Ask Lemmygrad

If you say this to the Finnish, they will get visibly incandescent.

Finland was part of the Russian empire so there are some Slavic influences on Finnish culture, but there are probably even more Swedish influences since it was also part of the Swedish empire at one point. Linguistically it's neither Slavic nor Germanic.

both major nationalities of finland, the finnish and sámi peoples, are speakers of finno-ugric languages, a branch of the non-indo-european uralic family. finnish swedes speak swedish, a language in the germanic branch of the indo-european family. slavic languages are spoken predominantly by immigrant communities, the largest of which is the russian-language community, consisting of about 1% of the population.

Novgorod and Sweden had a race to conquer sweden back then. A lot of finnish tribes converted to orthodoxy before the swedish conquest. The russian ethnogenesis also included significant finnic components.

But no finns aren’t slavs.

No

Well you have Sami people who are indigenous to the northern lands and white Finnish people who at best can be grouped in with the Baltics. Definitely not Slavic.

No. Hope that helps :)

no, its not.

His reasoning was that Russia and Finland share a long border and a lot of history

Sharing a border is no condition. Austria and Hungary where once a state, however Hungarians are not Germanic (The stuff about Austrian identity, Austrians as ethnic group and so on is actually rather new and I am way not an expert). Funny enough both differ in the language the same way as Finland and Russia.

In terms of genealogy the Finns are most closely related to neighboring Finnic groups Estonians and Sámi, not Russians specifically, East Slavs in general, or any other Slavic population.

In terms of culture Finnish culture is largely indigenous with a mix of a larger Swedish influence and much smaller Russian influence but is still culturally Finnic in most respects.

In terms of language the Finns speak a Finno-Ugric language like neighboring Estonians and Sámi, not a Slavic language like Russian or anything else.

Politically speaking Finland has long gravitated toward Scandinavia and thus the West and less so Russia or other Slavic countries even when it was part of the Russian Empire.

Religiously Finns are mostly Lutherans, itself an import from Sweden, and there is little Orthodox presence to tie them to Russia's own religious history. They also have an indigenous religion that is very clearly Finnic, not Slavic, in its customs.

So in every possible way that could matter: no, Finland isn't Slavic regardless of how the word is being used.

Definitely not Slavic, but I would say there is a lot of Russian influence depending on the location. Western Finland is more Swedish influenced while Eastern Finland is more Russian influenced. The cultural and linguistic divide is not that large today between the western and eastern parts due to homogenization. I do feel that the Swedish influence is overemphasized so we can happily stand in the Nordic camp. Overall Russian influence is smaller than historically if you look at something like toponyms (Turku, Kuopio) though the latter comes from personal name, loaned vocabulary includes religious, technical, material and dietary terms to list a few. There is little orthodoxy in Finland today and even that is mainly an East Karelian thing. Plenty of cultural exchange has happened between the Baltic Finnic peoples and the neighboring Slavs, mainly Northern Russians and what are now Pomors. Finland overall does not contain that much influence from its eastern neighbor. Modern Finland, its culture, language and ethnogenesis have been largely composed in the past two centuries. As everyone else has pointed out, Finnish is not related to its neighboring Indo-European languages, though consist many loan words mainly from Proto-Germanic and Baltic. Also a Saamic substrate, but I am not really knowledgeable in the topic.