Sleep

we don't recieve any education regarding early swedish-finnish history to tell the truth, it was like the two cultures always had existed side by side. However since history is one of my topics of interest i know that sweden conquered finland however regarding finland from the 16th century it is actually a quite strange view of Finland and Sweden i got during education on the topic. The view they teached us was that we swedes treated the finns like cannon fodder and slave labor during the many wars and finnish army battalions were the first to go into battle after which swedish elite troops acted support and later brought the battle to the leadership and reserve troops of the enemy armies.

Later when the muskets began to appear and Gustav II Adolf reformed the army the finns and swedes were mainly treated as equals and finnish battalions no longer acted cannon fodder but as light infantry.

when we lost Finland to Russia the finns became more of a brother people to the swedes and Scandinavism not only turned finns into brothers but also danes and norwegians even though finnish participation during all the student meetings connected to scandinavism was minimal.

Now since Finland became completely independent the finns are more than willing to prove themselves equal or even superior to swedes in sports among others and have gotten themselves a view of themselves as being the shield protecting sweden from russia and that was probably partially true during the thirties.

This is what i can remember from what they propagated in school. Why Sweden was painted black before the 17th century is beyond me however.

PiSigma said:

you are lucky.. i sleep every other night. and on the night i do sleep it's usually about 5 hours... but then again, it's finals weeks. normally i get 5 hrs a night... but i got 5 or 6 engg courses a term. and engg courses > IB courses in work load. i wish i was in arts.. they slack so much. engineering ruined my life

next year i'm going to go on the uberman sleeping schedule.. then it's 2 hrs of sleep for me per day... got so much more time than everyone else!!!!!!

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On a stretch, I can go about three days without sleeping. Normaly, its usualy waking up late and then missing everything in the day when I take naps. Typicaly I get six, lately, four or three.

I have 3 AP classes and sports as well as a bunch of social activities, but I still manage to get about 7 hours in a night.

we don't recieve any education regarding early swedish-finnish history to tell the truth, it was like the two cultures always had existed side by side. However since history is one of my topics of interest i know that sweden conquered finland however regarding finland from the 16th century it is actually a quite strange view of Finland and Sweden i got during education on the topic. The view they teached us was that we swedes treated the finns like cannon fodder and slave labor during the many wars and finnish army battalions were the first to go into battle after which swedish elite troops acted support and later brought the battle to the leadership and reserve troops of the enemy armies.

Later when the muskets began to appear and Gustav II Adolf reformed the army the finns and swedes were mainly treated as equals and finnish battalions no longer acted cannon fodder but as light infantry.

when we lost Finland to Russia the finns became more of a brother people to the swedes and Scandinavism not only turned finns into brothers but also danes and norwegians even though finnish participation during all the student meetings connected to scandinavism was minimal.

Now since Finland became completely independent the finns are more than willing to prove themselves equal or even superior to swedes in sports among others and have gotten themselves a view of themselves as being the shield protecting sweden from russia and that was probably partially true during the thirties.

This is what i can remember from what they propagated in school. Why Sweden was painted black before the 17th century is beyond me however.

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well thats clears up thing or two...quite strange they dont teach anything about older generations...I mean, I have sometimes even envied swedens history compared to finnish one, particullary dealing with middle-ages. Its really shame that they let such a good history to waste...

Now that i think about it i can remember one other thing, There is a debate in sweden in which they try to establish whether Gustav Vasa was the father of the swedish nation or an belligerent and oppressive tyrant. Quite a shame actually to bring history to such a low level since most of us already know of his actions during his time as ruler, it doesn't bring us farther from the fact that he got rid of the danes and established one of the first truly centralized states, thanks to the fact that the nobility was out of the way because of the slaughter in Stockholm. Even though his supporters, the commoners no longer saw him as their hero but rather as their common enemy which was among others the result of his actions to establish protestantism in sweden, the priesthood becoming increasingly displeased with the confiscation of church property and the greatly increased taxation to fund the swedish military and especially the shipyards.

Now you have to think of the fact that during the time the union of kalmar was without doubt the biggest state in Europe and probably the strongest too and the leadership abilities of one man managed to split the whole union in two, with Sweden and Finland being the slightly stronger of the two parts which is by no means an easy task which i believe is enough to establish whether he was a great leader regardless if he was a tyrant or not.

However regarding early swedish history it is truly a shame no effort has been taken to teach it.

Gustav vasa was argubly one of the most important figure in nordic history, and important one in whole europe...So sweden dont see them self as independent before 1520-talet? Its rather weird, I mean, Finns would if had a history of such. So that Erik (cant remember his name ar prefix but i thik it was Jovardson or Johanson...or anyway, the son of some Erik who was 'holy' in some way) who 'conguered' finland werent consider as king of sweden but somethin preceeding state? This is news to me. They didnt teach so in here...

But if talking of Vasa and wether he was a tyran or not, I think you are rigth. I mean He did but this part of the world out of middle ages and route to modern times, and who monarc could be described as 'non-tyrant'? The concept of power and any jurification backing that up in those days shouldnt be solely looked from todays point of wiev. He was well liked king among finnish comon folk who werent used to exept anything less from king, but little bit of that 'iron fist'. It was the way of things back in then. Thougt it's funny who Gustavs sons power strugle coused first uprising of finnish people, the 'club-war' of 1590s and showed first sings of something that later would be described as awekening of finnish national identity. In finnish history writings, there have been long lasting eternety struggle wheter finnish peasent rose agaisnt authorityes from their own reasons or lured to do soby King (or prince, i cant recal wether he was at the power in that moment) Erik.

well it's quite strange actually yes. Some say that sweden wasn't really a kingdom before gustav vasa but rather a loose grouping of powerful nobility with family ties in which the most favored in the family were chosen king for lifetime while others say that it was indeed a kingdom but that the king himself wasn't very powerful but relied on the nobility to do the military campaigns while he took care of the more peaceful matters at home and another group say that sweden was like any traditional kingdom, however this debate isn't going anywhere and everyone think what they want and since no one teach history of that time anyway were not likely to come to a conclusion at all.

As i said before if you're not fully awake in history class you might get the view of sweden as the area from which the vikings just popped out from and that finland was just a big forest until the vikings came and built villages there and in a decade the vikings turned from barbarous pagans into civilized christians after which history just fast forwarded to the 16th century and gustav vasas fight against the danes.

Seriously had not history been one of my topics of interest i would have had no idea what happened during those 400 years they just skipped in history class, it's as if swedish historians are ashamed of what happened during those years and rather would leave history unknown than educate us about our past which makes no sense if you consider that they used three full months to make sure everyone kept a critical mindset about what is written in the books, analysis on the topic is almost impossible without reading literature specially written about it.

yes what more can you say, than the old saying, "a nation who doesent know its history cannot look into future..."