Muawiyah wrote:
"Understand this the first boat to New Sweden in Delaware had 95 passegers (presumably just the heads of households) who were identified as speaking "FIN" or "FINN". There were about 7 more Swedes, all military officers."
We know from the records of the colony that many of the passengers on the ships bound for New Sweden were Finns. For example, out of a total of 105 colonists on the Mercurius, which sailed in 1655, Huygen lists 92 as Finns. 'The majority were "Swedish Finns" and, since Papegoja [the commander] did not understand the Finnish language, he engaged one Hendrick Olsson, who had been in New Sweden before, to assist him.' Thirdly, the records also contain indications of the presence of large numbers of Finns in the colony. For example, Lindeström remarks, circa 1655, that the land between the Christina River and the Sandhook (i.e., New Castle) was 'here and there settled by Finns'; Beeckman, Stuyvesant's representative at Altena (formerly Fort Christina), speaks, in 1662, of 'sixteen or eighteen families, mostly Fins, residing in our jurisdiction'; Thomas Paschall, an English settler in Philadelphia, writes to a friend, in 1683, that the 'River ... [was] taken up all along, by the Sweads, and Finns and some Dutch, before the English came'; and a Philadelphian, Jacob Bengtson, in 1748 observes, on the strength of information given to him by his grandfathers, who were among the first Swedish settlers, that 'a large number [of early colonists came] from Finland.' Finally, we have the testimony of travelers like William Edmundson, an English clergyman, who observed, upon his arrival in Delaware Town (i.e., New Castle), circa 1675, that most of the inhabitants were Dutch and Finns; or like the Labadists Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, who, on a journey through the Delaware River valley in 1679, visited Takany (i.e., Tacony, now a part of Philadelphia), 'a village of Swedes and Finns, situated on the west side of the river'.
However widely Finnish may have been used along the Delaware, it was destined, like its most immediate competitor, Swedish, to eventual eclipse. An informative comment on the decline of Finnish appears in Peter Kalm's journal under the entry for November 22, 1748, as follows:
Finns have also settled here. They have never had clergymen of their own, but have always had themselves served by the Swedish.
They have always spoken Finnish among themselves. Most of them settled in Penn's Neck, where people have been found who until very recently spoke Finnish. But now most of them are dead, and their descendants changed into Englishmen.
The Finnish Language on the Delaware
A. R. Dunlap & E. J. Moyne
Muawiyah wrote:
"The Sa'ami who lived in Finland's forests and chased reindeer were sometimes mistakenly called "Forest Finns"."
Forest Finns (
Norwegian:
Skogfinner,
Swedish:
Skogsfinnar,
Finnish:
Metsäsuomalaiset) are people of
Finnish descent in the forest areas of Eastern
Norway and Central
Sweden. The Forest Finns emigrated from
Savonia in Eastern
Finland during the late 16th and early to mid 17th centuries, and traditionally pursued
slash-and-burn agriculture.
WIKIPEDIA
The recruiting of soldiers, officials and settlers for New Sweden was a difficult task at the beginning of the 1640s and thus, already in 1640 the Swedish government made plans to sentence Finns for deportation to New Sweden. These were Finns living in the forests of the Swedish countryside who had earned a bad reputation for their burnbeating methods of deforestation. In 1640 at least four Värmland Finns, who had been sentenced to military duty for burnbeating, petitioned for deportation to New Sweden. Their request was approved and the Crown decided to round up even more of the Finnish burnbeaters. At this point, the government also found some Forest Finns who volunteered to go.
In 1643 the Governors of several Swedish provinces received orders from the Crown to imprison burnbeating Finns for deportation to New Sweden. This action apparently brought additional Värmland Finns to New Sweden. At the same time, some petty thieves from prisons in Finland were also sent to the colony. This forced migration could not have been very extensive, since the population of New Sweden in 1647 still numbered under 200 and the settlers formed a very small part of this number. The majority were still soldiers and civil servants.
In time, forced migration was no longer necessary, for at the end of the 1640s a veritable "America fever" spread among the Värmland Finns. Thus, in 1649 Matts Erickson of Värmland wrote to the Swedish Privy Council on behalf of 200 Finns and petitioned to have this group sent to New Sweden. From the Council's records for the same year, it becomes clear that there were close to 300 who desired to emigrate. A few, perhaps a tenth of the applicants, succeeded in sailing with the ninth expedition, but very few of this group arrived at their intended destination. There are no existing details about the composition of the large group which arrived in New Sweden in the spring of 1654. Since we know that recruitment work for this expedition was carried out in the forest regions of Värmland and Dalarna, it is quite likely that the group included Värmland Finns. The recruiter (Sven Skute) came from Kronoby in western Finland.
Finns in the New Sweden Colony
The legacy of the 17th century "Forest Finns" lives on in the border areas of Norway and Sweden
By some curious historical accident, George W. Bush may have his roots in Finnish Savo
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 19.10.2008
Muawiyah wrote:
"Accept the fact the Finnish Finns (the Suomi), ....didn't come to the Americas in large numbers until about 18.."
This is True
http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/FinnsAmer/finchro.html
The Finns on the Delaware, of course, were quite a small group among those who settled in America. By the beginning of the 1700s they had already lost their language. Nevertheless, the group left its mark to the extent that its existence was known in some form up until the 19th century, since the Delaware Finns still appear in American literature that dates from the beginning of the 1800s.
Finns in the New Sweden Colony
In the 1500s, 1600s, and most of the 1700s ~ the Swedes generally referred to Finns as being identical with the people living in the far North form middle of the West Coast of Norway, up and around to Petsamo and then down through the virtually empty countryside made up of what is now Lapland County and thither in the remote uplands, all the way to whatever border the Russians could defend.
The Skolt nation, the true woodland Sa'ami, lived in general from about where the Norwegian/Russian border is today, across to Penchanga and then down to Lake Inari and east to what is the Russian/Finnish border regions.
The Pomars, also reindeer chasing people, but of Slavic origin ~ usually identified as Russian by most sources, competed for the same sort of range in the Eastern reaches, or Fenns/Finns of Finland.
The Pmars and Sa'ami are clearly identifiable from the standpoint of modern Finns.
Still, when the term "Finn" was ascribed principally to the people living in the Finmark ~ in the North Everywhere, the people who actually lived there were Sa'ami.
The ships logs kept by the Swedes (which ever ones we can find) identified the LANGUAGE spoken by the people on board the book ~ and Sa'ami were always identified as FIN.
It is possible there were a couple of "Finns" somewhere ~ 'cause there's the town of Finland in Lanaster County PA ~ it dates from an early time. It's right up the road from Nickelmines ~ originally settled by Sa'ami from what is now Petsamo Oblast
Only Germans and English people live there now, all the Scandinavians having moved out to avoid disturbances by Quakers.
Otherwise there are many places whose names contain the word "deer" or "union", and they are places established later by Sa'ami who were only lightly supervised, counseled, or ruled over by anyone!
The Skolt Sa'ami were clearly REMOVED from most of their territory in Northern Finland and Russia by Swedes and Russians more interested in the iron ore, and the nickel mines than in people selling baskets and deer hide.
At some point in time it became conventional to refer to the various Scandinavan, Russian and Latvian/Estonian tribesmen living in Finland as Finns.
Before that time Finn was the description of the language and place where the Sa'ami lived.