 The eastern origin of the breed was first proposed by archaeologist Johannes Reinhold Aspelin, who published Suomalaisen hevosen kotoperäisyydestä ("On the Nativity of the Finnish horse") in 1886 – 1887. Aspelin proposed that Finnish horses descended from an animal that had accompanied the Finno-Ugric peoples' migration from the Volga region and middle Russia to the shores of the Gulf of Finland. A similar idea was suggested over a hundred years earlier by natural historian Pehr Adrian Gadd, and this theory has continued to receive some support into modern times. The veterinarian Ludvig Fabritius considered the proposed prototype a side branch of a "Tartarian" breed, and considered it possible that the same prototype also influenced Estonian, Swedish and Norwegian horse populations.
