The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

FINNS

The Finns (in their own language called Suomalainen), are a race of people inhabiting Finland and the north-west of European Russia . In a wider sense the term Finns, with its adjective Finnic or Finnish, is applied to one of the chief branches of the northern or Uralo-Altaic division of the Turanian family of peoples and languages. The Uralo-Finnic family has been divided into four groups or branches: 1, the Ugric, to which the Ostiaks, Voguls, and Magyars belong; 2, the Bulgaric or Volgaic, consisting of the Tcheremisses and the Mordvins; 3, the Permic, composed of the Permians, Sirianes, and Votiaks; and 4, the Chudic or Baltic group. To the last belong, besides the Finns proper, the Esths of Esthonia and the Lives or Livonians, the Chudes, and the Lapps.

The typical Finns are physically of low stature but of strong build; with round head, forehead low and arched, features flat with prominent cheek-bones, and oblique eyes. Their language belongs to the northern division of the Turanian or Uralo - Altaic family of languages, and is most nearly allied to the languages of the Esths, Lapps, Mordvins, Voguls, and Hungarians. It is agreeable to the ear, rich in vowels and diphthongs, copious, and uncommonly flexible.

The language is remarkably rich in declensional forms, there being as many as fifteen different cases, expressing such relations as are expressed in English by near, to, by, on, in, with, without, along, etc. There is no distinction of gender in nouns. The verb resembles the noun in its capability for expressing shades of meaning by corresponding inflections. Finnish literature is valuable chiefly for its rich stores of national poetry. These poems, which had been preserved by oral tradition from the times of heathendom, were gradually dying out, until 1835, when Lonnrot grouped together in one whole all the fragments he could lay his hands on and published them, under the title of Kalevala, as the national epic of the Finnish people, A second edition, increased almost by one-half, was published by him in 1849. He also published a collection of 592 ancient lyric poems and 50 old ballads, and collections of proverbs and riddles. A great impulse was given to the cultivation of the Finnic language in the 19th century and it was recognised as an official language side by side with Swedish, and became more and more the vehicle for imparting instruction - at the time the Finns were being ruled by Russia, having previously been ruled by Sweden and had not been an independent people for some considerable time.
Research Finns