User talk:Wahlin

Swedish-speaking Finns
Hi

You'll be happy to know that Finland Swedes has been renamed according to your suggestions. --Espoo 18:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Iceland
Maybe you are interested in this project... --Michkalas 15:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Superdong
A tag has been placed on Superdong, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia per CSD a7.

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Gutiscandja
(You wrote)

You're right that the reference I could dig up online said so. Anyhow, I believe that the reference I used was written as a stance against the "standard dogma" that Gdansk probably comes from the Gothic language that's why I wrote "possibly". But since I could not find online reference for this, I think your version is good. Wahlin (talk) 00:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I tried to make the best of what you found, but of course you're welcome to look around for whatever else is there to this story. Cheers, Poeticbent talk  01:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Gutiskandja II
Me again. I could now dig up a general reference to an etymology lexicon, and I changed the wording of the Gdansk article accordingly. I don't think you should alter this writing. According to this discussion page, it is quite common that namnes are borrowed in this order: Germanic-->Slavic-->German(ic) see []. Another example is Finnish and Swedish. For example in Finland, there is a Swedish-speaking village with the Swedish name Raumo (Finnish Rauma). Raumo does not sound Swedish at all and the name has apparently been borrowed from Finnish, that in turn borrowed it from extremely old Swedish / Scandinavian (before 500 CE at least) *Strauma (=Stream). Other examples, Swedish village (in Sweden) Hortlax is originally from Finnish Hourtalahti (=Dog's bay, I think). Finnish capital Helsinki is from Swedish Helsingfors, so these borrowings go both ways. However, the Gothic thing don't have much to do with Germans. Probably Poles, Roumanians and Ukrainians share more genes with Goths than Germans do.Wahlin (talk) 16:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. --Poeticbent talk  16:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi
Thanks for your comment. As far as I know I'm I1, but I've had only an STR test, so this isn't SNP confirmed. Nevertheless I'm fairly confident. There is some evidence that haplogroup I1 may have been introduced into the UK well before the medieval period. It is nonsensical to talk of Vikings if many I1 haplogroups were introduce to Great Britain during the mesolithic. The fact is the the claim that I1 British types are all derived from post-Roman migrations is based on a very biased and narrow view of history. The only way to understand this view is to pretend that there was no cross North Sea contact between the east of Britain and other North Sea regions at all before ~450 AD, and then suddenly for some obscure reason "Germanic" continental people and "Brythonic" British people suddenly realised the North Sea existed and decided to sail across it. That's just stupid. The fact is the cross North Sea traffic had been ongoing for millenia before the so called "Anglo-Saxon" and later "Viking" invasions. On the other hand I took a test for my Y chromosome STR type based on Oppenheimer's analysis and came out as his "I1a-3" (this is not an official name, but Oppenheimer's name for a specific cluster of STRs). This type, according to Oppenheimer, arose in Norway during the Bronze Age (~3000ybp) then moved to Denmark and probably then to Great Britain at some time ~1200 years ago. This means that it may well be associated with some population movement associated with the Danelaw. But there are several points to note.
 * We have no way of knowing how this person who brought the Y chromosome to Britain, and who happens to be one of my many direct ancestors, thought of themselves. But one thing I will absolutely say, I doubt very much that they would have thought in terms of "Swedish", "Norwegian" or "Danish", at least not in the sense of the way we think of them as nation states today. It is a simple anachronism to use modern terms for states and national identity and try to pretend that they would have had any meaning to people who lived a thousand years ago.
 * You write "your paternal ancestor was maybe "Swedish"" I find several problems with this comment.
 * Firstly I have thousands of paternal ancestors. It may well be that some of them were born, lived and died in what we now call Sweden. That does not make them Swedish. It is impossible to know when people started to think of themselves as Swedish, as opposed to something else. But clearly if one of my ancestors lived in that geographical region that is now Sweden four thousand years ago, they could not be sensibly described as Swedish.
 * Furthermore if one of my paternal ancestors migrated from Scandinavia over 1000 years ago to live on Great Britain, then clearly I have a very long line of paternal ancestors who were born lived and died on the island of Great Britain. Why pretend that some ancestors are more important than others? Am I to pretend that my father, who was born and grew up in Wales, is unimportant as an ancestor? Clearly not. If we assume that a generation is 25 years, then my last 48 paternal line ancestors have been born on Great Britain and lived there. Furthermore each of these ancestors will have other ancestors who are not from Scandinavia. Clearly the overwhelming majority of my ancestry will not be from Scandinavia, even if my paternal line ancestry happens to have spent some generations living in that geographical part of Europe. Or to put it another way, the overwhelming majority of my paternal line ancestry is actually African, as it is for all humans. We left Africa only ~50,000ybp, whereas our species probably arose in Africa about 200,000ybp.
 * Why do you pretend that this possible Scandinavian episode in the odyssey that is the demographic history of the Y chromosome I possess, is more important than any other episode? Why is the Balkan refuge episode not important? I is supposed to have survived in the Balkan refuge during the last Ice Age, does that make one of my paternal line ancestors Serbian? Of course it doesn't.
 * Ethnicity is a social construct, it is not biological. We cannot tell someone's ethnicity from their genes. If one is to claim that all I1 males are "genetically Scandinavian", then one is living in a weird racialised world where we tell people that they can't have British citizenship because their "Y chromosomes" are wrong. That's just scary. Ethnicity is about identity, it is about how one defines their own sense of belonging the world. If you found out that half of your ancestry was Russian and not Swedish, it would not make you any less Swedish. That's because you see yoursels as Swedish, and everyone else sees you as Swedish. Here's the thing, I don't know about in Sweden, but in the UK hardly anyone knows who their ancestros are, or where they came from, past two or three generations. I know where my grandparents were born, more or less. But I have no idea where their parents were born. I know my mother's and both grandmother's maiden names, but I don't know the names of the families in previous generations. I don't know how they saw themselves, or how they felt about their identity. I do know that my maternal grandfather thought of himself as English. I do not think of myself as English. There is no contradiction there. Identity comes from the society and community we are members of, it is not "biologically" determined. In fact I get extremely worried when I hear biologically deterministic things. Peoples like Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Welsh, English etc. are not defined by some phylogeographic partitioning. They are defined by social and cultural markers. That's what anthropology tells us. It is chilling to hear the racialised arguments of more ignorant generations re-surface due to ignorance of the relationship between genetics and social construction.

