Finnish

The Finns are a Baltic Finnic people native to south-western Finland, speaking Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to Scandinavian tongues. Their ancestors migrated west from the Volga region to the Finnish coast by the eighth century BC, and a distinct Finnish material culture emerged by the sixth and seventh centuries AD.

The Second Swedish Crusade of 1249 fastened Swedish rule, and the Treaty of Nöteborg in 1323 fixed the Novgorod border. The Reformation brought written Finnish through Mikael Agricola's New Testament of 1551.

Finnish light cavalry, the Hakkapeliitat, fought for Sweden in the Thirty Years' War. The Great Wrath of 1714 to 1721 brought Russian occupation and the loss of Vyborg. After the Finnish War of 1808 to 1809 Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian tsar, and the Kalevala of 1835 became a symbol of national consciousness.