Historical linguistics and the origin of the Finns
Dr. Angela Marcantonio
1. The traditional Uralic theory and modern research
In the last couple of decades there have been in Finland as well as abroad a number of publications, in several fields of science, such as linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, genetics, which, one way or the other, all question what one can call ‘the standard, traditional Uralic (U) theory' about the origin of the Finns and their language. Compare for example the following works in fields outside linguistics: Dolukhanov (2000a & b); Julku and Äärelä (eds,1997), Julku (2000); Niskanen ( 2000) and Nuñez (1987); see also the article ‘Palaeontology: science or fiction?' in this volume for further references.
According to the standard U theory, the Finns and their language are relatives, that is, genetically related, with other peoples /languages (such as the Saami, Mari, Mordvin, Khanty, Mansi, Samoyeds etc.), located between North-eastern Europe and Western Siberia, and with the Hungarians, isolated in the middle of Indo-European languages and peoples.
All these languages are claimed to form a ‘language family' (‘Finno-Ugric / Uralic' family), which means that they all are assumed to be derived from one single, genetic parent language, or ‘proto-language', called ‘Proto-Uralic (P-U)'. P-U is believed to have been spoken in an area extending between the Ural Mountains and the Volga bends (the traditional home land), at least 6,000 - 8,000 years ago. From this area, the originally small, close proto- community, in the course of the years, divided itself, like the branches of a tree, into several branches, which migrated toward the areas where we find the various Uralic populations nowadays. In particular, the Finns and the other Finnic peoples, such as the Estonians, migrated toward the costs of the Baltic Sea, which are supposed to have been empty before the arrival of the migrating peoples. This theory is still widely taught in school and universities, not only in Finland, or Hungary, but also elsewhere, in Italy, for example. However, as mentioned, a group of scholars, from various field of research, have been recently claiming that all this is not correct, is not true. This academic debate between scholars of opposite views, between ‘revolutionaries' and ‘traditionalists', one could say, has intensified during the last couple of years as a consequence of the publication of two works on behalf of two ‘revolutionary' linguists, the book by Professor Emeritus Kalevi Wiik (2002, Eurooppalaisten juuret), and by myself (2002a, The Uralic Language Family).
In spite of this on-going, at first clear-cut debate, I am often asked by Finnish and not Finnish friends, or by
linguists who are not experts of U studies: ‘what is all the debate about?'. After all, usually, both traditionalists and revolutionaries claim
that there has been a Finno-Ugric/ Uralic family and that the Finns do belong to this very family. Thus, what precisely do the two opposite schools
argue about? It is exactly this issue that I would like to address in this paper. Being myself an expert of historical linguistic and Uralistics, and
being an Italian who lives and works in Italy, therefore well away from the emotions that often go hand in hand with this kind of debate, I shall try
to illustrate as objectively and as clearly as I possibly can, the basic tenets of the two opposite views, together with the ‘evidence' on which
these views are (supposedly) based as well as the ‘counter-evidence' they are faced with. I shall also try to separate out the ‘evidence',
that is, the actual linguistic or extra-linguistic facts, from the many assumptions, interpretations and speculations that are an intrinsic part of
both views (whether explicitly stated or implicitly embedded in them).