Finland is considered part of Scandinavia, but it’s language is more like Russian. Finns may stand out genetically from both sides, but I think it would be difficult to differentiate Swedes from Norwegians.
My son-in-law, who was born in Russia, found out that he was 15% Sami. The Sami are a Finno-Ugric people who live in an area that encompasses parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Murmansk area of Russia (which is in the northwest part of Russia). He promptly bought a tee-shirt that says “I am Sami” with a graphic of the Sami flag.
Most Finns would tell you they’re not Scandinavian, though many Americans lump them in with Scandinavia. The Scandinavian Peninsula encompasses Sweden and Norway, but because Denmark immediately to the south has close historic, cultural, and linguistic ties to its northern neighbors, the term “Scandinavia” is usually used to refer to all three. And because the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic languages are all closely related, they’re classified as Scandinavian languages and the term “Scandinavian” is sometimes used to refer to the people of all four countries. (Here in Minnesota there are so many people of Scandinavian descent that we sometimes jokingly call ourselves “the fifth Scandinavian country,” which also reflects a certain egalitarian social democratic bent shared with the proper Scandinavian four). The term preferred by Finns and people from the four Scandinavian countries when Finland is included in the group is “Nordic countries” in recognition of their relatively close geographic, cultural, social, political, and economic ties and similarities.
And sorry, but the Finnish language is not at all like Russian. Russian is a Slavic language, along with Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. The Slavic languages in turn belong to a larger family of Indo-European languages which also includes subfamilies of Indo-Iranian, Hellenic (Greek), Germanic (including Scandinavian), Romance, Celtic, Albanian, Armenian, and Balto-Slavic (Latvian and Lithuanian) languages.
Unlike most modern European languages, Finnish isn’t an Indo-European language, and it’s certainly not a Slavic language. It’s a Finno-Urgric language, along with Estonian, Sami, and (more distantly) Hungarian. Similar languages are also spoken by some tribal peoples in and to the east of the Ural Mountains, in western Siberia. These languages have radically different root words and grammatical structures than the Indo-European languages. Linguistically speaking, then, the Scandinavian languages are actually more closely related to Russian than is Finnish, though the connection is a distant one.
My DNA test told me I’m 100% Finnish. To which my 100% Finnish-American siblings said, “Well, what did you expect? Did you think your father was the mail carrier?”
Finland has only been a country for 100 years (since 1917). Before that they were a duchy of Russia, and were part of Sweden for 700 years before that. So genetically distinguishing Finnish ancestry (especially outside the Sami pool) seems dicey.
@bclintonk One if my kids was passionately interested in Finland even though we don’t have a drop of Finnish blood. She went to Finnish language camp, became fairly fluent, and studied abroad there a couple of different times. She is a wanna be, but the ancestory tests always disappoint her. 
100% of anything showing in one of these DNA tests is pretty amazing, even if both parents were from Finland. Very interesting.
I have had two good unexpected contacts from ancestry.com - 2nd cousin in Scotland and 3rd cousin in USA from Swedish side of family. The only somewhat strange contact was from a woman in northern England (and I also do have English ancestry) , who was showing as 6-8 cousin, her sister was showing as 4-6 cousin, still all very distant. She was pretty insistent in emails for awhile that I also do gedmatch. She could not figure out why she and her sister were so mismatched (this can certainly happen with percentages with siblings). She just seemed to want too much for such a distant connection and I do wonder if she was potentially concerned about paternity issues with her sister. I ended up telling her I was not taking further testing and wished her the best. Have not heard from her since.
“Before that they were a duchy of Russia, and were part of Sweden for 700 years before that. So genetically distinguishing Finnish ancestry (especially outside the Sami pool) seems dicey.”
Not at all dicey. Peoples speaking mutually unintelligible languages can stay quite separate. In this case, Finnish is as distant from both Russian and Swedish as Japanese. You find this kind of result in many ethnic groups that were under the rule of some foreign empire for centuries. There is often a strong taboo against intermarriage in both empowered and disempowered ethnic groups.
Many on the thread have noted data coming back as 99.9% Ashkenazi Jewish. That’s another example of a separate ethnolinguistic group staying genetically distinct through 1000+ years under external rule – and they didn’t even have their own geographic turf, which Finns do.
That doesn’t tell the whole story of Finland’s history. It was colonized by Sweden but Swedes never settled there in large numbers. But Swedes did run place as government administrators, tax collectors, military garrisons, clergy, big landowners, and merchants in the coastal ports. There was a distinct class structure—Swedes were a smallish ruling aristocracy, and a much larger and culturally, linguistically, and ethnically distinct population of Finns were largely poor peasants, fishermen, and servants. My understanding is there was never a great deal of intermarriage between Swedes and indigenous Finns, whom the Swedes regarded as inferior. To get along with their lives in a country that was run by Swedes, some Finns did learn the Swedish language and some adopted Swedish names. To this day, Swedish is recognized as a second official language and you’ll still find a lot of Finns with Swedish surnames… But none of that changed the gene pool very much, especially in the interior where the Swedish presence was much lighter—and where my ancestors came from.
