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institutions; therefore the Normans took possession of
new territories as feudal lords.
Another peculiarity of the conversion of Finland
was due to the differences in language. It has been
said that the Swedes ought to have amalgamated
with the Finns, as the Normans after coming to
England amalgamated with the English and Danes.
There was, however, this great difference; that the
Swedes were not (like the Normans and the Danes in
England) a nationality closely connected in race and
language with the people whose country they had
conquered; they can better be compared with
Norwegians and Danes or, later on, Normans and English
in their relation to the Celtic population of Ireland, or
with Frenchmen in Alsace or Belgium. So great was
the difference that there was no possibility of a
language common to all, as in England. Not only did
the upper class generally speak two languages, but an
entirely distinct Swedish population was settled on
the coast of the Gulf of Finland in Southern Nyland,
from the Kymmene River westwards, and in Finland
proper as far as where the mountain-chain separates
the southern coast from the west, and on the groups
of islands known as the “skärgård.” On the other
hand, the western coast of Finland proper has a
population chiefly Finnish; while again on the lower
and more fertile coasts of Southern Ostrobothnia, as
far north as Gamla-Karleby, there is a large Swedish
population. The total number of Swedish inhabitants
of Finland amounts to nearly one-seventh of the whole
population. The Swedes on the southern coast may,
like those on the other side of the Gulf of Finland —
on the islands of Dagö and Runö, for instance — have
come there much earlier than the dates mentioned
above; and according to the last researches, even
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