The Forest Finns are one of Norway's five national minorities, recognised as a Norwegian minority in 1998 alongside the Kven, Jews, Roma and Romani people. This came as a consequence of Norway ratifying the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities of 1995.
The Forest Finns came from the border regions of Savolax, in Tavastland and in Karelia. Personal, economic and societal reasons all played their part in their departure. Many were poor tenant farmers on the border with Russia, and they dreamed of their own land and their own home. When they journeyed through Finland and Sweden to the forest areas along the Swedish border in southern Norway, where they settled, it was because the woodlands here resembled those they had come from. There were pine and spruce forests, berries and opportunities for hunting. Forest Finn immigration took place in several waves, continuing right up to the 18th century, and at that time Finnish was spoken in Finnskogen.
The Forest Finns were known for practising the land-intensive form of agriculture called slash-and-burn cultivation. They burned down the outlying land and then sowed rye in the ashes. They kept up this form of land use until the 19th century, before switching to arable farming. They were hard-working and had true Finnish sisu, and the sauna tradition was of course with them too, though in the form of the smoke sauna (savusauna).
