AHC - Lay the groundwork for East Karelia and the Kola Peninsula to become part of Finland

Aaland wanted to join Sweden but Finland wanted to keep it. International arbitration ended with Finland keeping it and Aaland being given autonomy and had Swedish as sole official language.

In an ATL with both a culturally and linguistically majority Norwegian Kola and pretty much OTL Ålands, I think Finland would be hard-pressed to keep both through international arbitration, unless those making the decisions are blatantly pro-Finnish. Realistically, Finland would stand to lose at least one of them, and in case it already has a lot of land in Karelia as it is, it might conceivably lose both.
 
In an ATL with both a culturally and linguistically majority Norwegian Kola and pretty much OTL Ålands, I think Finland would be hard-pressed to keep both through international arbitration, unless those making the decisions are blatantly pro-Finnish. Realistically, Finland would stand to lose at least one of them, and in case it already has a lot of land in Karelia as it is, it might conceivably lose both.

Not necessarily I think it depend on whether the Kola Peninsula had been transferred to the Grand Duchy of Finland under the Empire (in general if we look at the international arbitrations they favored whether a area had been integrated into early legal construct). If not Norway would get it. The reason I suggested a Norwegian presence is because I doubt Russia would transfer a majority Russian area to Finland (and a non-Russian Kola could have effect on the population of coastal Karelia). We really need to set up a legal precedents first.
 
Not necessarily I think it depend on whether the Kola Peninsula had been transferred to the Grand Duchy of Finland under the Empire (in general if we look at the international arbitrations they favored whether a area had been integrated into early legal construct). If not Norway would get it. The reason I suggested a Norwegian presence is because I doubt Russia would transfer a majority Russian area to Finland (and a non-Russian Kola could have effect on the population of coastal Karelia). We really need to set up a legal precedents first.

Then again, seeing the Russian Empire transferring even more land to the Finnish Grand Duchy would not be an easy task to accomplish. If anything, it would be easier to see an ATL where the Grand Duchy is smaller rather than bigger (say, Russia keeping Old Finland, or taking parts of Finland during late 19th century Russification). Apart from Old Finland, there is really no precedent for St. Petersburg giving the Grand Duchy major additional areas, and Kola does look rather big on the map. While there were good reasons for the decision with Old Finland, to do with trying to ensure that the Finns will be loyal subjects of the Tsar when they regain a measure of national unity, there would not be similar reasons with Kola if it is mainly inhabited by non-Finns.
 
Aaland wanted to join Sweden but Finland wanted to keep it. International arbitration ended with Finland keeping it and Aaland being given autonomy and had Swedish as sole official language.
It helped though that Sweden was already a language with significant usage in Finland, unlike Norwegian.
 
This would account for most of Eastern Karelia. The Kola peninsula is more difficult, as its low population has for long been Russian rather than Finnic. We could of course tweak 19th century events to have Finnish/Karelian migration to Kola (increased Arctic Sea fishing, in the main, the only really sustainable trade up there at that time for any real numbers of people). Further on, we might have to butterfly the creation of the Murmansk railway, to keep the numbers of Russians lower up there.

In that case, could the local Sámi people be a potential asset? AFAIK the Sámi and the Pomors would hugely benefit from avoiding what happened later on during the Soviet period, especially the former.
 
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