Forest Finns (Finnish: metsäsuomalaiset, Norwegian bokmål: skogfinner, Norwegian nynorsk: skogfinnar, Swedish: skogsfinnar) were Finnish migrants from Savonia and Northern Tavastia in Finland who settled in forest areas of Sweden proper and Norway during the late 16th and early-to-mid-17th centuries, and traditionally pursued slash-and-burn agriculture, a method used for turning forests into farmlands. By the late 18th century, the Forest Finns had become largely assimilated into the Swedish and Norwegian cultures, and their language, a variety of Savonian Finnish (Värmland Savonian dialect), is today extinct, although it survived among a tiny minority until the 20th century. Descendants of the Forest Finns still live in Sweden and Norway.
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👉 Forest Finns in the context of Finns
Finns or Finnish people (Finnish: suomalaiset, IPA: [ˈsuo̯mɑlɑi̯set]) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland. Finns are traditionally divided into smaller regional groups that span several countries adjacent to Finland, both those who are native to these countries as well as those who have resettled. Some of these may be classified as separate ethnic groups, rather than subgroups of Finns. These include the Kvens and Forest Finns in Norway, the Tornedalians in Sweden, and the Ingrian Finns in Russia.
Finnish, the language spoken by Finns, is closely related to other Balto-Finnic languages such as Estonian and Karelian. The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages, which also includes Hungarian. These languages are markedly different from most other languages spoken in Europe, which belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Native Finns can also be divided according to dialect into subgroups sometimes called heimo (lit. 'tribe'), although such divisions have become less important due to internal migration.
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Forest Finns in the context of Northern Norway
Northern Norway (Bokmål: Nord-Norge, Urban East Norwegian: [ˈnûːrˌnɔrɡə], Nynorsk: Nord-Noreg; Northern Sami: Davvi-Norga) is a geographical region of Norway, consisting of the three northernmost counties Nordland, Troms and Finnmark, in total about 35% of the Norwegian mainland. Some of the largest towns in Northern Norway (from south to north) are Mo i Rana, Bodø, Narvik, Harstad, Tromsø and Alta. Northern Norway is often described as the land of the midnight sun and the land of the northern lights. Farther north, halfway to the North Pole, is the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, traditionally not regarded as part of Northern Norway.
The region is multi-cultural, housing not just Norwegians but also the indigenous Sami people, Norwegian Finns (known as Kvens, distinct from the "Forest Finns" of Southern Norway) and Russian populations (mostly in Kirkenes). The Norwegian language dominates in most of the area; Sami speakers are mainly found inland and in some of the fjord areas of Nordland, Troms and particularly Finnmark – though ethnic Sámi who do not speak the language are found more or less everywhere in the region. Finnish is spoken in only a few communities in the east of Finnmark.