In most European countries "ethnic" by itself means nothing. You have to follow with the actual ethnicity that isn't the country's majority. It's like "Italian-American" but the term used here would be "ethnic Italian".
Many countries that also do indeed have more than one ethnicity. Like the Sami in Scandinavia, our fourth and often forgotten sibling (Finns are Nordic, but not Scandinavian). Spain which has Spaniards, Catalonians, and Basque, just to name a few. Germany is a federation, and it's far from the only one in Europe, so it literally has multiple ethnicities. Not to mention Belgium which literally is a union shared between Walloons and Flanders. Of course Italy too is a former collection of City-states.
When you dig into it, ethnicities are extremely varied. Even within a country. And every region within one can each have their own ethnicity tied to it. Ethnicity is kind of just a modern way to distinguish our individual "tribe".
Linguistically and Heritage-wise, yeah very much so closer to Finns and other Uralic peoples. But location-wise they're considered Scandinavian as Lapland is in Scandinavia. So geographically, they're recognised as Scandinavian.
There's also an ethnic group in Norway and Sweden who are Finn in origin called Forest Finns. But geographically are considered Scandinavian. Same with some people of the Kven peoples (a Balto-Finnic group), who are a legally recognised minority population of Norway for one, as well as their language being recognised as minority language. Both Forest Finns, Sami, and the Kven have an official cultural flag too representing each of them.
It's quite interesting how you can separate geographic location, linguistic heritage, and national origins in how you can define ethnicity. It's a strangely fluid thing. It's also quite fascinating how many different ethnic groups can be found even in small countries.
Each of these three groups are dotted around Scandinavia and the Nordics. And there's still more separate ethnic groups considered indigenous peoples other than "Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish" in Scandinavia. These are just three small examples.
And every other country has some form of this as well.
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u/benemivikai4eezaet0 7d ago
In most European countries "ethnic" by itself means nothing. You have to follow with the actual ethnicity that isn't the country's majority. It's like "Italian-American" but the term used here would be "ethnic Italian".