Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Finland's history is the story of a cold country which for centuries was used
as a wrestling mat between two heavyweights, Sweden and Russia, and the
nation's eventful emergence from their grip to become one of the world's
most progressive and prosperous nations.
Early Days
What is now Finland was inhabited way back: pre-ice-age remains have been found dating
from some 120,000 years ago. But the big chill erased most traces and sent folk scurrying
south to warmer climes. Only at the retreat of the formidable glaciers, which had blanketed
the country 3km deep, was human presence re-established.
The first post-thaw inhabitants had spread over most of Finland by about 9000 BC. The
people used stone tools and hunted elk and beaver.
Pottery in the archaeological record shows that a new influence arrived from the east to
southern Finland about 5000 years ago. Because Finland was the furthest point west that
this culture reached, it's suggested that these new people brought a Finnic language with
them from Russia. If so, those who lived in Finland at this time were the ancestors of the
Finns and the Sámi.
In the 1st century AD, the Roman historian Tacitus mentioned a tribe called the Fenni,
whom he described as wild savages who had neither homes nor horses. He might have been
referring to the Sámi or their forebears, whose nomadic existence better fits this description.
Studies indicate that today's Sámi are descended mostly from a small original group, and
some claim that a divergence of pre-Finnish and Sámi cultures can be seen as far back as
700 BC. Nomadic cultures leave little archaeological evidence, but it seems the Sámi gradu-
ally migrated northwards, probably displaced by the southerners and the advance of agricul-
ture into former hunting lands. Verses of the
Kalevala,
which is derived from ancient oral
tradition, seem to refer to this conflictive relationship.
