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Finland Gypsies
Gypsies have been present in Finland since the second
half of
the sixteenth century. With their unusual dress, unique
customs,
and specialized trades for earning their livelihood,
Gypsies have
stood out, and their stay in the country has not been an
easy
one. They have suffered periodic harassment from the hands
of
both private citizens and public officials, and the last
of the
special laws directed against them was repealed only in
1883.
Even in the second half of the 1980s, Finland's 5,000 to
6,000
Gypsies remained a distinct group, separated from the
general
population both by their own choice and by the fears and
the
prejudices many Finns felt toward them.
Finnish Gypsies, like gypsies elsewhere, chose to live
apart
from the dominant societal groups. A Gypsy's loyalty was
to his
or her family and to Gypsies in general. Marriages with
nonGypsies were uncommon, and the Gypsies' own language,
spoken as a
first language only by a few in the 1980s, was used to
keep
outsiders away. An individual's place within Gypsy society
was
largely determined by age and by sex, old males having
authority.
A highly developed system of values and a code of conduct
governed a Gypsy's behavior, and when Gypsy sanctions,
violent or
not, were imposed, for example via "blood feuds," they had
far
more meaning than any legal or social sanctions of Finnish
society.
Unlike the Lapps, who lived concentrated in a single
region,
the Gypsies lived throughout Finland. While most Lapps
wore
ordinary clothing in their everyday life, Gypsies could be
identified by their dress; the men generally wore high
boots and
the women almost always dressed in very full, long velvet
skirts.
Like most Lapps, however, Gypsies also had largely
abandoned a
nomadic way of life and had permanent residences. Gypsy
men had
for centuries worked as horse traders, but they had
adapted
themselves to postwar Finland by being active as horse
breeders
and as dealers in cars and scrap metal. Women continued
their
traditional trades of fortune telling and handicrafts.
Since the 1960s, Finnish authorities have undertaken
measures
to improve the Gypsies' standard of life. Generous state
financial arrangements have improved their housing. Their
low
educational level (an estimated 20 percent of adult
Gypsies could
not read) was raised, in part, through more vocational
training.
A permanent Advisory Commission on Gypsy Affairs was set
up in
1968, and in 1970 racial discrimination was outlawed
through an
addition to the penal code. The law punished blatant acts
such as
barring Gypsies from restaurants or shops or subjecting
them to
unusual surveillance by shopkeepers or the police.
Data as of December 1988
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