You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish. (June 2023)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Wikipedia article at [[:fi:Suomen virolaiset]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|fi|Suomen virolaiset}} to the talk page.
Estonians in Finland or Finnish Estonians (Estonian: Eestlased Soomes; Finnish: Suomen virolaiset) are people who originate from Estonia and who live in Finland. People can be born in Estonia, have Estonian ancestry and/or be citizens of Estonia. As of 2024[update], there were 46,675 people born in Estonia living in Finland. Similarly, the number of people with Estonian citizenship was 50,444. The number of people who spoke Estonian as their mother tongue was 49,563.[1]
Finland has the largest Estonian community outside Estonia.[2]
History
The earliest known mention of Estonian migration to Finland comes from the 14th century, when it was mentioned that people had fled from the Bishopric of Ösel–Wiek to the towns of Turku and Viipuri or their surroundings. Place names containing the elements Est- and Viro- are found across the southern coast of Finland, the former in traditionally Swedish-speaking and the latter in Finnish-speaking areas. One of the earliest attested examples of such names is Virolahti, which was first mentioned in 1336 as Viirlax. These names may refer to contacts between the locals and Estonians, or even to Estonian settlement, though the latter is less likely. Some later names may be references to migrants from Swedish Estonia and Livonia, who were not necessarily ethnic Estonians, and may have included Estonian Swedes, Livonians and Latvians as well.[3]
During the Great Northern War, Estonians came to Uusimaa as refugees, settling especially in Kirkkonummi, Pernå and Porvoo, later followed by more migrants coming to the area for various reasons, such as fleeing serfdom or searching for better fishing waters. A document of the (then mostly Swedish-speaking) Kirkkonummi parish assembly from 1795 mentions that the small Finnish-language congregation within the parish consisted mainly of Estonians. The island of Pirttisaari near Porvoo was mostly Estonian-speaking in the 18th and early 19th centuries.[3]
In 1906, an Estonian community emerged in the village of Kabböle, part of the largely Swedish-speaking municipality of Pernå, after nine families from Kuusalu had bought land there. Due to mixed marriages and education in Swedish, the community began assimilating into the majority, and the third generation of Estonians in Kabböle was almost entirely Swedish-speaking.[3]
Immigration from Estonia to Finland was low before 1990. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Estonia's accession to the EU in 2004, emigration from Estonia to Finland increased rapidly.[4]
The migration of Estonians peaked in 2012, when more than 6,000 Estonians emigrated to Finland. In 2017, however, net migration from Estonia was negative, as Estonians returned to their country. The reasons for this are rising salaries in Estonia and family ties. Nevertheless, the Estonian population is still growing, although at a much slower rate than before.[5]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
