Sweden-Finland
Sweden-Finland is a term sometimes used for the Swedish Kingdom between the Kalmar Union and the Napoleonic wars, or the period from the 14th to the 18th century. In 1809 the realm was split and the eastern half came to constitute the semi-autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, in personal union with Imperial Russia.
Although the term has didactic merits, for instance when used in conjunction with the terms Denmark-Norway and Sweden-Norway, it is potentially misleading – and contradicting contemporary usage. Finland (proper), as understood from the middle ages and forth, was for a while one of the provinces of Sweden, later a dutchy; while what today constitutes the Republic of Finland, was once a set of provinces comprising the eastern part of Sweden proper, which in Sweden were often referred to as Österland ("the Eastern land"), elsewhere in the world as Finland (Compare: In Sweden the Finnish sauna is called bastu, elsewhere "sauna"). Gradually, that term fell from use in Sweden too, and by the 18th century, also inside Sweden-Finland, only the term "Finland" was commonly used for the land of the Finns, where the common people spoke Finnish language.
Worldwide, Finland was commonly used for "the land of the Finns" already early in the middle ages, which fact can be detected from numerous historical documentations and maps. In 1988 the Unites States Senate ratified a law to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the earliest continuous Finnish settlements on the New Continent, now USA. In those ealy Finnish settlements in America too, a place called Finland was used already in the 1600s for one of the areas where the Finns lived.
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