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I can think of two additional differences off the top of my head.
Politics - Finland is a mixed presidential parliamentary system more akin to France than to the rest of Scandanvia. I could be wrong but I do believe that there president has some degree of political power. On the other hand, Iceland's president is a figurehead along with the different monarchies of the rest of Scandanavia.
Crime - While Finnish crime stats are still pretty low compared to the US, it has a noticably higher homicide rate than the rest of Scandanavia. Although the streets are still safe to walk around late at night, there is a problem with alcohol-fueled domestic violence. That is why the homicide rate will appear a little but noticably higher than in the rest of Scandanavia. Alcohol seems to be abused more here.
I have dealt with people from Scandinavia. Many of them do have a reserve about them. They never came off as "gloomy" to me, just more quiet. I can be kind of quiet myself.
One thing I have noticed is that alot of Finnish people might have blond hair and blue eyes, but the facial features tend to be different. Among the Finnish persons I have met, I have found the facial features to have more in common with Russians that other Nordic peoples. One thing I notice is the rounder faces and relatively high cheekbones. I think part of that has to do with the Finno-Ugric influences.
From my research there is a huge split between Lapps and other Finns. Why? It is hypothesized that Lapps are actually descended from Mongolians. According to what I have read, Lapps are not blonde with blue eyes, which is evidenced in my family. I have Lapp ancestors, and my Finnish side has very dark hair, dark eyes, and very pale skin. That is my look, and it has very obviously come from that side. From people who speak both Finnish and Japanese, it has also been said that there are many similarites between the two languages. This would make some sense if the Mongolian hypothesis is true.
From my research there is a huge split between Lapps and other Finns. Why? It is hypothesized that Lapps are actually descended from Mongolians. According to what I have read, Lapps are not blonde with blue eyes, which is evidenced in my family. I have Lapp ancestors, and my Finnish side has very dark hair, dark eyes, and very pale skin. That is my look, and it has very obviously come from that side. From people who speak both Finnish and Japanese, it has also been said that there are many similarites between the two languages. This would make some sense if the Mongolian hypothesis is true.
The Finns are from east of the Urals as well, and the closest language in Europe to Finnish is Magyar (Hungarians, who also came from the east.
Im danish, and ive always had a quite strange relationship with the finns. They seem like an odd misplaced country to me lol. All we hear about is school shootings and their race drivers (raikkonen,kovalein and haikkinen), and i think they do some sort of shoe throwing for sport. I don't really feel connected to finns like i do to swedes and norwegians. They're my brothers while finland is that distant cousin only sweden talked with lol.(finland was under swedish rule).
From my research there is a huge split between Lapps and other Finns. Why? It is hypothesized that Lapps are actually descended from Mongolians. According to what I have read, Lapps are not blonde with blue eyes, which is evidenced in my family. I have Lapp ancestors, and my Finnish side has very dark hair, dark eyes, and very pale skin. That is my look, and it has very obviously come from that side. From people who speak both Finnish and Japanese, it has also been said that there are many similarites between the two languages. This would make some sense if the Mongolian hypothesis is true.
I have heard that the Saami were descended from Mongolians. Some people have actually thought Finns themselves were descended from Mongolians.
When I first looked at a website in Finnish, the first thing I noticed is that some of it looked like Japanese.
I have heard that the Saami were descended from Mongolians. Some people have actually thought Finns themselves were descended from Mongolians.
When I first looked at a website in Finnish, the first thing I noticed is that some of it looked like Japanese.
Saami are actually European, descended from the same genetic stock as other Europeans. They appear quite east asian though. This is thought to be because they were genetically isolated for 10 000 - 15 000 years, during the time when the european apperance developed. In other words, they've kept the original Ice Age look.
It gets a bit complicated by their language that was named for them turning out not to be their original one, but imposed from Asia maybe 1500 years ago. So the language is definitly Asian.
Scandinavia is generally understood to be the three countries sharing a goverment system and muturally comrehensible languages -the constitutional monarchies of Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
The "Nordic countries" term also include the incomprehensible republics of Finland and Iceland.
I only knew, well sort-of they were more like acquaintances, two Finns and I'd agree they didn't strike me as a particularly gloomy people. Nor did they talk about tango at all.
The latest linguistic & genetic resersh seems to indicate that the Finns and the Sami/Lapp are the direct decendants of the various peoples who lived in Europe and Asia during the last ice age.
Other peoples decendents from the original Euro/Asia habitants are Northern Samoyedic peoples are(Nenets, Enets and Nganasan) Southern Samoyedic peoples (Selkup) - both found in Siberia, Yukaghir speaking people in the Russian far east. We also have languages such as the Moksha and Erzya language found in Mordovia (related to Finnish), Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi language (Vogul) of central Russia, both related to Hungarian and a handfull of other languages.
These languages or groups of people seem to have maintained their very old languages (and some times cultures) living in remote areas such as in very cold climates or in mountainous areas...areas were they did not associate that much with "newer" europeans and asians.
I hope some of this made some kind os sense.
So this is different from the Swedes, Norwegians and Danes who are "newer" people/languages/cultures.
Nothing is permanent though. People in northern Sweden are very, very often of Finnish and/or Swedish decent.
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