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Name "Finland" was used by the Scandinavians first: it's already found in Viking Age runestones in Sweden, and later in sagas. Both Finns and Samis they called as Finns. "Fenni, Phinnoi" are mentioned by Tacitus 98AD, Ptolemy 150AD and so on.. it is Latin/Greek form of the word what Germanic peoples used. "Österland" was used in Sweden proper between 1350-1470 (according to Wikipedia). Finnish speakers used old Finnish names of the regions (Suomi, Häme, Karjala, Kainuu, Pohjola and a newer name Satakunta).
It's pretty ghastly that medieval farmers had a better life than those that followed them. Though that being said, if you lived in the east, as far as I've understood, you always needed to be worried about slavers from Novgorod/Moscow/Rus.
That's my opinion that can be somewhat influenced by my interest in said era. But yeah, I suppose the East and sometimes West of Finland always had to be alert in case of the great Russian culture.
@@Anttimation Just because the slave traders came through or from Russia doesn't necessarily mean they were Russians. Islamic flesh merchants have always prized young blonds and redheads above any other. They also targeted Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and Hungarians. The Ottoman court, for instance, was mostly composed of Ukrainian woman who were raided from their families along the north shore of the Black Sea and sold as little girls to become concubines.
@@ezekielbrockmann114 Yeah I remember reading about Finns too being sold to the Ottomans and/or beyond. They were not only blonde but also considered heathens which, if I remember correctly, only added their value as they could be sold to Muslim buyers. However, saying that Russians caused problems in Finland throughout centuries is as correct as it gets.
@@Anttimation Muslims buying Muslim slaves, and Christians buying Christian slaves were frowned upon by respective parties. This lead to pirates in the Mediterranean exchanging their slaves with each other, so Christian pirates exchanged their Christian captives with Muslim ones from Muslim pirates, and vice versa. Being smart has always helped business.
Great animations, illustrations and humor in these videos. Also I usually skip past sponsored ads but you incorporated it so well into the premise of this video I actually enjoyed watching it too! Learning about those dark times in the past always makes me appreciate sitting here enjoying youtube videos in modern society.
Lots of awesome art (again) in this video! (The knight looks pretty Central/West European though). My sister did genealogy reserch for several familes. I sometimes helped her reading micro films of the old churchbooks. That's pretty interesting stuff to do. Tracking families back them is not a simple task: takes a lot of comparing, plenty of people used only their parents' names as surnames, or priests invented new surnames for them.
Thanks! That would be because Western European knight references are more plentiful, hehe. My general understanding is that Medieval Swedish arms and armour followed the European trends but about half a century to a century late. Do you have somewhere in mind where to look for Swedish knight references? There will be part 2 so it would be very useful.
@@Anttimation I don't have. I would look at museums. I believe (don't actually know) that full plate armors in Sweden (including Finland) were more like ceremonial armors what royals had. Knights, or rather Medieval heavy cavalry generally, was probably more like hauberg (chain mail shirt), helmet, breast plate, maybe some plates protecting legs, arms, gauntlets maybe. Not a full suit of plate armor.
@@Anttimation But hey, looking at your knight again, he seems to wear a hauberg (although this seems like metal chain full body sock) and helmet, not a full plate suit.
Kiitos kun teet näitä videoita! Todella hyvän laatuisia pätkiä! On aika uskomatonta miten vähän sitä tietää oman kansansa historiasta. Toki meiltä puuttuu paljon tietoakin, mutta näissä videoissa on tullut itselle jo paljon uutta tietoa.
I will give this a try, my aunt was able to trace back a "viking" ancestor in south Sweden as a shipbuilder through her own methods. My DNA results unfortunately say I'm 0% Finnish. Mostly German, Danish and English. Btw, your art is really getting good really loving it❤🍄
Sounds badass. How did she trace it back so far? I imagine thousand-year old records from Sweden to be quite scarce. Thank you! It's always a constant struggle how much time I'd put into illustrating a video. But the better I make them, the more I enjoy the videos so I've been adding more detail to the newer instalments in this history of Finland series.
kiitos.. ! as always a nice way to learn the background for my passion (medieval re-enactment) ....as someone who grew up in the hanse-town of hamburg before finally returning to the fatherland, i enjoyed seeing the hanse mentioned here. And yes, they had a pirate problem... and they dealth with it too haha... but that story is maybe out of your scope. Maybe when finnland is all told - you can expand to the surroundings and revisit it. I gladly help with research ;)
Thanks! Yeah I try to keep this series focused on what is today's Finland/Finnic peoples living there and only include the absolute most necessary events outside, for example the political history of Sweden when Finland was subjected to her. Otherwise this would be a mammoth of a series, haha. Could be interesting to explore in another video maybe... Thanks for offering to help!
