During the summer, I visited the history museum, where they had an exhibition about ancient DNA. I was walking around looking at the artefacts and reading the history, amongst which is written “It is important to remember that genes do not define Finnish identity.”
I think to some this is just some woke bs about diversity, but personally it was such an articulate and touching sentence that connects the history of the Finnish people and the changing future.
I, as an immigrant who came here, do not have the right to define what is Finnish and what is not. I don’t claim myself to be Finnish if I don’t even have citizenship yet. However, despite however racist some Finns can be, I feel very welcomed here.
I came here during high school, now in first year of university. I speak Finnish on a daily basis and it will always be the first language I use to address somebody. I am not as fluent as somebody who is born here; but I still feel very welcomed, as everybody always starts off with me in Finnish. A lot of the times I feel as though they completely forgot that I am not a native speaker. They don’t slow it down or dumb it down for me, rather they just speak as if they were speaking to any other Finnish person.
Now I’m not saying that they see me as a Finn, but it truly feels welcoming when you are not underestimated nor judged for not speaking the language natively. That my fluency doesn’t affect how they see me, despite the skin colour, is so encouraging. I don’t feel like I would get the same experience in, say France or Japan.
This is my own take though. This is something I personally love about Finnish people.
https://i.redd.it/hnystyh7p5bg1.jpeg
Posted by LesRainbows0405
11 Comments
Welcome! Very well said and happy you’ve felt welcomed as exactly who you are.
I totally agree with the museum text.
There seems to be a very common misconception that until a short while ago, people just lived separate from each other and are completely different once you cross a border, or a river, etc.
In fact, we are all children of migrants – humanity developed in Africa and migrated all over the planet. In many cases (probably most) they then moved on multiple times (as for the Finns – probably from somewhere around the Ural mountain range).
They also didn’t stick to themselves: people migrated all the time and mixed with the locals. They traded over long distances (we have evidence of this back to the stone ages), and invading armies also did their best to leave their genes wherever they roamed.
The human genome is just a hotchpotch of mixed up genes from all of these.
And to be honest, I believe we are much the better for this! Look at the European royals to see where inbreeding leads to.
Don’t show this to perussuomalaiset
I really wish that museums etc. would check their English before using it in their exhibitions.
Facts 100%
Many Finnish tatars have less than 5% Finnish ancestry, they are much more Finnish to me than 100% Finnish Americans who haven’t even stepped on Finnish soil
Finnish genetics have been largely unchanged since early middle ages according this [study](https://yle.fi/a/74-20175820?utm_source=social-media-share&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ylefiapp) in Tampere region.
While the statement is true technically, it’s quite purposefully been left as broad as possible. Many of the regions of Finland have had their gene pools, how would you put it “locked in” or amalgamated and slowed down since the middle ages with the gene variation considerably slowing.
So, yes technically this is a true statement, it doesn’t really remove the fact that the Finnish people are majorly from the same area and the fluctuations in it come from its surrounding areas (Sweden, Russia, Norway, Dutch, German).
For example as an anecdote, one half of my family comes originally from Sweden some 800 years ago to northern parts of Estonia and around 600 years ago they moved to Finland and from then on have been in Finland. The other half has been in Finland as far as we’ve found the documents.
Before defining a timeline, giving mixture of genes is bullshit.
My home country is the fucking cradle of all civilizations, yet my cultural & DNA ancestors moved from Central Asia 1000 years ago. Should I define my gene history for that 1000 years ago or 500 years ago where it is already mixed with tons of others….
Just the same as there is no such thing as an Arabic person or Japanese person. Korean and Chinese? Same thing. Russian or Ukrainian? Same thing. Native American or a Mayflower descendant? Same thing. Pakistani or a Jew from Israel? Same thing.