Karelia

• History of Karelia 
• Culture of Karelia

Karelia (Karelian and Finnish: Karjala; Russian: Каре́лия, romanized: Kareliya,; Swedish: Karelen) is an area in Northern Europe of historical significance for Russia (including the Soviet era), Finland, and Sweden. It is currently divided between northwestern Russia (the federal subjects of the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast) and Finland (the regions of South Karelia, North Karelia, and the eastern portion of Kymenlaakso).

During the Early Middle Ages, settlers from western Finland mixed with the local population to form the Karelian ethnic group. Possible migration from elsewhere may also have contributed to the Karelian ethnic composition.

Karelianism 

Karelianism was a late 19th-century cultural phenomenon in the Grand Duchy of Finland and involved writers, painters, poets and sculptors. Since the publishing of the Finnish national epic Kalevala in 1835, compiled from Finnish and Karelian folk lore, culture spheres in Finland became increasingly curious about Karelian heritage and landscape. By the end of the 19th century Karelianism had become a major trend for many works of art and literature in Finland. In the movement Karelia was seen as a sort of refuge for the essence of "Finnishness" that had maintained its authenticity across centuries. The phenomenon can be interpreted as a Finnish version of European national romanticism.

Later, towards the Second World War, some of the ideas of Karelianism were taken over by an irredentist movement aspiring to create a larger Finland. Thus some of the ideas put forward by Karelianism were used as a motivation to the proposal of a Greater Finland, a single state encompassing many Baltic Finns.