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Finland




Cousins,
    I am curious about whether others responded also to the GUESTLIST query
from the man from Finland who was interested in Rosslyn?  I haven't heard
anything from him.  Perhaps he received to many answers that he is still
translating them??  Or else he really was well helped and that was all he
needed.
Then with Niven's information about the extensive Scotland-Sweden
connection, I was wondering whether there were any connections with Finland
since 1000AD?

 (Trivia fact: Pure Finnish people are not Scandinavians (only in a
geographical sense) but culturally and linguistically they belong to a
completely different group of people..Finno-Ugrian.  This makes them
distantly related to the Huns, Hungarians, and Turks and loosely related to
the Estonians. They originated far to the east between the big bend in the
Volga and the Ural Mts. Similarities in language of people of this area to
the Ainu of Japan may connect another interesting group of people to them. )
I wonder about this also because I am 1/2 Finnish and also another, Myra
Perela,  from Oregon on this discussion group has a husband with Finnish
roots.

    A very brief history of Finland says " There is a record in Norwegian
history of the "Sea-Finns."  This group, carpenters and shipwrights, came to
settle, or at least to work for part of the year, along the Norwegian
fjords, then thickly forested.  They were specialized craftsmen, living
entirely by their shipbuilding.  Even as early as the Viking days these
Sea-Finns never went to sea, but were hired for their skill on dry land; and
were especially valuable to the Norse Vikings at a time when the looting and
plundering of monasteries along the Irish and English coasts were of far
more profit than the building of ships.  Hiring carpenters to build the
longboats saved valuable time."
Laurel

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