LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE — DOMlNlAN. 425 



ment adopted similar measures of colonization. Slavic tribes hard 

 pressed by their kinsmen or by Tatars from the east thus found 

 refuge in the mountainous Dalmatian coastland under the asgis of 

 western nations. A traveler taking ship to-day and sailing from 

 harbor to harbor along the shores of the eastern Adriatic could 

 readily notice numerical predominance of the descendants of Slavs, 

 who, for that section of the world, constitute the mass of toilers 

 in every walk of life and who sooner or later will probably erect 

 a political fabric on the foundation of their linguistic preponderance. 



8. THE AREA OF FINNISH SPEECH. 



The eastern half of the European land mass contains a region 

 of excessive linguistic intermingling^ along the contact zone of the 

 Germanic and Slavic races. The Finns occupying the northern- 

 most section of this elongated belt are lingTiistically allied to the 

 Turki. Physically they constitute the proto-Teutonic substratum 

 of the northern Russians, with whom they have been merged. 

 Their land was transferred from Sweden to Russia in 1808. Au- 

 tonomy conceded by the Czar's Government until rescinded by the 

 imperial decree of February 15, 1899, provided the inhabitants with 

 a tolerable political status. The opening years of the present cen- 

 tury marked the inception of a policy of Slavicization prosecuted 

 with extreme vigor on the part of the provincial administrators. 



The area of Finnish speech forms a compact mass extending 

 south of the sixty-ninth parallel to the Baltic shores. Its complete 

 access to the sea is barred by two coastal strips in the Gulfs of 

 Bothnia and Finland, in both of which Swedish predominates in 

 varying percentages.^ The group of the Aland Islands, although 

 included in the Czar's dominions, are also peopled by Swedes all 

 the way to the southwestern point of Finland.^ 



This broken fringe of Swedish is conceded to be a relic of the 

 early occupation of Finland by Swedes.* The Bothnian strip is 

 remarkably pure in composition. The band extending on the north- 

 ern shore of the Gulf of Finland, however, contains enclaves of the 

 Finnish element. This is ascribed to an artificial process of " Fenni- 

 fication," resulting from the introduction of cheap labor in the in- 

 dustrial regions of southern Finland. Slower economic develop- 

 ment of the Provinces of the western coast, on the other hand, tends 

 to maintain undisturbed segregation of the population. 



1 H. Nabert, Verbreitung der Deutschen in Europa, 1 : 925,000. Flemming, Glogau. 



2 Atlas de Finlande, carte 46, Soc. de Geogr. de Finlande, Helsingfors, 1911. 



3 K. B. Wiklund, Spraken i Finland, 1880-1900, Tmer, 1905, 2, pp. 132-149. 



* R. Saxen, Repartition des Langues. Fennia, 30, 2, 1910-1911, Soc. de G^gr. de Fin., 

 Helsingfors, 1911. 



