The elusive Finn : ethnic identities, source criticism and the early history of Northern Sweden in seventeenth-century Swedish historiography
Sarviaho, Samu (2020-08-10)
Samu Sarviaho (2021) The elusive Finn: ethnic identities, source criticism and the early history of Northern Sweden in seventeenth-century Swedish historiography, Scandinavian Journal of History, 46:1, 21-41, DOI: 10.1080/03468755.2020.1788633
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Scandinavian Journal of History on 10 Aug 2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2020.1788633.
https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2022021719702
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
The earliest history of the Swedish Realm’s northern regions has long been contested in historiography. This article primarily analyses views in seventeenth-century Swedish historiography concerning the origins of Finns in this region, in terms of source usage and ethnic identities. Gothicist views, emphasizing Swedish greatness were based on biblical notions of a postdiluvial settlement, linking sources from classical antiquity to Sweden via etymological comparisons. Combined with a reliance on Icelandic sagas and the uncritical use of secondary sources, these notions gave rise, among others, to the idea of an ancient, partially Finnish, Amazon warrior realm in Ostrobothnia. Conceptions surrounding the origins of Birkarl tax collectors were mostly based on traditions collected in the early 1600s, and later that century, they became associated with a migration of Finns to the north thought to have taken place in the late 13th century. Finns were given a role in the region’s history even within Gothicist historiography too. The ethnicity of these early settlements does not seem to have been overly emphasized though — indeed the boundary between Finns and Swedes was seen more as something fluid — indicating that ethnosymbolist theories of nationalism overstate the importance of ethnic identity in early modern Sweden.
Kokoelmat
- Avoin saatavuus [34516]