Historical Relationship of The Swedish- and Finnish-speaking Populations
The Finnish substrate toponyms (place names) within today's Swedish speaking areas have been interpreted as indicative of earlier Finnish settlements in the area. A toponymical analysis from e.g. the Turunmaa archipelago—today largely Swedish-speaking—suggests the existence of a large population of native Finnish speakers up until the early modern age. Whether the Finnish settlements prior the arrival of the Swedes have been permanent or seasonal is debated. According to another toponymic study, some Finnish villages and farms on the south-western coast and the archipelago became Swedish-speaking by assimilation.
According to another view (e.g. Tarkiainen 2008) the two major areas of Swedish language speakers (Uusimaa and Ostrobothnia) were largely uninhabited at the time of the arrival of Swedes.
According to an interpretation based on the results of recent (2008) genome-wide SNP scans and on church records from the early modern period, Swedish-speaking peasantry has been overwhelmingly endogamous. Historian Tarkiainen (2008) presents that from the late Middle Ages onwards until relatively recent times, Swedish-speaking peasants tended to select their marriage partners from the same parish, often from the same village as themselves. This tends to be the rule among traditional peasant communities everywhere. As tightly-knit peasant communities tend to assimilate eventual newcomers very quickly, this has meant that most marriages within the Swedish-speaking peasantry during this period were contracted with members of the same language group. During the time of early immigration by Swedes to the coastal regions (approximatively between 1150 and 1350), the situation was different and according to a study from the 1970s (as referenced by Tarkiainen, 2008) the intermarriage rate between local Finns and Swedish newcomers was considerable. According to Tarkiainen, in the areas of initial Swedish immigration, the local Finns were assimilated into the Swedish-speaking population.
Read more about this topic: Swedish-speaking Population Of Finland
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