Every week, at least two people land on this blog with some combination of the keywords "Are Finnish people Asian." The Finnish-Mongolian connection is a common misconception that lives on to this day. When I was living in England, people often commented on how interesting it is that Finnish people originate from Mongolia and how "Finnish is not related to any other language." (Hah!) More than one Englishman claimed to easily see that I have "Asian eyes." And yellow skin.
The desire to see Finns as "different" persists in the media: in his analysis of Finland's first school shooting, in Tuusula in 2007, London Times correspondent Roger Boyes points to paganism and friendless Finns' desolate lives, mostly in darkness, as the uniquely Finnish conditions leading to the shooting deaths of nine people. He describes most people as living on isolated farmsteads, having apparently neglected to Google for the statistics that reveal that 77% of Finns live in cities, towns and surrounding metropolitan areas.
It's hard to assert "I am white" without seeming a little aspirational, and seeming to embrace the idea that being white is better. The whole discussion happens in a context where "non-whiteness" is first assigned to Finns and quickly followed by a list of characteristics that define Finns as "less than". One is then left, as a Finn, to defend the idea that someone can be white and still be uncivilized, alcoholic, violent, and have strange customs like the sauna. The only explanation for these behaviors need not be found in the un-Europeanness of one's DNA.
Early racial theories pegged Finns as "Mongoloid", primitive, animalistic, the usual non-white descriptives. Mostly, these ideas were based on the since-discredited Uralic-Altaic racial theory which, in turn, was based on somewhat primitive linguistics. There was also considerable curiosity about the origins of the Sami, the last indigenous people of Europe. Finland, like other Nordic countries and Russia, has a small Sami population. There was anxiety over the dangers of racial mixing that this represented. This, in turn, led to discriminatory racial policies towards the Sami.
Our language family used to dominate what is today known as Russia and Eastern Europe, all across Siberia but - ironically - not Mongolia. Slavic expansion gradually displaced Ugric peoples and languages, but millions of us still inhabit Finland, Hungary, Estonia, five autonomous republics of Russia, as well as other areas. Some of the indigenous Ugric speakers still practice traditional shamanistic religions. We all share some version of the sauna, and a propensity for drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
In the U.S. in the early 20th century, there were attempts to deport Finns (especially socialist labor organizers) under the Asian Exclusion Act, due to our "Mongolian" origin. Later on, the Finns and the Hungarians were considerd to be the only civilized representatives of our race. Finnish anthropologists and Finns themselves have struggled to be seen as white for close to 200 years. We're still debating what it means to be Finnish, what is considered "foreign" and who gets to decide. It sometimes feels like the only acceptable topic for artistic and cultural production in Finland is "what does it mean to be a Finn?" Some Finns embrace the exotic, Ugric, pagan view of Finnishness and identify strongly with our Finno-Ugric relatives. The panic to be seen as white and civilized is a neurosis that has never really left Finnish culture, and may to some extent tinge the Finns' own racist impulses and defensiveness.
In the U.S. in the early 20th century, there were attempts to deport Finns (especially socialist labor organizers) under the Asian Exclusion Act, due to our "Mongolian" origin. Later on, the Finns and the Hungarians were considerd to be the only civilized representatives of our race. Finnish anthropologists and Finns themselves have struggled to be seen as white for close to 200 years. We're still debating what it means to be Finnish, what is considered "foreign" and who gets to decide. It sometimes feels like the only acceptable topic for artistic and cultural production in Finland is "what does it mean to be a Finn?" Some Finns embrace the exotic, Ugric, pagan view of Finnishness and identify strongly with our Finno-Ugric relatives. The panic to be seen as white and civilized is a neurosis that has never really left Finnish culture, and may to some extent tinge the Finns' own racist impulses and defensiveness.
Genetic studies have shown that we may not share special Mongolian genes, but our Ugric language carries a lot of culture and world view in them. Finnish language carries shamanistic terms for soul and spirit, for example, that we now use for "nature" and "breath".
