Happy belated Independence Day, Finland. #Finland #Soviet #Russia You can vote for the next video in the community section right here :D : / @historycity2840
Simo Häyhä was never killed. But some soviet did shoot his jaw so in the end he couldn't come back to war. However after many surgeries, he still lived a full life
The early part is massively inaccurate and represents a 1950s vision of Finnish history written from a nationalist point of view, which not seen as factual. This is far from superb, but a good effort nonetheless, since there’s a serious lack of historical record.
Finns are amazingly resilient people. Peaceful, innovative, quiet yet friendly (until it's about metal and drinks), and have their independent course of foreign policy. Much love to you guys from an Indian!
@@arvopohja7693 Yes if our idiot people won't open their eyes and see that Russia is a big threat even now, and also to stop fooling around with the social democrat party since they seem to be totally not capable of running the country, using tax payers momey to buy whatever they want, put up restrictions which they don't follow, we'd have to push the EU's green agenda although we have the most forest to land area on Europe. We should join Nato to make sure that Russia won't threaten us, they have showed us many times that they are assholes who don't care about borders. they cross our air space and sea borders, and even if they start to threaten, it would be a nice needle in the guts for them IF WE WOULD BE IN NATO.
I'd like to think that Finland at least historically is the quiet big guy in bar, polite to the barmaid and peaceful in his drinking, but fuck his day up and he fucks your life up. Realistically, we are not THAT great war heroes. Many glasses wearing Finnish people will point out that winners usually do not come out of a war paying to the other side but also invasive effort from US sized super power is not resisted with such force that they decide to not bother and just... Do politics or something. Fly a plane over the space and have awkward talks between presidents about it.
Finns not adopting a "viking" lifestyle isn't exactly true. Both the Finnish tribes and Estonians to their south were seafaring and conducted trading along with pillaging in the surrounding areas in the eastern Baltic. Baltic Finnic people had their own vocabulary for boats, and similarly to the Norse, Finnic people also associated ships with serpents. One good example is "uisko", which was likely a small longship that could transport people and goods along with it being able to go into rivers. It was also capable to be dragged out of the water and over isthmuses and between different waterways. Estimates for how many men could be onboard was as high as 40, but that was likely exclusive for the largest ones. "Uisko" as a word has been used in folklore in which it has more often than not meant "snake" or "serpent". The word was also loaned into the Eric Chronicle written in the early 14th century as "wisko" as it was described as the ship used by Karelians along with it being introduced into early Russian as well. The Tavastians used rivers like the Porvoo River to get from the interior into the Baltic along with few medieval sources describing "Tavastians ports" on the coasts. Finns and Baltic Finnic people as a whole were no strangers to the Baltic and knew how to traverse it.
@@eksiarvamus Southwestern Finns due to their habitation being situated on and near the coast and around the Aura river along with Karelians due to the direct connection from the Ladoga into the Baltic through the Neva and Vuoksi, since back then the Vuoksi reached further west on the Karelian isthmus and many of the now separate lakes were more interconnected to each other making travel easier. Tavastians are a bit iffy, I'll admit that, due to their more inland settlements along rivers and lakes. However they did still use rivers, like the Porvoo river I previously mentioned, to get from Tavastia out to sea.
@@jokemon9547 In my home region, southern finland. We have a lot of viking artifacts being found, graves, evidences of camps, and so on. This is in the coastal & archipelago regions. I'm not saying finns, just vikings. My theory is the swedes 100% purged some of our history during their reign.
@@tominhaledhisfingers2468 Why though? There never was any deliberate need for Sweden to do that since they had ruled in Finland since early medieval age so there wasnt really much to delete.
Great video. Theres a lot of comments about historical inaccurasies, but i think the overall image is very good. When you are squeezing hundreds of years in to 20 minutes, small mishaps are bound to happen. A lot of times the correct answer is uncertain. This is a good summary of the Finnish history, perhaps the best. I rarely subscribe to any channels, but you have earned it. Kiitos!
