Gymnasiet Grankulla samskola

A few weeks ago I gave a short presentation about the minorities in Finland, as a part of my first English course. I found out that we have a lot more minorities here in Finland than I thought. In my presentation I chose to merely tell about the minority groups I thought I knew the least about. I found out some pretty interesting things about these unfamiliar minority groups. The different minority groups I looked into in my presentation were the Samis, the Romany, the Russians and the Tatars.

First of all, what is a minority?

A minority is a group of people, who are part of a bigger group. But in some way this smaller group is different than the bigger one. This can be for example culture, language or religion.

I believe that the Samis are familiar to most of us who live in Finland. I still wanted to mention this minority group, because I did not actually know that much about them and their lifestyle. The Samis are the only indigenous people in Europe, and they have a long history. They live in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The Samis also have their own language, court of law, culture and lifestyle. Their lifestyle includes traditional livelihoods, for example reindeer farming. I think all of us are also familiar with their national costumes.

The Romany or Gypsies have their roots in current northern India. However, the name Gypsy comes from the word Egyptian, because people first thought that they were from Egypt. As the Samis, the Romany also have their own culture. The women wear their special dresses, and they mainly marry other Romany, it’s very uncommon to marry someone who’s not a Romany. The Romany have a wheel on their flag, which symbolizes their travelling in the older days. They speak Finnish but also Finnish Romani. The Romany have been living in Finland since the second half of the sixteenth century.

When it comes to the Russians in Finland, I mainly looked into why and when they came to Finland. But I think it’s worth mentioning that the Russians are actually the second largest minority group in Finland, after the Swedish-speaking Finns. In 2010 there were actually almost 30 000 Russians living in Finland. But back to the main point, why and when did they come to Finland?

The Russians came to Finland in three ”waves”. First there were people relocated from the province of Karelia during the 18th century. The second wave came around the years 1908-1917, during the time when Finland was autonomous but still was a part of Russia. After the Russian revolution in 1917, we got the last wave when people escaped to Finland. There are of course a lot of Russians who have moved to Finland after this, but they haven’t come in such big groups, all at the same time.

Last in my presentation I mentioned the Tatars. This was a totally unfamiliar group of people to me. The Tatars espouse a Muslim faith, and they have a Turkish origin. They are also actually the oldest Muslim population in Scandinavia, and they came to Finland about 200 years ago. The Tatars are a pretty small minority group compared to for example the Russians, since there are only 800 Tatars living in Finland today.

So these were the four minority groups I decided to shortly mention in my presentation. It was very interesting to do some research and learn new things about these minority groups, and I’m definetely curious to get to know some more about them!

Varje dag från första till tjugotredje december publicerar GGs-bloggen ett inlägg med anknytning till ett ämne som undervisas i skolan. Dagens ämne är engelska.