Canada 3 Finland 0

[HEyHEY]

Yeehaa! Anyonme else following the World Junior Hockey Championships?

[Jonte_1979]

1. Good news!

Not that I'm a fan of Team Canada - I just dislike those cocky Finns! In your faces, you vodka guzzling tango-lovers!;)

[Tripper11]

2. I haven't been...is it on CBC Vancouver or just TSN?

Normally it's on just TSN and unfortunately I don't get that here in Seattle.
Way to go guys!!!!

Edited to add : Nope, just on TSN as I went to their website.

OH well, will go with internet updates from Canadian websites and hopefully you HEyHEy as well!

[HEyHEY]

3. Just on TSN

I don't know what you would do in the US

[Tripper11]

7. Nothing I can do....

hockey is covered here like cricket...hard to find unless it involves stupid Santa's fighting in Long Island, then you hear about it. Scores are on the back page of the newspaper.

I'll check with TSN regualrly, and I talk to my Dad online daily and he'll keep me up.
It would still be nice to see some games nonetheless.

[HEyHEY]

9. I've remember last eyar you could get them VIA internet.

No clue what station though

[JVS]

4. Crush those Finns!

[HEyHEY]

5. Oh they've been crushed!

But truly I like Finland, after Canada I always cheer for them.

[JVS]

6. I could never root for those fake scandinavians

Their language isn't even related to old Norse! Poseurs! ;-)

[HEyHEY]

8. Old norse?

? What's that mean?

[JVS]

10. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Finns are scandinavians

The case against:

Their language is a Finno-ugric language like Hungarian, where all the other Scandinavian languages are Indo-european. In fact they are all derived from Old Norse which is an old Germanic language which has its closest descendent in the form of Icelandic.

By looking at the map you can see that Finland is not part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, neither is Denmark, but it forms a peninsula jutting into the heart of scandinavia. Iceland is also not in Scandinavia, but there is documentation of the settlement of Iceland by vikings, so their claim is not questioned. Finland on the other hand is really more like a northwestern extension of Eurasia.


The Case for:
Finland is predominantly Lutheran (90%) and has a population of 6% ethnic Swedes which reflects the long occupation of Finland by Sweden from the 1150's to 1809. King Erik Christianized them. Since this occupation began before "civilization" had even gotten off the ground, it would not be an overstatement to say that Finnish culture was in good part scandinavian.
http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/english/chrohist.html

Without claiming some kind of orientation towards scandinavia, Russification would have more likely occured during the period from 1809-1918. By identifying themselves as scandinavians they could gravitate to something other than being an isolated nation occupied by Russia.

Finns are hard to distinguish from other scandinavians until they speak.


So there you have it.

[Zuni]

11. I read that Finns are more

close to Russians or eastern europeans than to Scandanavians. Of course, Russians and eastern europeans have a lot of nordic intermixing too.