Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/160

 and Russia around the Gulf of Finland. In the early days of Russian history, the Russians fought constantly with the Swedes, and the Finnish tribes passed sometimes under Russian rule, sometimes under Swedish rule, until finally Swedish rule was established in the whole of what is now Finland and over all but a certain portion of the Finnish people, who were left outside, in the governments of Archangel and Olonets; these were Orthodox, whilst the Finns in Finland were first of all Catholics and then when the Reformation came became Lutherans. Thus the main body of the Finns were almost exclusively under the influence of Swedish civilisation, and there was practically no Finnish movement until after the Finns came under Russian rule. The very peculiar conditions under which Finland became incorporated into the Russian Empire, with complete internal autonomy, with a kind of ring-fence separating the Finns from the rest of the peoples of the Empire, made it possible to develop within Finland a very interesting and a now very strong national movement, which first of all fought very hard against Swedish predominance. Swedish was the dominating language of the State, the language of the aristocracy, of the towns, of culture and of civilisation generally; and then, when the Finns suddenly discovered in the thirties, through the labours of the scholar, Elias Lönnrot, that they had a great national epic, there was a sudden uprush of national pride amongst the Finns, a great many people in the towns who had hitherto called themselves Swedes suddenly discovered that they were Finns, adopted the Finnish language and adapted it to literary purposes,