Challenge: Wank the finns.

Would the kingdom of Kvenland be able to become at least a regional power? and if so how?
 
Considering that Kvenland seems to be a name given to the region rather than an actual entity, I doubt it. The only way I can think of is giving them someone to do to Finland what Rurik did to Russia, but even then you have the problem that Finland isn't exactly well suited to being a great power. I suppose you could do a greater Finnic thing, but that would require a different Slavic migration and have a lot of butterflies, and not really be Finland-wank, just Russians speaking a language that sounds similar to Finnish.
 
I suppose you could do a greater Finnic thing, but that would require a different Slavic migration and have a lot of butterflies, and not really be Finland-wank, just Russians speaking a language that sounds similar to Finnish.
So in short, OTL European Russia would be ATL "Finland", am I right?
 
Yes, with different migrations OTL Russia could have been "Finland," or even something weirder like Cumania or Mordvinia. The migrations were so dynamic the butterflies are incalculable
 
Only the northern half or so of European Russia was Finnic, though. And it wasn't even all Baltic Finns, it was mostly Volga Finns. At most you'd get a Finnish version of Novgorod (in terms of territory). The language would be closest to Veps.

Speaking of the Russians, if you could keep them weak and somehow get Finland+Karelia on the level of medieval Sweden, you might have a Finland which could maintain independence from outsiders, assuming it converts to Christianity.

One idea I had thought of is if the Sami domesticate reindeer earlier, and then the Finns to the South adopt reindeer herding as well. It might give them a bit more resilience. And for an even crazier idea, domesticated moose sometime in the first millennium. Combined that would give the Finns more resilience, although their neighbours would probably also adopt it within time thus taking away any advantage. But Finland would be slightly more prosperous.
 
The best way that I can think would be for Hunnic invasions kick a bunch of Arian christian Goths northwards when they come. Large enough group that they could take over some tribe and become a ruling class, but small enough that they would be quickly assimilate. A farmer society would then have some time to colonize the areas around them by their superior population density before the Slavs start doing their thing. The end result would not be anything like the modern day Finns, though.
 
The best way that I can think would be for Hunnic invasions kick a bunch of Arian christian Goths northwards when they come. Large enough group that they could take over some tribe and become a ruling class, but small enough that they would be quickly assimilate. A farmer society would then have some time to colonize the areas around them by their superior population density before the Slavs start doing their thing. The end result would not be anything like the modern day Finns, though.
It is a reality

The problem is fall of money circulation at 7th century - and dissapearance of all these militarased societies/groups in Eastern Europe (they reaapeared only at 8th century with silver flow from califate)
 
I'm not sure what you mean here. I thought that the Finnic tribes over which the farmer Slavs expanded were more or less hunter gatherers. And the idea would be some Finnic tribe do the same thing Slavs did, but starting at the tail end of 4th century.

So you are saying that there were more organized societies before 7th century, and anyone trying to expand into the area at that time would have had a much harder go at it?
 
Sorry for my English

I mean that a lot of small organised groups went to the Eastern Europe after collapse of Hunn Empire

We can find their traces from Western Ural to Pskov and Novgorod.

But unlike Rus in 8-9 centuries, these groups could not develop chiefdoms and state - because they did not have money for having army. The reason of these - collapce of mediteranian economy after the Arab invasions in 7 century

And when relatively large troops of Slavs came from Danube to Estern Europe - they won these groups and assimilated local finns
 
Sorry for my English

I mean that a lot of small organised groups went to the Eastern Europe after collapse of Hunn Empire

We can find their traces from Western Ural to Pskov and Novgorod.

But unlike Rus in 8-9 centuries, these groups could not develop chiefdoms and state - because they did not have money for having army. The reason of these - collapce of mediteranian economy after the Arab invasions in 7 century

And when relatively large troops of Slavs came from Danube to Estern Europe - they won these groups and assimilated local finns

I heard the reason why was that Slavs had better agriculture AND the leaders/ruling class of these chiefdoms/tribal states tended to be Slavs. Meaning Slavic languages became the lingua franca amongst these groups (a hodgepodge of Indo-European peoples plus Turkic peoples, Uralic peoples, and who knows what else), and within a few centuries the groups mainly ended up speaking Slavic. That's mainly Central Europe/the Balkans I'm thinking of, but certainly it had to be true in what became Russia as well. Later Slavs had a demographic advantage over Finnic groups, so that's basically the end of things there.

Hence why I think the solution is to take a core territory (Finland/Ingria/Karelia/Estonia) and consolidate it into a state somehow, through an agricultural revolution, better tradelinks, unifications, etc. The central part of the realm would be, of course, Ingria, with the capital around where St. Petersburg is OTL. Very difficult to unify such a territory, though. But together it would be an equal of any Scandinavian kingdom at least. Linguistically I'd assume the language would be closest to modern Izhorian.
 
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