Just a reminder. Kalevala is no big mythological record. It is a collection of short rhymes passed down trough oral tradition, that form a somewhat consistent narrative. Since the stories from Kalevala are spread out geographically and diluted in the course of history, Elias Lönnrot could not have possibly gather all the stories consistently. The estimates say that, comparing a perfect collection of all Kalevala rhymes to Lönnrot's Kalevala, is like comparing the entire Harry Potter series, to a page long replica of Harry Potter.
People began sending in new verses after the Kalevala was published, and Lönnrot himself said that he could have written 6 different (storylined) Kalevala with all the materials he now had.
I gotta say, as a Finn, I teared up a few times watching this video. Also I learned a few new things about the country I've lived my entire life. Thank you!
As a native Karelian im happy that our language still exists and that the most finnic groups managed to survive. I cant get enough of our history and im always hungry for more videos about our brothers. As one of 40.000 native Karelians i just can say that russia dont care about our finnic friends. I was born in russia (кемь) but my family moved to Finland and i also just can speak Karelian and Finnish besides English. Russia has alot of territory that should be Finland because the russians dont make anything to save our people. Greetings from Joensuu (Finland)
Kind of similar to Ukraine, they are not Poles or Russians, the two powers that have fought over Ukraine for centuries even though Ukraine as a nation is far older that either, especially Russia.
As a Finn: An amazing summary. Quite balanced, humorous, main points covered, visually impressive with all the clips and editing, not getting stuck on details or a single thing -- I never say this, but thanks for making and sharing this video. It was a pleasure~
Hands down the best video on youtube covering the history of Finland. Everything important was carefully covered and the drawings were excellent. I can see this channel becoming one of the top history channels on youtube.
Really nice to see our history from an outside perspective, albeit there being some holes/empty hatches that are quite significant to telling the story. Understandably it is difficult to make everything fit into a 30min walktrough. Thank you either way for telling our history to the rest of the world, maybe for those really intereated this is a pathway into digging deeper.
_"[The Finns] were not allowed to receive financial aid from the Marshall Plan [and] they were not allowed to join NATO"_ - Incorrect! The Paris peace treaty neither mentions Marshall plan nor NATO because neither existed yet. Marshall plan aid and NATO membership was simply not accepted because the years following the war right up until the signing of the treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in 1948 were known as "the years of danger" during which the Soviet Union remained extremely suspicious of Finland and actively - but fortunately unsuccesfully - interfered in Finland's affairs in order to turn it into a Communist satellite.
Tbh it sounded like that's what he meant, Finland had to somehow arrange itself with the Soviet Union at the time and could't risk to upset them, therefore joining NATO or financially cooperating with the US wasn't really on the table- maybe similarly to Ukraines situation in the early 2000s. I'd be interested in how exactly they interacted with the SU though, did the soviets have a lot of diplomats over there or was it more like communication via signs (idk like ordering less wood could mean "Back off with that American rifle purchase, otherwise u will maybe have to use them in the not-so-distant future?)!
The Marshall plan came after the war treaty yes, but the fact remains that Finland didn't receive that aid and it was because the soviets let the finns know that they shouldn't take it. Not outright forbidding it but sending a message regardless, a tactic they used throughout the cold war to keep Finland in check.
I am by no means an expert but I'd just like to make a few corrections from my own past research. In the start, Ukko is not the "high god", or even a god really. The Finnish concept of the divine was more simillar to sprits than gods, but this is from the Kalevala which is a Christian version of the story and is accurate to the book. The second, Vikings actually refused to travel with Finns, interestingly out of fear as they believed they could control the weather and although they could take advantage of this they thought the Finns might use this to take a lager share of loot. However Finns and Estonians still did raid frequently on their own although it wasn't until way into the Viking age and so anyone being raided would probably just think they where funny sounding Norse or Danes In the conversion section it's mentioned that they'd "convert and de-convert". while kind of true it's not how it exactly worked, the Finns didn't see a baptism as converting but as only a way to please the Christians. The Vikings also did this and it's even recorded that the legendary Viking Rollo complained that his baptism in France wasn't as good as his baptism in England. I am really enjoying this video and I' love to keep watching but its Joulu and time for sauna.
