Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9406837:


Corson

38
How the North works 17 9, 2:49am

@Thevstad You seem to misunderstand the meaning of 'Scandinavia' and 'Scandinavians'. It's about the culture/ethnicity. We're Scandinavians so our "homes" are what's called Scandinavia. That's also why Denmark is Scandinavian even though it is more geographically connected to Germany than to Sweden and Norway. We're in the same culture group. Finland is not. They're "related" to Estonians and even Hungarians but not to Swedes, Norwegians and Danes. That's also why their language is completely different than the rest. It belongs to the Uralic family. Ours don't.

You're right when saying that Scandinavia doesn't really mean anything useful though. It's just like saying "Baltics", "Balkan" or whatever. It's just an arbitrary name for something related. That still doesn't mean there's no "real definition" of it though. There very much is and Finland falls outside of that definition.

Obviously Finland has a lot in common with the Scandinavian countries today, so you could make an argument for modern Finland having a Scandinavian culture I guess, but why would you? Like you said, it doesn't mean anything of any value so what would be the point? A lot of people are talking about it like 'Scandinavian' is some sort of honorable "badge" or something that Finland deserves, but there's nothing inherently good or bad about being Scandinavian. It's just an arbitrary label for three related peoples. You can't "join" it or whatever.