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"Let's start by stating: There were Vikings in Finland.
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It would also have been possible to talk to each other despite the distance. In the Viking Age, the Nordic languages were more similar than they are today. Many spoke what we call «Danish tongue», explains Sindbæk.
– Finnish is a very different language to the other Nordic languages, but just like today, many of the Finnish Vikings would also have known Swedish, he says.
– Vikings like Harald Hardråde would thus have been able to travel all the way from Ribe to Lake Ladoga (Karelia) and have a conversation about fur hunting or silver trading with the locals without major problems.
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Back to Finn's question: Why do we never hear about the Finnish Vikings?
The answer is that we live in an Anglo-American world, explains Sindbæk. That is, at a time when what gets attention in documentary programmes, drama series and on the internet is largely decided by countries such as Great Britain and the United States.
That is why it is the Vikings who went out into the Atlantic Ocean, we hear about – to the British Isles, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Vinland, as the North American east coast was called in the time of the Vikings.
These Vikings were of course the ones who had a coast towards the Atlantic Ocean. So the Danish and the Norwegian.
– So if, for example, you find a Viking grave in England or Denmark, it can be linked to the stories many already know about the Vikings, and therefore the find gets more attention, says Sindbæk.
– Viking finds from Finland – and Sweden, for that part – is often overlooked internationally."
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