| dc.description.abstract | There is very thin scholarship regarding the activities of the people of medieval Finland and their contribution to the Varangian period. The history of medieval Finland is affected by thin historiography, due to a combination of having an oral tradition until about 1500 and relying on their neighbors to product written histories on their behalf, as well as having been colonised by these same neighbors from the early Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century. Though they are occasionally mentioned in both medieval and modern literary source material, they are conflated as one general unit by the chroniclers. This is harmful to minority cultures living in and around Finland who suffer doubly from voids in historic records. Therefore, historians must consult other forms of evidence, including archaeological and linguistic evidence, to glimpse into the priorities and identities of medieval Finns. This allows for examination of how they interacted with their neighbors and within the geographic networks of their time. This thesis aims to ascertain the avenues through which Finns contributed to Varangian travels and subsequent development of medieval Eastern Europe through linguistic and archaeological means by pinpointing evidence that tracks their movements eastward by way of trading settlement documents, their appearance in the slave trade, and religious development. It is essential for historians to seek out marginalised experiences in medieval narratives through the lens of identity in order to generate a more nuanced and diverse history. In the context of this paper, examining how Finns might have interacted with and influenced their neighboring territories in Baltic and Eastern Europe during the Varangian period provides insight into how medieval people experienced identity and understood their own culture and ethnicity in relation to others, as well as how Finns contributed to cultural history across the greater Varangian sphere. | eng |