Finland and Lithuania: Features of Historical Relations (until the beginning of the 17th century)

Abstract

The Republic of Finland (with a population of 5.5 million people) and nearly twice less populous Lithuania1 are separated by the Baltic Sea, but the distance from Vilnius to Helsinki is nearly twice shorter than the distance between Finland’s southernmost point and northernmost point. Owing to this, the first contacts between the indigenous people who inhabited the present-day territories of Finland and Lithuania were established as far back as the prehistoric times. The Balts and the Finno-Ugric people exchanged agricultural, farming as well as the linguistic and cultural experiences. Later, in the historic times, Lithuanians first encountered Karelians (the old Karelian land – an area currently divided between Russia and Finland). In the 16th–18th century, contacts further developed between the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereinafter – the GDL) in the context of the union ties with Sweden and Poland. Until 1809, Finlandia et partes orientales was a Swedish province, which was later incorporated into Russia as an autonomous state and declared its independence in 1917 only (Meinander, 2017, p. 28). After the collapse of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (hereinafter – the Commonwealth) Lithuania also became part of the Russian Empire, with the status of a Russian province. However, a single geopolitical sphere in the 19th century did not lead to closer contacts between two states. A noteworthy fact is a tragic campaign of the Finnish battalion to the Crimean War through Lithuania in 1854–1855; deployed Finnish soldiers were struck by cholera and typhus and were buried in Skapiškis (Skrodenis, 2015). It was