I you want to read a book, I can recommend Jonathan Marks' "What it means to be 98% chimpanzee". It's mostly about molecular anthropology. It gives a good account of why ethnic identity is a social construct. It also explains why we should be sceptical about biological determinism and biological absolutism. The fact is that you are not genetically more like other Swedes than you are to non-Swedes. Swedes in the north are more likely to be genetically similar to Finns and Norwegians from the north. Swedes in the far south are more likely to be more genetically like Danes, and Swedes in the west are more likely to be more genetically like people from Ahvenamaa. Alun (talk) 19:11, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you took offense at my pot on your talk page. It was not at all apparent that you were agreeing with me about social construction. Quite the reverse. Indeed I found it difficult to understand what your point was. It was far from clear that your point was to explain that the term Dane was used as a generic term for Scandinavian in Anglo-Saxon England. But just to clarify why I said what I said. According to Oppenheimer's analysis (and I know enough to understand that his analysis is not the final word), some of my paternal ancestors probably lived in what is now Norway during the Bronze Age (~3000ybp), but were living in what is now Denmark when the haplotype migrated to Great Britain. That's what Oppeheimer says, that this type came from Denmark to Britain. That's why I said Denmark, because that's what Oppenheimer's genetic analysis predicts. To clarify: I really do want to appologise. I've had a lot of problems with people misrepresenting and misinterpreting genetic research to try to make it about identity politics. It's common for these tests to use modern social constructs when they are dealing with ancient population movements. I have found it frustrating to deal with so many misinformed people. The fact is that genetic variation is clinal, the fact is that Y chromosomes are highly prone to genetic drift and only represent the demographic history of a single locus. All too often they are endowed with some special significance for determining someone's family history or identity. I've been having problems with people misunderstanding Y chromosome population genetics for a long time here. I suppose it's become instinctive for me to respond with a discussion about how genetic research can't be used to justify membership of any particular group. I'm sorry I offended you, it really was a misunderstanding on my part. Please accept my appologies, I know I can come over as aggressive and I don't mean to. Alun (talk) 06:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I typed Ahvenanmaa incorrectly that's just a typo. Not a big deal.
 * It was a simple mistake to mix my west and east, but then I live in Finland, so Ahvenanmaa is west of me. Everyone makes mistakes, I'm not going to be intimidated simply because I made a simple mistake.
 * In your original post you stated "your paternal ancestor was maybe "Swedish"", but as I pointed out, I have thousands of paternal ancestors, the way you wrote it you seem to be implying that one specific ancestor is somehow the one that is important. Also it's not at all clear that you don't mean "Swedish". If you mean "came from the region we now call Sweden" then say that. I know it's difficult to explain what one means, we are used to thinking of the world as we see it today, and we all sometimes say things like "came from Denmark 4000ybp", when it's clear that no such place as Denmark existed then. I know it's not easy to explain these things. That was a misunderstanding on my part.

NPVIC
Hi,

I was just curious as to where you found the number HB1270 for the Pennsylvania bill on the NPVIC? Would be great if you could add a source. The PA Assembly website knows nothing about this bill number. KarlFrei (talk) 08:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Cartogram editing
Hello, i replied to your question on my talk, sorry it was so late. Completefailure (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Carl Robin Geary


The article Carl Robin Geary has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "WP:NPOL not met, as it does not cover all mayors, and alludes to WP:SIGCOV for local politicians. An online-based WP:BEFORE shows that sources/mentions include: 1, 2, 3, 4, which is not enough for SIGCOV, especially since sources 3 and 4 are Associated Press copy. The reliability of Find A Grave is... not."

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