So to clarify for anyone who has absorbed the view of the 1920's Encyclopaedia Britannica that Finns are a strong, hardy race, of low stature, with almost round head, low forehead, flat features, prominent cheek bones, eyes mostly grey and oblique, short and flat nose, protruding mouth, thick lips, neck very full and strong; - complexion also somewhat brown. Us ethnic Finns, we are mostly not brown. Some of us have Sami genes, but many do not, and Sami people are not brown either. Many ethnic Sami, in fact, look completely white to a casual observer. Many of us don't feel that defensive about being thought about as exotic, though, and embrace the wild and woolly stereotype that gets attached to us. I hear it's terrific for getting laid, or launching an artistic career in Sweden. It's not that traumatizing to be thought of as exotic when it comes with all the privileges that go along with being, in fact, white.
Further reading for anyone who's interested in this subject:
Battling to be European: Myth and the Finnish Race by Edward Dutton - a paper critiquing Finnish researchers who claim that Finns are white. Another interesting specimen is an article angrily renouncing Nokia for having too much sauna culture. It's interesting to me that the blame for failures by Finns is assigned to being "too Finnish" - meaning, primitive, backwards, culturally un-European. When Finns attempt to define their own race and assert that they are European, they are accused of being nationalistic, myopic, backwards, and unaccepting of objective truth. The Finnish genome is combed for evidence that we are not white. One chromosome that some Finnish men share with the Chinese, but not with other Europeans is considered "proof" - but of what? Why is it so vitally important to find this proof? Any discussion of race as a cultural construct is left aside from these "scientific" debates, where white English men are objective observers who get to assign race to others and determine what problems and incorrect modes of behavior follow from having that "othered" ethnicity.
Illustration: The Swedish Nation, "Folk and Race-Types" (Nordic, mixed-race, Finnish, Lapp, Lappic mixed-race, Walloon), 1921
6 kommenttia:
Hei! I admit I just arrived here from Google (though not using the keywords you mentioned). Thank you for this very fascinating post and the loads of great facts and insight within. I'm half-Finnish, and have grown up hearing about the Finnish-Mongolian connection. Now I can phone my mother and triumphantly tell her she's wrong, and await the flurry of "perkele"s from a sore loser. :)
Kiitos!
You're just Finnish, what else is important?
Who cares what the crazy Swedish semi-Nazi anthropologists thought in the thirties, that's hardly relevant at all.
No one in their right mind, who had actually seen any Finns in Finland, would actually think that there was anything "Mongoloid" aka Asian about Finns. IT's ridiculous.
Ps. There was nothing about Finns in my search, I ended here anyway.
PPS. And Dutton is dumb. He knows nothing, he just think you're similar to Inuits "in spirit" lol. I guess he stayed in some remote small town, and now he thinks that some hicks are representative for Finland, though most people live in southern Finland, not in some remote cabin in some forest by a thousand lakes.
Hi, thanks for taking the time to comment! I think what this shows is that if you live in a poor country that other people want to run for you, they find a reason to call you "not white". Once your country is part of the 1st world and your people are running it, they find a way to racially reclassify you, or re-characterize your race.
As far as Dutton, I don't know what he's on about. I think it may be embarrassing to admit that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was deeply wrong.
Haha, Finns are definitely not "exotic" in Sweden. Maybe in Norway and Denmark, though.
I guess the Finnish-Swedish historical relationship (after the split) is quite similar to the English-Irish relationship. The English racists depicted the Irish as black Africans or closer related to them, the Swedish racists thought that the Finns were of Asian origin. The Irish and Finns were "uncivilized low classes" in England/USA and Sweden, respectively.
If the Finns aren't "white" due speaking an Uralic language and maybe having ancient and minor "Asian" DNA, then African Americans and not fully Spanish-descended South/Central Americans are white Iberians because of having Spanish or Portuguese ancestry and speaking Indo-European languages. The analogy doesn't really last. But then again, there are lots of Americans who think that ethnic Spaniards aren't white but exactly the same as Mexicans. So I guess Finns are not alone about being victims of ignorance.
And Finns aren't the only group where you can cherry pick images of individuals with "Asian-looking" eyes. Even Brits are capable of having it, like Diana Rigg, Chris Rea and Timothy West. No ethnic group is "pure". The Europeans ancestors all came from somewhere in Asia, humans never emerged there.
I am not the brightest guy in the world--but I do have a Ph.D. in Biochemistry. I specialized in human genetics and cancer. I was born 1934 in N.E. MN 100 mi north of Duluth. My granddad was one of 4 top aids to Pres. Teddy Roosevelt.
