What was Finland like under Swedish rule

t. Carl-Göran

>cultural heritage ruined, artifacts tolen
Was this really that different from the conversion of swedes to christianity and the loss of norse heritage and so on? I mean it wasn't like the finns wrote all their stuff down and then there was an active campaign to burn books and stuff led by the swedes, right?

t. Perka the pagan larper with Ukko tattoo

Olen vittu suomalainen

Stand still now

/thread

A bit better than in Estonia and Latvia.
There were Finnish-speaking nobles. This wasn't the case in Estonia or Latvia. All the nobles were initially German and Danish. Later, Danish nobles left (Estland was sold to the Livonian Order after a large-scale Estonian uprising), and some Polish and Swedish nobles arrived. The majority of nobles were always German though.
Finns actually owned some lands. This wasn't the case in Estonia or Latvia.

Destruction of culture was equally bad.
But for some reason Finns were converted much more efficiently.
Paganism in Estonia and Latvia survived until the 18th century. Not sure about Finland, but nowadays most Estonians and Latvians are irreligious. (this was the case in the 1930s aswell, so Soviet occupation ain't the cause).

In Finland paganism lasted a long time too, cant remember how long it lasted though. It wasnt that uncommon for people to worship both christ and do pagan things just to be sure.

Fusion of Christian and Pagan traditions also happened in Estonia to an extent.
Jesus (Essu) is one of the Seto gods. Jesus is the Sky god, the creator, and the father-in-law and advisor of Peko (Demigod and hero)
The Seto were converted a few hundred years before anyone else though, and they're orthodox. Much more religious than other Estonians aswell.

this. Finns had good representation in the Estates General. Finnish peasants continued to speak finnish and even practice pagan traditions into the 1700s. they were basically treated as a province of sweden and no really discriminated against. I mean, it was even a springboard from which carl gustav (?) launched a successful coup to despose his brother the king.

Also, for some reason, Mary (Maarja), Jesus' mother as we know her, is, in Seto religion, Jesus' wife and a god equal to Jesus. They have a daughter dogether (Nabra), who married Peko.

>Paganism in Estonia and Latvia survived until the 18th century.
You've got it the other way around. Pagan traditions lasted in the baltics but I'm pretty sure it survived longer in finland, which was HEAVILY forested and so easy for peasants to hide their pagan worship. Baltics were something of a contested land between poland russia and sweden ambitions and so it was harder to escape the imposition of church authority.

They found one university, the University of Turku, or Academy of Turku, in the 1600's.
That was later moved to Helsinki by the Russians, who were busy building a new capital to suit the russians.
Nowadays, University of Helsinki still claims it's founded almost 400 years ago, like some real European universities.

To my understanding Finns werent treated very badly compared to other regions. This mostly thanks to it being at the edge of the known world for a long time. During swedish rule there were very few peasant uprisings for example, like i think there was like one notable one and even that was started by some noble pissed off at the king.

Finnish population remained quite stagnant throughout Swedish reign for variety of reasons: poor infrastructure, scarcely populated, conscription, every war with Russia ending with Finland being raided/occupied for years, harsh environment for farming, taxes and restrictions on trade keeping Finns poor.

Basically for the entirety of Swedish rule FInland was Sweden's meat shield against Russia.

>Finnish culture
literally what

Swedish influence and Christianity eroded it.

Western Finns in particular have a very poor cultural base.

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