Why are Finns genetical outliers?

A fact confirmed by DNA tests is that there is only minor genetic variation between the peoples of Europe, the Baltic Finns included. Meanwhile, tests on the cell nucleus indicate that Baltic Finnish genes differ to some extent from those of other Europeans.
The Finnish people is probably the worlds best studied population. DNA, medical and forensic research in Finland is of highest international standard and there are very few mysteries left to unravel.
Therefore it’s surprising to see all sorts of myths and stereotypes still being upheld on the Internet.

DNA scientists class the Finns as Indo-Europeans, or descendants of western genetic stock. But because "Indo-European" is a term borrowed from linguistics, it is misleading in the broader context of bioanthropology. DNA scientists work within a time frame of tens of thousands of years, whereas the evolution of Indo-European languages, as indeed of all European language groups (Finno-Ugrian included) is confined to a much briefer time span.
Autosomal DNA studies naturally puts Finns in the European (call it Caucasoid if you wish) cluster but with a close up we can see that Finns tend to deviate away from their closest neighbours Swedes, Estonians and northwestern Russians in a direction of their own.
This deviation is because of genetical drift in a small and relatively isolated population.

A common fixed idea is that Finns are genetically different to Scandinavians, Balts and Russians based on their positioning in genetical charts. One reason is thought to be that 58% of Finnish men carry N1c, so the “founding population” of the Finns must have mostly carried N1c and have arrived from the East?
Using scientific data, I have to spoil the theory.
The rather high frequency of N1c is most likely inflated due to genetic drift and bottlenecks, which can affect Y-chromosomes. In other words, Baltic-Finnish peoples did not arrive from the east as a ready people.

Finns are DNA-wise identical to all other populations around the Baltic sea and do not carry any Y-dna or Mtdna haplotypes unseen in other populations. If you want to find them, look into the genepool of the Swedes where you can find haplogroups like Y-dna Q and K, Mtdna X that have been there for ages and does not come from recent immigration.

As stated, the peopling of Finland has not happened in one big wave of migration from the east. Just like in all other northern countries, trickles of people found their way to the geographical area of Fennoscandia during a very long period of time. And they came from different directions.


“… the population history of the Baltic Sea region, known to be affected by a variety of migrations and genetic barriers, was analyzed using both mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomal data. Over 1200 samples from Finland, Sweden, Karelia, Estonia, Setoland, Latvia and Lithuania were genotyped for 18 Y-chromosomal biallelic polymorphisms and 9 STRs, in addition to analyzing 17 coding region polymorphisms and the HVS1 region from the mtDNA. It was shown that the populations surrounding the Baltic Sea are genetically similar, which suggests that it has been an important route not only for cultural transmission but also for population migration.”

T. Lappalainen et al. “Migration Waves to the Baltic Sea Region” 2008

In a simplified chronological order the earliest arrivals came from continental Europe. After that people from the Northeast maybe as far away as from west Siberia arrived. Later also migration from central Europe, Volga/Ural and then finally from northwestern Europe. The time span is 10 000 years.


“The settlement of the Baltic Sea region advanced rapidly after the Ice Age, beginning about 14,000 BC in Northern Germany and 10,000 BC in Finland. All the populations have their roots mainly in Central Europe, although some eastern influence has been observed among the Finns.”

E. Salmela et.al. “Genome-Wide Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Uncovers Population Structure in Northern Europe” 2008

Finns have lived relatively isolated and we know from other isolated populations (Icelanders, Sardinians) how genetical drift affects the population making the now living ancestors looking genetically very different from the original inhabitants because of a faster rate of evolution. That is why MtDNA taken from medieval Icelandic bones were closer to modern day Norwegians and Swedes than the Icelanders living today.
(A. Helgason et al. Sequences From First Settlers Reveal Rapid Evolution in Icelandic mtDNA Pool 2009)

Living isolated, not being affected by the usual migration and mixing of peoples, increases a small populations distances to surrounding, more densely populated areas. Regional migration causes genes to mix and making people speaking totally different languages (French/Italian/German/Romany in Switzerland) or practicing totally different religions (catholic Croats, muslim Bosnians and orthodox Serbs) look genetically similar.

The effect of genetic drift is larger in small populations, and smaller in large populations.
For an excellent illustration on how genetical drift works, take a look at Wikipedias marble ball analogy


As you can see a founding population can consist of 50/50 or 30/30/30 of each given gene but can after only five generations have totally different allele frequencies because of random drift. It is therefore highly likely that a Finnish founding population have been fairly mixed and very similar in structure to their Scandinavian and Baltic neighbors and have not consisted of more people from Volga/Ural than from Central or Northwestern Europe as the high frequency of N1c leads us to believe.