It's funny how the vikings were so scared of their eastern neighbours. Vikings didn't like travelling into sami lands as they believed we practiced magic and were scared of us. I've heard stories of Norwegians thinking they got cursed by a same just some 20 years ago which is quite hilarious.
Interesting note about the Finnish civilwar. My hometown Liminka chose not to take sides in this conflict, with the reds and whites signing a treaty which would keep the peace even though the nearby city Oulu still saw fighting.
Finnish person here, not an expert in being Finnish just being one so take it with grain of salt. "Hakkaa päälle" mentioned as the troops is very Finnish phrase, where it is absolutely abstract but also not at all for a finnish speaker. Literal translation would be "Hit them over (on them)" where more meaning filled "localization" could be more "Hit and overwhelm!" - Our war language is subtly not related to what we do to other side, other side is not even part of the yell. The only needed part in finnish war vocabulary is "What we do" - With little bit of generalization rules where you can say stuff like "hitting over" and it makes way more sense in Finnish than English. Sorry for tangent, for me, and maybe many friends "Hakkaa päälle" is just one of those things we say, or at least, in inspirational war movies, we say - there is a scene in original "Unknown Soldier" where one says it, to charge and fall, but also inspires others to follow that chant and charge. (said scene, in the new remake version; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Lo2fkwB185A.html) - So, the saying is still well known to this day, though, amount of finns in gangs partaking in gang wars where people would say stuff like this for realsies is not very high, at least hopefully not. Too long for sure, but also thanks. Even for Finnish people, videos like these are always a good resource to refresh and have concise chronological order which to "tack on" things you remember learning from school. Much like for other countries, sometimes outsider looks filter the knowledge a bit better, may filter out biases very nationalistic finns may have, and so on. Also, small note about (Finnish) Ä, and name like "Häyhä" - It is linked to A bit instead of "British proper a" which is the A we have always only most proper and most posh A whenever A is written, Ä is a seperation of "A" in words like "at" "angle" or "Static", and you bring that "tinge of difference" further from A and you have somewhat Finnish Ä. - Sadly, for being such a badass that he became one of most known finns outside finland, and people can write his name for sure, saying it is bit different. Because in Häyhä's name's case you cannot say "just say it like a japanese person would say it" because his name is almost all the things finnish language has versus Japanese. When otherwise we have words like "Sakka, Sakko, Sokko, Kukka, Kakka, Akka" where you can just write them down サッカ サッコ ソッコ クッカ カッカ アッカ and they'd sound identical between the two speakers... Well, Häyhä is the name that has nothing you can do. Best you can say is "Ä is kinda like A, but more the one in ät rather than proper bri'ish bath" - and the Y is like Y in "yeet" rather than the more U people tinge it as. HAVE I MADE IT CLEAR THAT FINNISH IS WEIRD? Because damn, part of being finn that learns about outside world is learning how weird we are. In nice way. The way how Häkkinen speaks in F1 interviews. Having badass rock covers of Russian national anthems and stuff. In finnish.
Hehe. Funny how an exo-Finn (someone living outside of Finland who most certainly is a Finn none the less) like me ends up reading these comments in videos about Finland. My husband is French, I was born in Finland though and yea - got to agree, it is very curious to watch videos about my native country, especially when they are made by someone who is originally from elsewhere. The view is rather interesting also from outside in.
Maybe you should have mentioned tulta munille, fire to the eggs, that's a translation but it means fire at the balls, i think it had something to do whit being in trenches and low so you just hit them in the waist area.
I think it is amazing how, even though they were forced to sue for peace, the Fins absolutely humiliated the USSR in the Winter War. The K/D ratio is one of the most lopsided in history. Absolutely went full metal on them.
