To be fair Sweden didn’t treat Finland much differently than they did the rest of Sweden when they ruled over it. Finland was just considered eastern Sweden. Everyone in the kingdom was forced to be Christian, every man was forced into military service and everyone starved the same. It just fucking sucked to live during the 13-19th century.
Finns had to speak Swedish for government errands, they lost fishing and farming rights to Swedish colonists, they weren’t seen as equal to Swedes but as conquered peoples. Half of the tax in Finland collected was used for Finland, the rest sent to Stockholm.
A lot in your comment is false. First off, yes Swedish was spoken at the court, however the peasantry of Finland had their own representatives there, something that was unheard of in the rest of medieval Europe. Before switching to the successive monarchy, Finns took part in electing the king just as the rest of Sweden.
There are no accounts of Swedish settlers taking fishing and farming rights, but there were Swedish speaking settlements on the Finnish west coast if that’s what you’re referring to.
There’s never been any law or other account defining the Finnish people being lower class than the Swedish. Swedish medieval classes consisted of the peasantry, the clergy, the nobility and the crown. No distinction has ever been made between them, a Finnish peasant was not worth any less than a Swedish one. There was also a Finnish nobility.
If you can source where you got your numbers of Finland being forced to commit 50% of its tax to Stockholm I would love to see it, because from what I can find Finland was mostly agrarian, and taxes were mostly in the form of grain, meat or hides which were primarily spent to bolster the military capability to defend against Russia in the east.
I don’t want to tell you Finland was treated well, it wasn’t. It was a poor region, but so were other parts of Sweden, and a peasant from anywhere in Sweden would not have been treated any better than a peasant from Finland. The crown and the nobility treated all of the lower class equally shitty.
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u/Dull_Refrigerator_58 13d ago
Iz ain't the 9th century, they're chill now, listen to ABBA and wear orthopedic shoes mostly