Thanks for your informative and fun videos! My family tree in Finland on MyHeritage goes back to the late 1400s. The hot spots are in the Ostrobothnia (Southern and Northern). No witches and only one ancestor had a death sentence (in 1600s). So boring! A few priests between 1600s-1800s in Häme😬 The rest of ancestors all are farmers, which probably explains their long life spans, food was available to them. Most famous ancestor could be Jaakko Ilkka 🏹Admittedly is a bit difficult to ascertain, but I like to claim it, regardless the controversy.
Awesome! Was there info on the reason for the death sentence? I think I've heard quite a few people claim to descend from Jaakko Ilkka, records or not. But you might have a stronger claim :D
@@Anttimation What I have learned about the death sentence, he and his wife were accused of sodomy😹 So he confessed to save his wife’s life. This is a word of mouth info though, I have not seen any records. The connection to Jaakko Ilkka is tricky. Apparently there were a man with a sama name, in Alavus I think. What is more established, is that Peltoniemi family, who likely contributed to Jaakko Ilkka’s demise, are relative too😬I have only collected information on direct lines, so maybe if I included wider family members the tree would become more alive. But hey, farmers’ life is not very interesting.
No folkloric monster is half as creepy as an AI animated photograph. Also I didn't realize there were so many differences between peasants in middle age Finland and elsewhere in Europe. Seems like they had it a bit better (aside from having to live through something called a 'great wrath')
Thanks once again! I wonder if Estonian records could reach further than Finnish that often end/start in the 1500s. 🤔 Tallinn/Rävel being an important Hansa city and all that.
If well over half of tax collected from Finland went over the ocean to Sweden, I don't know what else that is than national serfdom. Finns probably were not bound to lands by law like in fully Feudal European kingdoms, but taking account the climate, environment and living conditions of the time, a poor uneducated illiterate farmhand had really no other choice than to serve a house or a lord. The alternative was to make it solo in the wilderness, to improv slash-burn-farming and building a small savupirtti in the middle of thick Savonian wasteland forests, in freezing -30C pitch black darkness... probably not very attractive alternative. Actually the Swedes encouraged this later on when they wanted more population to the eastern Finland for geopolitical reasons.
Now to think about it... isn't the book Seitsemän Veljestä about just this in a way. The brothers give the finger to civilized society and build a new life in the wilderness, where their hard work rewards them, but just a tiny mistake destroys it all and they're literally chased by wolves back to the civilized world.
Finns not only were not serfs, we had our own nobility that governed quite autonomously till the 1600s. Even after the purge, the nobility still largely identified as "Finnish", as we can see time and time again in their writings (letters, declarations, internal memos and meetings) as well as the writings of the Swedes, who referred to them as "De Finske" and "Finska Herrar".
Tuo vesi väittämä (noin 8:40 )on jotenkin oudon kuuloinen, sillä Suomessahan on runsaasti makeaa vettä tarjolla, usein juomakelpoistakin. Monet talot on sijoitettu lähteiden viereen juuri tuon veden saannin vuoksi. Kaupungeissa ymmärrän veden saannin olleen haastavampaa. Kaljan juonnin yhdistän enemmänkin (Keski-)Euroopaan, jossa maanviljelys ja maankäyttö oli paljon pidemmällä, en Suomeen, joka oli isolta osin erämaata tai muutoin enempi vähempi metsää ja suota.
Niin ovat minua viisaammat, mm. Ilari Aalto, sanoneet. Varmasti täällä oli paljon enemmän puhtaan veden apajia, varsinkin mitä kauemmas kaupungeista mentiin. Tässäkin lähellä oleva rautakautinen kylä sijaitsee lähteen vieressä. Sieltä on kelvannut hörppiä.
@@Anttimation Näin jälkikäteen ajateltuna varmaan tässä tiedossa korostuu tietolähteiden merkitys. Etenkin luonaisessa (mutta myös muualla eteläisessä) Suomessa tuppaavat vesistöt olemaan useammin julmakelvottomia kuin muualla (etenkin jos sen yhdistetään maanviljelykseen ja sarkajaon varsin tiiviiseen asumiseen). Sen kun taas yhdistää lähteiden, etenkin kirjallisten lähteiden eteläiseen painottumiseen käy olut enemmän järkeen. Toisena sivujuonteena on mainittava, että hyviä videoita teet. Viihdyttävää ja huumori on kohdallaan sekä ennen kaikkea saat luotua hyvän kuvan kokonaisuuden kannalta. Ovat mukavia katsoa.