Before coming to America he was an engineer who built roads, bridges and churches in Finland. How he met Teddy and got involved in Spanish-Am. War is not fully known.
Since 1971 I have lived half the time in Finland. I speak and read both Finn and English well. My granddad worked with Gus Hallberg (Hallinen) 1904-5 to organize International Workers of the World (IWW). Some called it the Communist Party. The Finns were the first ethnic group in world to strike and get their work week reduced from 14 hour 7 day weeks to 8 hour 5 day weeks. They started this struggle in Finland in 1880s against the Russian Tsar who in 1800s controlled Finland as a semi-autonomous province.
The other ethnic groups, the Swedes, Slovenians, Croations, Italians would not go on strike in copper and iron ore mines or in lumber camps (in the camps there were no other tribes working as they did not know how to work in forests as lumberjacks--didn't even know how to fall a tree with an axe and saw.)
In any case, many Finn were strike leaders and marchers in demonstrations wanting more humane work week in USA. They were shot by "goons" hired by the mining and timber corporation owners to quell the strikes.
My granddad and family escaped "left Dodge" just in nick of time--and moved into deep wilderness to build a small farm. Like many Finns he was "black-listed" and prevented from getting any type of job, so farming was only way to get/grow food and live.
We American middle class--the workers--owe a mega gratitude to Finns for starting and struggling to get all of us a humane work week--although the Uber-Rich, mainly Zionists on Wall Street, and in men in Big Oil , are likely going to sadly succeed in lowering the middle class into a poor class as exists in the 3rd world and Mexico.
In any case any human being that has light-pigmented (white) skin and light brown or white blond hair has Finnish genes. For the highest phenotype or expression of these attributes, and coded by genes, is found in their purest homozygous unmixed states in central Finland.
But at end of last Ice Age Finns and many related Finnic tribes and Finno-Ugric tribes did not live up north near vicinity of area that became Finland. For in 11000 BC the north was covered by Gaciers. In fact in 11000 BC light-pigmented Finnic tribes lived in the northern part of Africa and The Near East.
In Egypt they built the Great Pyramid: It was a "Pyora mittaja" or stone pyramid sky wheel measurer with shafts that measured rate of rotation of 12 night star zodiac patterns--25,920 yrs for all to make one full revolution.
And Jesus was not a Jew. His mother tongue was a Finnic tongue like Finnish. And this is why so few words that Jesus spoke were ever written down by Romans and Greeks.
In fact Biblical Scholars have always wondered why only a few words that Jesus spoke were actually written down. The reason was because the Romans and the Greeks did not understand the mother tongue of Jesus--in which he and God spoke to the local natives; the indigenous people. To be understood by the original natives living in Egypt and the Near East it was necessary that God and Jesus spoke in a Finnic tongue(s).
For more on these topics kindly click link, http://finnics7.blogspot.com or in a search engine(s) as Yahoo or Google type, finnics7.blogspot, and catholicwealth.blogspot, and zionists run fed reserve, kill usa, by will, and catholic church wealth huge by will, and catholic church riches huge by will. My email, willfin02@yahoo.com.
Interesting article. The debate over whether Finns and Saami people should be considered white or Asian has been beaten to death in anthropological discussions. I am only interested in it because I like general anthropology, but I do notice that most of the searches I've done regarding this lead me to white supremacy internet forums. That being said, I think this is the first article I've read that briefly addresses the negative associations evoked by labeling Finns as Asian. It seems to me that Finns will bend over backwards to deny any association with the Mongolian race. While they may indeed have little association, my question is: why is that bad, anyway? Most of those very people who want to keep anthropolgical credibility in the academic world and avoid being labeled a white supremacist would probably not dare say it aloud, but I think it is indeed an adherence to the "white is right" philosophy. It amazes me that people, usually Americans, always want to remark that modern-day Scandinavia is so liberal and free of racism and yet we come across issues like these. Denying any Asian connection, by itself, is not racist. What is an evident, true form of racism is when resulting reactions are negative. This includes non-Finns who desperately want to use this as a way to prove Finns inferior as well as the Finns who so desperately want to avoid that and yearn to be accepted into the white race. Why is being white so important to you?
Just my two cents.
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