Bottlenecks too have their part in reducing Finnish DNA diversity. Razib Khan, Scienceblogs:
“Once a population goes through a bottleneck a great deal of its genetic information is gone due to imperfect sampling of the pre-collapse variation in the post-collapse survivors; it takes time, either through migration or mutation, for genetic variation to be replenished”

Another comment from Razib Khan at Scienceblogs:
“Fenno-Scandinavia was settled from the south within the last 10,000 years, so founder effects would be more operative among these populations (this trend exists on a pan-European scale from south to north). Additionally, the ecological context of northern Europe tends to result low populations, which increase the power of genetic drift to fix rare variants. Finland in particular is marginally arable, while even Sweden exhibited a relatively late adoption of agriculture. Migration is a population genetic parameter which works against drift to reduce between population barriers.”

“Another factor behind the outlier status of Finland could be admixture with other populations outside the studied region. Indeed, the comparison to the Asian HapMap samples revealed interesting differences between the studied populations, with the Nordic populations and especially Eastern Finns appearing to harbour a significantly stronger Asian affinity than Central Europeans. A similar eastern influence has been observed in Y-chromosomal, mitochondrial DNA and autosomal studies of the Finns, consistently with archaeological and linguistic data. A small degree of Saami admixture has been observed among the Finns and could also contribute to the differentiation observed in this study, but it could not be detected in the absence of reference data. Thus, the possible eastern contribution observed among the Finns supports the earlier studies done with a more limited number of markers, although a full synthesis of past migration waves is beyond the scope of this study and would require additional data.”

E. Salmela et.al. “Genome-Wide Analysis of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Uncovers Population Structure in Northern Europe” 2008

The genetical distance between Finns and Saamis is almost as big as between Saamis and everyone else. Infact, the genetical distance between Finns and Italians, the largest genetical gap within Europe (Saami’s excluded), is smaller.
There are regions in northern and north eastern Finland where there traditionally have been intermarriage between Finns and Saamis.
The town of Kuusamo is one such place and the genetical gap between Finns from Kuusamo and Helsinki is almost as large as the gap between Finns and Estonians because of this admixture.

“The eastern elements in the mtDNA variation of the Baltic Sea region are intertwined with the Saami influence. Recent studies of the mtDNA variation among the Saami show a link to the Volga-Ural region (Tambets et al. 2004, Ingman & Gyllensten 2006), which is now shown to exist also among the Karelians and, to a lesser degree, among the other populations from the Baltic Sea region as well. Additionally, the presence of U4 in the Eastern Baltic Sea populations may represent eastern influence, since it is typical for the Volga-Ural region (Bermisheva et al. 2002). The high diversity of this haplogroup in the Baltic region, observable in the haplotype network, suggests a complex history, and rules genetic drift out as a cause of the high frequency. All in all, these mtDNA haplogroups may be maternal reflections of the eastern influence that can be most clearly observed in the Y-chromosomal haplogroup N3.”
T. Lappalainen et al. “Migration Waves to the Baltic Sea Region” 2008

But there is Eastern influence. Of course, but Eastern is a wide term and in the case of the Baltic-Finnish peoples it does not stretch any further east than to the Volga/Urals and to other Finno-Ugrian peoples.
The Volga/Ural region is the eastern most geographical region of Europe and a minor genetical contribution, often called Uralic, from this area is a fact.
As with all European populations there is a Eurasian, Asian, Middle Eastern and African contribution of varying degree.
We know that Bulgarians, Scandinavians, Hungarians, Greeks, Spaniards and Czechs all have an Asian component. So the Finns are not really standing out in this perspective either.
Well, in a sense they do. Most of the Eastern component in Finns is likely to be ancient, possibly more than 4000 years old or more, whereas the Asian component in the other peoples listed is from more recent and often well documented migrations from central Asia to Europe. Using the logic applied on anthroboards about these migrations, everyone are foreigners in Europe.

“It seems probable that early migrations from Finno-Ugric sources affected the whole country, whereas subsequent migrations from Scandinavia had an impact mainly on the western parts of the country. The contacts between Finland and neighboring Finno-Ugric, Scandinavian and Baltic regions are evident. However, there is no support for recent migrations from Siberia and Central Europe. Our results emphasize the importance of incorporating Y-chromosomal data to reveal the population substructure which is often left undetected in mitochondrial DNA variation. Early assumptions of the homogeneity of the isolated Finnish population have now proven to be false, which may also have implications for future association studies.”

T. Lappalainen et al. “Regional differences among the Finns: A Y-chromosomal perspective” 2006