Replies

Interesting article. Thanks for posting.

This isn’t exactly news to me however. My dad was born in Norway and lived there until he was about 9.

He used to get irritated when people would refer to Finland and its people as Scandinavian as he knew their language and culture was distinctly different and used to say they are more Russian than Scandinavian.

My dad of course could speak Norwegian and could understand enough Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and even German to hold a conversation with speakers of those languages and visa versa, they with him. He could not however understand a word of the Finnish language.

Ironically my dad’s first name was Finn (meaning “from Lapland or Finland”).

Sápmi (area)

"Ironically my dad’s first name was Finn (meaning “from Lapland or Finland”). "

My interest was piqued when I had my DNA analysed and realized that my mtDNA is haplogroup 'V' which is the same as 68.4% of the Norrbotten Sa'ami and 52% of the Skolt Sa'ami. I have Sa'ami mtDNA (mother) and Irish (R1b) yDNA (dad).
The Sa'ami connection was a total suprise to everyone in my family.

I just got the results of my dad's mothers DNA and she has mtDNA U5a1a which is spread about equally between Scotland and Finland and I read today that it probably spread across this region when Scotland was still connected to the European continent...before the end of the Ice Age.

Overall, the highest mtDNA amoung the Sa'ami is mtDNA U5b1 -- yDNA I1a and is referred to as the 'Sa'ami Motif'.

Also interesting...9,000 year old Cheddar Man is mtDNA U5a and related to my dad's mother.

Finnish was J.R.R.Tolkien’s favorite language. I’ve read in more than one place that he based some Elvish on Finnish, but I believe Welsh also entered in on the creation.