To be fair, the whole nationalist romanticism thing was something that was just going on at the time. Later on in the 1800's Finnish people became very interested in Karelian folklore and shit

This reminds me that there are and have been small communities of what are essentially Finnish hoteps who believe that every ancient king and kingdom in recorded and prerecorded history was actually Finnish but that they were somehow fucked over by the dastardly Swedes/Vikings who went on to enslave Finns and to erase all traces of ancient Finnish culture... and this slavery goes on even today in the form of mandatory Swedish classes in Finnish schools. It's wild