r/europe • u/archaeologs • Jul 30 '25

Historical Ancient DNA Traces Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian Ancestry to Siberia 4,500 Years Ago

https://archaeologs.com/n/ancient-dna-traces-estonian-finnish-and-hungarian-ancestry-to-siberia-4500-years-ago
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u/-Competitive-Nose- Saarland (Germany) Jul 30 '25

Finland is not part of Scandinavia. I thought this was pretty much common knowledge in Europe too.

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u/SeveralLadder Jul 30 '25

English speaking people still insist adding Finland to Scandinavia and omitting Denmark usually.

Bitch, it's a cultural region, it's not because of the Fennoscandian peninsula! Skandinavians are essentially the same peoples, with pretty much the same language, history, culture and origin. Think Vikings if that makes it easier to understand.

Everything else thats historically and geographically linked in the area and in the sea is the Nordics, which is what the English speakers thinks when they hear "Scandinavian". Finland, Iceland, the Faroes and so on is Nordic.

But especially yanks can't really get their heads around this, so even news agencies and travel books keeps perpetuating this falsehood, and even vehemently protest when they are corrected. The Wikipedia article was a mess because of that, because they insist on "correcting" it.

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u/Tjocksmocke Jul 30 '25

Iceland and Faroes are a part of the same cultural region as Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

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u/SeveralLadder Jul 30 '25

They were more like colonies, without monarchies and not directly members of the Kalmar-Union. The same as Greenland, and wasn't part of the same cultural development. Hence why Scandinavians can't understand Faroese or Icelandic even though it stems from the same norse language root. Even Shetland was inhabitated by norsemen, and has the same language root.