@@jessekosunen5943 kiitos paljon! Hyvin pohdittu - se on aina erittäin tervetullutta. Sisämaan eränkävijät tuskin on paljon kaljoitelleet pitkillä pyyntireissuilla :D
What sources do you use for these videos, out of curiosity? I've been researching Finnish mythology for around a year now and I still hear new stuff in these videos. The main sources I've looked at, personally: Itämerensuomalaisten Mytologia (skimmed), the Finnish Folklore Atlas, some historical documents, and SKVR. Also Quora which is probably a bad idea lol but I was just starting out and needed basic sources
Thanks! Plenty of sources depending on the video. Most often the books of Uno Harva, Martti Haavio & Risto Pulkkinen. Books and blog posts/podcast appearances of Ilari Aalto, Mikko Moilanen etc. Taivaannaula.org, SKVR for the poems... and the occasional checking of dates and years from Wikipedia 🤫 When quoting someone, I usually annotate it right there in the video. Unless I forget to.
Was Kekri the time to put down old livestock before they began eating from the winter stores of food? It makes sense to me. I'm sure that they'd realize that feeding an elderly or infirm beast of burden that might not make it through to the springtime ploughing would be a waste of resources for a winter that might not be so mild. I'm sire their animals were much beloved, too.
Can't remember but that sounds like it makes sense. Peasants/farmers were very resourceful. Sometimes - although the records for this are probably later than the Middle Ages - a kekri/yule slaughter animal was chosen shortly after birth, and special care was taken of it.
Olet näissä videoissa puhunut "kuninkaista" jotka hallitsivat ilmeisesti suurempia alueita kuin jotain yhtä paikallista heimoa. Onko tällaisille suurille johtajille tai niiden hallitsemille "laajoille valtioille" todistusaineistoa?
Puhutaan heimopäälliköistä (petty king), jotka luultavasti hallitsivat yhtä tai useampaa asutuskeskusta, ei siis kuninkaista sanan myöhemmässä merkityksessä.
@@Anttimation Tällaisten ylipäällikköjen ja asuinkeskuksia yhdistävien valtakuntien olemassaolo viittaa aika korkeaan yhteiskunnallisen järjestäytymisen tasoon, ainakin verrattuna siihen käsitykseen, että muinaisessa Suomessa ei olisi ollut mitään järjestystä tai valtiovaltoja, vaan muinaiset suomalaiset elivät erittäin hajanaisesti ja jopa anarkistisesti, korkeintaan joissakin heimoissa, joiden "hallitsemilla" mailla ei ollut mitään selviä rajoja. Tässä kuvitelmassa on varmasti jotain todenmukaista, mutta käsitys muinaisesta Suomesta "valloittamattomana erämaana" johtuu varmaan kirjallisten lähteiden puutoksesta. Tosiaan rautaisten miekkojen yleisyys, sekä rautakaudelta lähtöisin olevat kalevalaiset runot kertovat kylläkin siitä, että Suomen alueella olisi ollut järjestäytyneitä yhteiskuntia, jotka sotivat toisiaan vastaan, ja jotka kilpailivat keskenään (ilmeisesti resursseista ja maasta). Mutta tämä kaikki on spekulaatiota ja tulkintaa, eikä nämä todista tai kumoa ajatusta siitä, että muinainen Suomi olisi ollut järjestäytynyt yhteiskunta. Minä kysyn edelleen, että onko näille ylipääliköille tai paikallisia asuinkeskuksia yhdistäville valtakunnille todistusaineistoa?
En muista, miten videossa kirjaimellisesti sanotaan. Kuten sanoit, niin "--spekulaatiota ja tulkintaa, eikä nämä todista tai kumoa ajatusta siitä, että muinainen Suomi olisi ollut järjestäytynyt yhteiskunta." Missään kohtaa rautakaudella kukaan ei hallinnut koko nykyisen Suomen aluetta, siitä voidaan olla aikas varmoja. Ylipäätään tarkka rajojen piirtely alkaa Euroopankin historiassa vasta myöhemmin, ja Pähkinäsaaren 1323 "rajasopimus" tuskin oli rajasopimus sellaisena kuin se nykyään ymmärretään. Luulen, että nyk. Suomen sisällä oli eri vuosisatoina enemmän ja vähemmän järjestäytyneitä pieniä "valtakuntia" ja näiden vallan alla enemmän tai vähemmän olevia yhteisöjä sekä erämaan eräilijöitä. Isoin "järjestävä tekijä" lienee ollut puolustus (ja hyökkäys eli ryöstöretket). Linnavuorten varustamista on pidetty todisteena yksittäisiä kyliä laajemmasta hallinnosta, ainakin "projektiluontoisesti". Muutamalta on myös jälkiä asutuksesta ainakin myöhäisrautakaudelta. Vasta ruotsalaisvallan vakiintumisen myötä alkaa olla kirjallisia ja primäärilähteitä (piispojen kirjeet, Novgorodin kronikat ym. - ja niitäkin pitää tulkita kontekstissaan), joten käsitys aiemmasta yhteiskunnasta on aina tulkintaa.
