From: achristo@pons.uio.no (Alf Christophersen)
Subject: Re: Finns of Norway
Organization: University of Oslo
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 04:35:15 GMT


>There are Finnskog (Finn Forest) areas in south-eastern Norway adjoining
>those in Sweden (Vaermland county). My encyclopedia tells that the
>settlement started in the 1570's in previously uninhabitated forests.
>What I really didn't know was that there were Finnish settlers as far west
>as Baerum, Asker and Lier, which are communes to the west of Oslo. Today,
>Baerum and Asker are suburbs of Oslo but as those who know Oslo know, the
>wilderness still begins within city limits.
We in DIS-Norge had at our last meeting the immigration of
Finnish people to Vrmland, Finnskogene in Hedmark and Nordmarka
as a theme. It was a very interesting meeting where the speaker,
Ranveig Blakkestad was speaking about the background, the
predecessor of Gustav Vasa (if my mind was correct), some Eric,
was interested to have Finnish blacksmiths as workers. They was
promised new land in the forests of varmland, but as the smiths
finnish apprentices was very poor and just lived of what was
called 'nevagraut', finely ground rye meal boiled with water for
the period you might sing a short song, they needed to grow rye.
That was done by burning wood and when the ash was still hot,
they sowed the grains. The fire was a controlled fire, they cut
down the forest piece they wanted to use before putting it on
fire and the fire was made in such a way that it wouldn't spread
to the whole forest as it does today when it is a forest fire.
  Because of the warm ash, the grains sprout very quickly and she
told it was possible to produce rye on places in the Nordmarka
where it has never been able to produce rye, neither before nor
later. And the yield was much higher than what it was in the
valleys where farmers did live.
  Both the way of putting forest on fire and the very high yield
they got from this type of growing (but it could only be used for
1-2 seasons before they had to burn somewhere else), the peasants
was angry and jealous. So they wanted the king to remove those
people, who also was speaking in a very strange manner (if I'm
not wrong, Finne means a person who speaks in an inunderstandable
way). As long as the king lived, nothing happened, except that
the king got more and more enemies, even his son was against the
forest people. When the king died, everything turned upside down
for them. All people who was angry got their time. The finnish
people was asked to show papers for their houses, and if they
hadn't, the houses was first burned and people removed from the
place, if they persisted, they was punished. In Norway it was
told that at least one family was murdered by some peasants, but,
this is far from a genocide. Why did they disappear in the
forests? Well, they moved west. So the 'killed people' as Jarmo
states, they probably came here to Norway and settled here!

  There are lots of history interested people here in Norway who
is interested, both in where did they came from, and what did
happen to the immigrants? It was told that the finnish people
even moved even far westwards, even to area of Hardanger, but
this is rather bad documented.

  We tried to trace if it was registered some Finnish emigrants
from Stavanger and Bergen which possibly could be descendants of
the forest finns, but we didn't succeed at that time. Maybe we
will when the emigrant registers for emigrants passing Bergen,
Stavanger, Kristiansand and Christiania are finished?

>
>There is no mention how long Finnish was spoken in these
>areas. It is certain, however, that the Finnish language is gone today.
It may be possible to ask if the speaker has any data of this.

>
>Norway has a Finnmark county, but the name "Finn" does not refer to
>Finns but to Saami. Question: Did the word Finn originally have a different
>meaning, like "foreign", compare the Welsh (originally
>meaning foreign)?
See above. I rather think it means 'a man with an inunderstandable
way of talking' :-)

>
>While I am at it, I may tell that there was also a substantial Swedish
>immigration to Norway in the period 1880-1920. This was from Western Sweden
>to the newly industrialized areas in South-east Norway. Some also came to
>build railways. These people were very fast assimilated. You see some
>Swedish names in the telephone-book, that is all.
There has been periods of this. In Kragero there is registered
all people who came to Kragero and Sannidal. It is searchable
using a modem to tel. +47 3 990 991. The BBS is 'Slekts-Forum'.

>
>Rolf Manne
>e-mail Rolf.Manne@uib.no
>

Maybe there should be made some searchable registers of all
historic Finnish emigrants in Norway and Sweden. If you in
Finland had the possibility to register those who emigrated, it
would be interesting to cross them to make a linkage where they
came from and where they did go to. SInce most of these data is
long time before 1900, there should be little problems with
person register laws.

The Kragero register was registered by enthusiasts who had no
money for doing the work. Maybe there are other such peoples
around??

If it is of interest, the DIS (in Link|ping, Sweden), DIS-Norge
(I am editor of Slekt og Data) and 'Datateknik f|r
Sl{ktsforskningen' in Helsingfors should be contacted.

Alf Christophersen

Discussion could also be done in the no.slekt group if that is a
better group. (Then in Norwegian or Swedish)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic