Karelia (historical province of Finland)

From the Merovingian period onwards finds from Karelia display a distinct features of West Finnish influences which has been interpreted to result at least partly from a colonisation.

In South Karelia, the number of archeological discoveries from this time period is lower, though permanent inhabitation was nonetheless present.

During the 12th and 13th century, Karelians fought against Swedes and other Finnic tribes situated in western Finland, such as Tavastians and Finns proper.

As a result of the crusade the western parts of Karelia fell under Swedish rule and the building of the Castle of Viborg on the site of a destroyed Karelian fort started.

Hostilities between Novgorod and the kingdom of Sweden continued in 1300 when a Swedish force attacked the mouth of the River Neva and built a fort near the current location of Saint Petersburg.

Indecisive fighting in 1321 and 1322 led to negotiations and peace by the Treaty of Nöteborg which for the first time decided the border between Sweden and Novgorod.

Western Karelia, as a historical Province of Sweden, was religiously and politically distinct from the eastern parts that were under the Russian Orthodox Church.

Confusingly, the same name is used also of a closely related but distinct ethnic group living mostly in East Karelia, earlier also in some of the territories Finland ceded to the Soviet Union in 1944.

Karelians live, and did even more so before Stalinism and the Great Purges, also in vast areas east of Finland (in Eastern Karelia, not marked on the map above), where folklore, language and architecture during the 19th century was in the center of the Finns' interest (see Karelianism), representing a "purer" Finnish culture than that of Southern and Western Finland, which had been for thousands of years in more contact with (or "contaminated by") Germanic and Scandinavian culture, of which the Kalevala and Finnish Art Nouveau are expressions.

[clarification needed] See also List of Karelians Other than Finns, the historical province of Karelia also had Russian speakers living on the territory.