writing didn’t really come to Finland until the 12th century.