There were few things I would have wanted you mention for example Finland had relative of Wilhelm II as king of Finland for that 1 month of independence. And about the Crimean war, there we're some fighting in Finnish coast where Finns won fight against British, and captured a war boat from them. And you can go see that war boat too here.
13:50 I think Kustaa Raninen (Gustaf Ranin) was one of the wealthier Finnish speakers. Usually people finnicized their previously Swedish or English family names. He did the opposite.
Wow, incredibly underrated, both in channel and in video. Hope your channel blows up someday! It will almost certainly happen eventually if you keep making quality content.
One thing to note of the finnish civil war it was and still is one of me most bloody civil wars in history of the world when compared to countries population
At least Finland is one of those countries that stands up for itself and does not back down. Also the paper that Finland had during the depression really helped their economy.
Maybe but we are economically pretty fucked right now anyway and it will just become worse dunno if its because our leaders seem to be pretty fucking corrupted somehow everytime or they are just dont know what they are doing who knows
Going back to the tug of war (literally) between the would-be Swedish empire and the Rus, there's an old saying that "the Swedes would fight to the very last Finn."
Gonna have to rail really hard against that "Finnish chieftains replaced by Swedish nobles" line. A large portion of the nobility were Finns, often chieftains who just converted to Christianity. Horn, Carpelan, Tavast, Tawast, Särkilahti, Blåfeld, Creutz, Stålarm, Kurki etc families were of ethnic Finnish origins, and most of their members spoke Finnish until the internationalization of the nobility took a toll on Finnish language starting from the mid-1600s. Many of Sweden's most important and influential statesmen, members of the privy council for example, were Finns. Finns held great power in the kingdom. It wasn't some exclusive ethnic Swedish project, but a mutual cooperative project between Swedes and Finns. The single BIGGEST lie in this video is that of the club war. It was not some uprising by Finns against Swedes, but an uprising by both Finnish and Swedish speaking peasants against the Finnish nobility. The regent of Sweden actually supported the peasants, while the Finnish military dictator Klaus Fleming embargoed Sweden and supported the king of Poland-Lithuania. Calling it a Finnish revolt against Sweden couldn't be further away from the truth.
Indeed, depicting the Swedes as oppressors is simply wrong and historically inaccurate, most people lived quite harsh lives back then but Swedes and Finns were (and are) brothers in the truest sense. Thousands of Swedes died defending Finns as the Finns died protecting the Swedes when we were one country and after that Sweden sent officers to help during the civil war and during WWII gathered the largest volunteer force in history to help the Finns during the winter war with the Soviets and sent thousands of tons of military equipment, even a 1/3 of the air force to defend Finland. Way to skip on the "details" in the video.
Yeah, I was confused about that too. Swedish Kings often trusted the Finns more than the Swedes (as the Swedes this side of the bay were more likely to back-stab eachother).
@@GegoXaren While this might be true , its been proven that provinces in Finland wasnt required to provide more soldiers then any other provinces from Sweden , they were seen as equals from the start and thus nothing you occupy. Source to this is the historian Herman Lindqvist , reason why we "forced" swedish was so that we could trade with 'one' language and when meeting were held about the future of all of Sweden those from finlands provinces could represent their case in Stockholm , thus it was of practical reason and not an intent to wipe finish off the map. Which sweden had ample time for over 700+ years if that was the intent. There is a long list of stuff that's all written from Finlands nationalistic point of view , and simply not correct.
@@matso3856 The idea of Finland providing more troops in the Swedish army likely stems from the amount of Swedish cavalry that was from Finland, since despite Finland being only 1/3 of the Swedish population, on average 37% of the cavalry came from Finland and at times it was as high as 50%. So proportionally speaking, Finland supplied a lot of cavalry. It also has likely been affected by the mainly Finnish units fighting in Finland during Swedish-Russian wars. Not that Swedish units weren't there at all, but for example in the last Swedish-Russian war over Finland in 1808-1809, most of the soldiers fighting were Finnish units.
