Surprise You’re Finnish

While I was in Atlanta visiting family last Thanksgiving, I had my paternal family history rewritten for me. Having had a childhood filled with Sunday morning 'Swedish hotcakes' at my grandparent's home and having read a book about our Swedish-specific ancestry, I made the false assumption that we were "completely Swedish" on my Dad's side.

Over coffee last fall, my grandmother and I further delved into the topic together. We chatted through my endless questions regarding the family roots and origin as we flipped through her scrapbooks and sifted through family letters, report cards, birth and death certificates, photos and more. Through our conversation I learned that my grandfather's family was originally from a small town in western Finland called Närpes. Show up for coffee, leave with a slight identity crisis...

Through a quick Google search I learned that Närpes is one of the municipalities of western Finland that is unilingually Swedish and whose population is categorized as Finnish-Swede. Due to the complex history between the two countries (Finland was a Swedish colony for many years), Swedish is the second official language behind Finnish - duh! - in Finland. Throughout the past century, there have been multiple controversies over the the duality of cultures and languages in the region and what "should" be done about it in the future.

While all of this is extremely interesting from a linguistic and cultural development perspective, I was just curious if that made my every "Oh, yeah, my dad's side of the family is Swedish" over the past 26 years slightly less incorrect?

Either way, I've appropriately edited my family history based on that newfound knowledge and it sounds something like this (Editor's note: the following is to be read in the most basic of bitch voices): "Yeah, I'm Swedish and, like, "lost Swedish" on my Dad's side. My ancestors were, like, really absentminded explorers who just, like, forgot to go back home to Sweden like, I don't know, two hundred years ago. Instead they lived on a farm in western Finland and, just like, stared longingly at their motherland across the Gulf of Bothnia, but like totally couldn't be bothered to pack their things again. Like, moving is really hard, you know? But yeah, I'm, like, definitely Swedish on my Dad's side."

Regardless of Scandinavian squabbles, my ancestor's obvious aversion to moving, or my now being of Irish, Swedish, and maybe Finnish descent, you already know what I left my grandmother's house thinking that morning: I want to go to Finland.