The Ancient Finnish Kings and their Swedish Archenemy: Nationalism, Conspiracy Theories, and Alt-Right Memes in Finnish Online Medievalism

Summary

If one searches the internet trying to find information about Finland in the Viking Age and Middle Ages, sooner or later one is bound to encounter stories about the forgotten history of an ancient, pagan Finnish kingdom. The story of the Ancient Finnish Kings is a persistent counter-narrative to academic research that has its roots in seventeenth-century historiography, romantic nationalism, and works published by independent alternative historians. Nowadays, the story is kept alive through blogs, online discussion forums, YouTube videos, and social media. Details vary, but the core narrative remains: before the annexation of southern Finland by the Kingdom of Sweden, which occurred between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Finland had mighty and powerful kingdoms of its own. Respected and held in awe by their neighbors, these Finnish kings were the forefathers of the royal houses of Northern Europe, including that of William the Conqueror. According to the supporters of these theories, there is a reason why people today are ignorant of the glorious ancient history of Finland: a centuries-old conspiracy perpetuated by the Swedish-speaking minority, who deliberately destroyed all evidence of the Finnish kings to suppress national consciousness and Finnish pride. Moreover, this conspiracy theory also has its modern villains: academic researchers, heritage institutions, mainstream media, and other multicultural or Swedish-minded elites.

This pseudohistory has little to do with the prevailing view about the Viking Age in Finland. Scholars have refuted arguments about the Ancient Finnish Kings since the late eighteenth century, and theories of a pre-Christian Finnish kingdom are regarded as pseudohistory and pseudoarchaeology by the contemporary academic community. The Viking Age society was divided into local autonomous groups with a loose system of leadership headed by elite families. There is no convincing evidence of more regional leaders or proto-states, even in the more densely populated southern Finland, which was inhabited by Finnic-speaking settled farming communities. Speakers of different Sámi – and possibly other – languages lived in central, eastern, and northern Finland, combining hunting and fishing with sporadic farming in a semi-nomadic lifestyle. In line with this academic consensus, we classify the discussion about the Ancient Finnish Kings as medievalist pseudohistory. Pseudohistory, like other forms of pseudoscience, presents misleading information, violates the methods of the discipline in question, and bypasses and disdains scholarly discussion.