Best history vid of Finland I've seen. Finally someone who just doesn't say "yeah Finns were some forest people before almighty swedes came to rescue them".
A very informative video! I LOVE ❤️ history myself and so enjoyed this video very much. Bless you for being such a person with ardor and insatiable desire for history 🥰
This is a very well done and amusing summary of Finland, the Finns and their place in the world. I did my last year of high school as an exchange student for the first 3 months in a Finnish speaking school in central Helsinki (Ressun Lukio), and then the rest of the year in a Swedish speaking village, Karis (Karjaa in Finnish) in the costal forest area half way between Helsinki and Turku... Your presentation of the Finland is oikein hyvä!
Great job, I'm over all impressed with the video. There are some small inaccuracies but no where near as bad as in most youtube videos. Especially the history since 19th century seems accurate, hell even the Finns aren't sure about the prehistory of the country
In 1939 when the soviets asked to move the karelian border 50km west, Sweden actually promised to join Finland in case of war. Most of the influencial people here supported the border change, but we trusted the Swedes to join and declined the soviet offer. But never joined thus forcing Finland to cede more of Karelia
The language issue during the Swedish era was not quite as clear cut as presented. It was a peculiar mix with high nobility speaking German (or French later on), merchants speaking German, educated folk speaking Latin and ordinary folk either Finnish or Swedish. That being said the lack of written (or indeed even unified form) of Finnish increased the importance of Swedish language. Regardless the common folk had the right to make their appeals to the Swedish crown in Finnish as well. Also Finland was part of the actual Swedish state (i.e. not just a territory) with people having the same rights regardless of language. Also Sweden waged many wars in the west as well against the Danes (and Norwegians) so it wasn't quite as easy going 'in the west' as it might seem. Club war on the other hand was mainly a part of the internal strife which was waged across Sweden so it wasn't just a 'Finnish thing'. The separation plans also were mainly handled by the Swedish nobility of Finland, it wasn't like fully nation wide grassroot level stuff. And it actually had been pondered previously, the commander of the forces who crushed the peasants in Club War also had ideas of creating his own Finnish state. So it is a lot more complicated issue than just Finns vs. Swedes.
We have an amazing and intresting history, and also we are really wealthy and happy people:). I hope that you could fully see our country! Terveisiä Suomesta!
What a great summary of Finlands history! Thank you so much for making this video! Even I learned much because I wasn't this interested on history at school, and school was over 20 years ago :D
One of the best foreign history videos of Finland i've seen on YT. For most part the video was well made, but after 1939, there was lack of information and false info about Winter war and Continuation war.
One fun fact, Swedish Kings often trusted the Finns more than the Swedes... And the dominant language in Stockholm was for a time German and Finnish (becouse many Finns moved to Stockholm and German was the language of nobility and trade).
Nice video! One slight mistake used in video, during the civil war white side used yellow lion on red background in their flag. It was temporary state flag. Blue crossed flag with white background came after the war. Also the reasons of Continuation war are still to be depaded. After the Winter war Soviet threath was not gone (for example taking down Finnish civilian plane Kaleva), Soviets were not done with the Finnish question (Molotovs discussions with Hitler in 1940).
Nice, Always good to see new History Channels popping up, especially ones with such comfortable narrator voices and story telling. I can't wait to binge your videos to catch up and look forward to new ones Edit: Also the volume was too low, I didn't realize until I switched to a video from Lemmino. I had turned up the volume so much during this video, that Lemmino's "Just let me know" opening tag woke up my dog.
9:26 Actually, the club war was an uprising against a Finnish military dictator. The rebels sided with a Swedish Duke who eventually became King of Sweden. The clubs were spiky iron-reinforced flails which were quite effective against cavalry. I admit I'm slightly biased here because my ancestor was the leader of the uprising.
Quite a few minor or actually some bigger mistakes on the history front. Would have also liked that the music would be from Sibelius instead of Tchaikovsky.. - cause that is like when presenting American history.. you would have 'God save the Queen' playing in the background. Otherwise a good effort for starting an account of history on every country on this planet. Good luck with the project!
