ABSTRACT
‘Finland’ was a small region in the south-west, where the town of Abo later would be founded. As the area was incorporated in the evolving state of Sweden, the word Finland came to be used, by the late fourteenth century, as a technical term for the entire eastern part of medieval Sweden. In almost any historical or archaeological work we would find the term Ruotsin vallan aika, suggesting a hierarchy, as Finland of course was subjected to Swedish rule. In archaeology nationalism led to a presumption of paganism in all prehistorical contexts, despite any empirical principles being voiced, or any possible Christian features being visible. In Finnish archaeology, it is an absolute requirement that a Christian grave is empty of all grave goods. Archaeologists contemplate the origins and meanings of the Finnish national identity, be it in comparison to Western Europe, Catholicism, Scandinavia, Sweden, Russia, the Soviet Union, Greek Orthodoxy, or the European Union.
