A Point About Finland

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Today is the 6th of December 2017, which is not only Finland's national day but also the hundred years anniversary of Finnish independence, 6th of December 1917. Since I am currently busy studying stuff and what not I decided to discuss this through a journal instead, so bear with me with these boring walls of text (which you should be used to by now, speaking of my general history pics) and I'll just discuss in a very abridged way how Finland managed to achieve just that...their independence.

Thinking about it, isn't Finland quite a young nation? It is, because while there has always been a Finnish people and a Finnish language (one heck of a unique language I might add), there has never really been a Finnish state or nation per say.
The earliest mentions of anything possibly related to Finland, such as Roman historian Tacitus' (55-120 AD) mentions of "Fenni" and lombardian historian Paul the Deacon's (720-799 AD) mentions of "Scritobini" would rather be synonyms for the Sami people more than the Finnish people, but the similarities in the etymology are still there, besides the theories of the Finnish and Sami languages being related to one another.
Otherwise, in Finnish, Finland is called Suomi. Origins of the name is unknown, so there's that.

What was Finland before, well, anything then? Most likely it was a bunch of tribes and smaller agricultural societies made up of peoples with similar languages that would make the origins of the Finnish we know today. Much of the metallurgic technology that reached Finland was spread from the areas around what is now Sweden, which means then that Finland went through both Bronze and Iron Age-phases.
Due to Swedish movements during the Viking ages (793-1050) and possibly even earlier during other parts of the iron ages, the areas around modern Finland and Sweden got in contact with each other quite early, which would later make way for the historical development to come. Trade probably took place and many Swedish vikings most likely passed through Finland on their way to Byzantium and the Middle East.
The contacts with Sweden would come to hit back at Finland however. After the Christianization of Sweden, crusades were made against the pagan tribes of Finland between the 1050's and the 1200's/1300's, which later became the end of Finnish prehistory. Finland was officially incorporated into the kingdom of Sweden in 1249, in which its history and Sweden's are pretty much intertwined.

But that didn't last forever. In 1809, during the Napoleonic wars (1804-1815), a total national trauma hit Sweden when Finland was lost to Russia, which it became a part of until World War 1 (1914-1918). Before that however, the Finnish people had already wished for more and more independence. The 19th and early 20th centuries were after all a highly nationalistic time period and similar requests for independence were going on in the Balkan areas around what was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Procedures for more self-rule as a Russian province came in 1905, and even the allowance of local voting and candidacy rights for women was opened up in 1907, but it was first after the October Revolution in Russia (7th of November 1917) that Finland could call out for independence on the 6th of December, with the collapse of the Russian czar government.

As an independent nation, Finland later faced some huge problems. The first ones were mainly internal, such as the bloody Finnish Civil War (1918) between the White Liberal forces against the Red Social Forces. The White faction went out victorious after some violent and, dare I say it, even merciless fighting against the red faction. Other than that, poverty and food shortage was also a problem, which would last way up in the 1960's.
The next conflict came against the aggressive expansion of the Soviet Union in the form of the Winter War (1939-1940) during World War 2 (1939-1945), which would later be followed upon with the Continuation War (1941-1944) and the Lapland War (1944-1945) against Nazi Germany.

So, what can we say? Despite crusades, expansional wars, poverty etc etc, Finland managed to get their independency and when they did get it they didn't leave it freely. Finland may be one of the younger nations in world history, but the area itself sure has a rich and long history behind it...even if it at times is intertwined with that of other nations and states.

So, happy birthday, Finland! It's not been a long journey on paper...and yet, it still kind of has.