I must congratulate this channel, most of the videos regarding our history here in RU-vid are very bad but I couldn't spot historical inaccuracies in this one. Good job. Kiitos.
Keep at it, unless there's a conspiracy by YT against you, your channel will reach at least 100k subs. Your content is on the same level as Kraut's, although your channel seems to be more about history and facts, whereas his videos are more about history, (his) interpretations about history and theory.
From one small RU-vidr to another, this is superb. I started watching and had to doublecheck to make sure you were under 1000 subscribers. I can only imagine how long was spent making this video. If you are interested, some aspects of Finland as an early nation-state during the 1920s were briefly brushed over, like the Heimosodat (Tribal wars over Karelian territory in the early 1920s) and the Flying Finns helped solidify the Finnish national identity and may be of interest to you. I have a Flying Finns video in my files that is sitting unfinished and you may have inspired me to pump it out. P.S. Knowing the Finnish inferiority complex of being obsessed with what foreigners think of them and English language media about Finland in general, this video will become quite popular
This guy deserves way more subscribers and views for this high quality content. Only issue I see is that you don't talk very loud, maybe raise your voice.
Mahtavaa. Thank you for telling others about our history. Ill give you a follow for this. I bet heres other thankful finns too so yeah. If you make a vid about finland. You will get many finns to your fan base lol. Kiitos
If you are Finnish, let me know what mistakes I've made in the video so that I can learn something new :) and I hope you will continue supporting this channel
Finnish National Board of Antiquities says first here was nothing but forrest and snow, and then the swedes came in and populated the area. Funnily enough it is run by swedes or Swedish minded Finns, yet fund by Finns. They strictly deny that there ever was population here and swedes never had to 'conquer' the lands of Finland to acquire it.
@@hermannikorianteri I believe the modern idea of the "crusade" into Finland in the 1150s is either that it was just a regular military expedition supposedly due to Finns raiding across the sea into Sweden (this justification was given in the chronicle describing the event) or that it was done to take over the trade routes that existed in Finland before Novgorod or some other entity took them over. Considering no evidence exists for the "crusade" actually having Papal involvement, Sweden likely acted on it's own accord for whatever reason. The 2nd crusade however did have Papal involvement as is evidenced by letters between the Pope and archbishop of Uppsala at the time discussing the "heathen Tavastians" converting back to paganism. And then the 3rd one against the Karelians was likely just another military expedition specifically against Novgorod dubbed as a holy war, considering Novgorod had formally conquered and taken over the Karelians 20 years before the crusade was said to have taken place. Out of the 3, really the second one could seriously be considered a crusade in my opinion. There is also the idea that initial Swedish expansion into southwestern Finland wasn't even a conquest, as you said, but rather a gradual incorporation into Sweden as local Finnish rulers allied and submitted to the Swedish crown in order to get protection against their enemies, who would have been the Karelians and by extension, Novgorod. The threat of the Karelians and Novgorod is evidenced by Novgorod chronicles mentioning multiple conflicts between the western Finnish groups like Finns and Tavastians and the Karelians with the assistance of Novgorod during the 11th and 12th centuries. These conflicts likely would have pushed Finnish chieftains and minor kings into searching for aid in the form of Sweden in exchange for converting and submitting to the crown, especially since southwestern Finland had close ties to Sweden even before the viking age.
The video is not bad. However, you present a wrong perspective of the relationship between the geographical areas of nowadays Sweden and Finland. You present that as a relationship of conqueror vs. conquered. And that is so incredibly false. The first inroads of Sweden into "Finland" were totally through alliance. Later, yes there was some fighting against the Tavastians - not a lot though. Nevertheless, even after that those parts were totally integrated into Sweden with representatives in the parliament of that time. Sweden at that time thus was a kingdom that enclosed both parts of current Sweden and Finland. Those parts were totally equal.