Russia had, if anything, even a smaller impact on the gene pool. They took control of Finland in the early 19th century after a war with Sweden, moved the capital to Helsinki to make it closer to St. Petersburg (it had been at Turku in far southwestern Finland, directly across the Baltic from Stockholm), maintained military garrisons and tax collectors, and otherwise granted the Finns a fair bit of autonomy, with the Russians, like the Swedes before them, keeping separate as a conquering ruling class. That changed in the first years of the 20th century when the Tsars decided they needed to “Russify” Finland. That met with fierce resistance, and Finland was re-granted semi-autonomous status after the First Russian Revolution in 1905. Finland finally gained full independence as a nation-state in 1917 after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
You say Finland only became a “nation” in 1917. I’d say Finland only became a “nation-state” in 1917. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a distinct Finnish culture, language, and gene pool, almost entirely separate from those of Sweden and Russia. In fact, it’s one of relatively few in Europe where the genetic markers are so distinctive that experts can definitively state “Your ancestors were from this country” rather than from a broader region or a mixture of places. Here’s more:
Bromfield2 - Which test did your son-in-law take that showed Sami ancestry? I have Sami ancestors, and Ancestry.com only has me as 59% Finnish and 36% Swedish. I don’t think they have an option for Sami. My Sami ancestors were from far northern Sweden and Norway.
^ Yes, Ancestry.com is very clear that they don’t distinguish between Finnish and Sami. I assume that’s because the particular genetic markers they use to distinguish Finns are shared with Sami, but in my limited understanding of human genetics it looks like there are other markers that aren’t shared between these two groups. I’d also be interested if another test does make that distinction, I’ve heard rumors for years that my family might have some Sami ancestry, but I haven’t been able to identify it through genealogy.
Had dinner last wknd with a cousin by marriage who always knew he was adopted. Through ancestry.com, he was able to locate cousins on both sides of his family - connect with them on FB - and eventually was able to learn the identity of both biological parents. It seems like he was the product of a hs romance. His biological mother is deceased, his biological father is an elderly man with 4 children and 9 grandchildren - so he decided not to intrude on them and announce his existence.
It’s kind of sad - he spent a lot of time on this project over the past year - has some answers - but it doesn’t seem like a satisfying end to his story.
bclintonk, glad you understand Finnish linguistics and can explain. I was tempted to comment, but too lazy. No Finnish here, but my dad was obsessed with the country, spoke the language and went there every summer for a few decades.
Even before DNA testing children placed through closed adoptions have been searching for and finding their bio parents with mixed results. I know many more who have had unhappy results than the big happy family reunion they were searching for. Some have been true disasters.
Yes, I get annoyed with all the ads for Ancestry, My Heritage, etc. that imply a meeting between a bio parent and the adult child given up for adoption always ends in sweetness and light.
Interesting about how detailed Finnish ancestry can be. My ancestry.com says 40% Scandinavian ,but does not break it down further, just says Sweden, Norway, Denmark (even though ancestors were from Sweden). Second was the heading Ireland/Scotland/Wales at 29%, but Scotland is pulled out of that (which is correct). The most specific was Great Britain at 19% , which narrowed it down to Northern England and the Midlands. Curious why Scandinavia was the one that wasn’t broken down further. No surprises with the results but still interesting, especially with different percentages that my sister and I ended up with. My children ended up with same general genetic makeup as well , but different percentages. Interesting and fascinating how genes are handed down.
“Curious why Scandinavia was the one that wasn’t broken down further”
Probably because the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes not only live next door to each other but all speak closely-related languages.that are all derived from Old Norse, which would facilitate a lot of moving around and intermarriage, which in turn would result in a lot of genetic overlap - making it hard for genetic tests to pull out one particular subgroup
Most people of British descent today also have some Scandinavian ancestry as well, due to the constant Viking raids and settlements in Britain back in the 8th through the 10th centuries. It’s also reflected in the English language. Modern English has several hundred words that came from Old Norse rather than from Old English or Latin - words such as egg, glove, happy, muggy, etc.
^ It’s also likely the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians came from fairly recent common ancestors and a common gene pool. As late as the 11th century they were all Vikings (or Norsemen) and spoke a common language, Old Norse, and there was a good deal of trade and travel between coastal ports in all three countries which likely contributed to continued genetic mixing. Old Norse was spoken until at least the 13th century, but over time distinct national kingdoms emerged, separate (though on the whole quite similar) cultures began to develop, and the language devolved into three distinct (but closely related) languages. But the three kingdoms were united in a political union known as the Kalmar Union until 1523; after Sweden left, Norway remained as Denmark’s junior partner all the way up until 1814 when Norway won its independence. Also, parts of southern Sweden were Danish all the way up until 1658, and part of western Sweden was Norwegian until the same year. All of this facilitated continued intermixing and intermarriage.
Bottom line, I don’t think there’s been sufficient time for the gene pools to diverge very much, and any tendency in that direction has probably been largely canceled out by ongoing intermarriage.
Interesting dilemma:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/magazine/can-i-contact-the-grandkids-i-discovered-on-a-dna-website.html
A man discovers via DNA testing that his son was a sperm donor. The man has bio grandchildren. He wants to become involved in their lives. The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, says no, because the son (father of the kids in question) agreed to be a sperm donor on the condition that he would have no further role in the children’s lives.
I’m not so sure about this. The grandfather was not involved in this agreement. The mother of the children never made any agreement not to allow the bio granddad into the children’s lives.
CF, the laws are state-specific, but generally grandparents’ rights are quite limited.
https://www.liveabout.com/grandparents-visitation-rights-1695771