![](https://web.archive.org/web/20220519174346im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Finno-Permic_Languages0.png/220px-Finno-Permic_Languages0.png)
Western Finns
Pinks: Sami
Blues: Baltic Finns
Eastern Finns
Yellows and red: Volga Finns
Browns: Perm Finns
The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages traditionally classified in the Finno-Permic language family, and which originated in the region of the Volga River. The largest Finnic peoples by population are the Finns (or more precisely the Suomi, 6 million), the Estonians (1 million), the Mordvins (800,000), the Mari (570,000), the Udmurts (550,000), the Komis (330,000) and the Sami (100,000).[1]
The scope of the name "Finn" and "Finnic" varies by country. It originates in an Old Norse word for hunter-gatherer, finn (plural finnar), which was first applied to the (pre–reindeer herding) Sami, who arrived in Scandinavia during the first millennium CE, and perhaps to other hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia.[2] It is still used with this meaning in Norway. Thus there is Finnmark in Norway, which is Sami country, but also Finnveden in Sweden, which was not Finnic-speaking. The name was also applied to what is now Finland, which at the time was inhabited by Sami hunter-gatherers.[3] Today, Finnish scholars restrict the term to the Baltic Finns, who include the Finns of Finland and their closest relatives but not the Sami.[4] In Russia, however, where the other Finnic peoples live, it continues to be used in the broad sense, and sometimes implies the Volga Finns who have their own republics.
Three groups of people are covered by the names "Finn" and "Finnic" in the broad sense:[5][6]
- the Sami people, spread across northern Scandinavia
- the Baltic Finns, also known as the Western Finns, of Finland, Estonia, Karelia and northwestern Russia
- the Volga Finns and the Perm Finns,[7] also known as the Eastern Finns, of central Russia, including the four central-Russian republics of Komi, Mari El, Mordovia and Udmurtia.[8]
Formerly, the Ugrians were considered an additional branch of the Finns (as "Ugrian Finns"),[9] but due to the theory that the Hungarian language is most closely related to the Ugrian languages and because the Hungarians are not ethnically Finns, the Ugrians are now generally excluded.
Linguistically, things are a bit more complex; particularly, the unity of the Volga Finnic languages is disputed, and because of this the Permians are sometimes counted as Volga Finns and sometimes not. The distinction is a linguistic one, however, and varies between linguistic reconstructions. Linguistically also, the Finnic people are sometimes called "Finno-Ugric", uniting them with the Hungarians, or "Uralic", uniting them also with the Samoyeds, but these linguistic connections were not discovered until the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and do not underlie traditional ethnic identity.[10]
Finnic peoples migrated westward from very approximately the Volga area into northwestern Russia and (first the Sami and then the Baltic Finns) into Scandinavia, though scholars dispute the timing. The ancestors of the Perm Finns moved north and east to the Kama and Vychegda rivers. Those Finnic peoples who remained in the Volga basin began to divide into their current diversity by the sixth century, and had coalesced into their current nations by the sixteenth.
See also
- Chud
- Fenni
- Fenno-Scandinavia
- Finnic mythologies
- Finnic neopaganism
- Finno-Ugric countries
- Finno-Ugric languages
References
- ^ "Национальный состав населения по субъектам Российской Федерации". Retrieved April 5, 2020.
- ^ Rygh, Oluf (1924). Norske gaardnavne: Finmarkens amt (in Norwegian) (18 ed.). Kristiania, Norge: W. C. Fabritius & sønners bogtrikkeri. pp. 1–7.
- ^ Lamnidis, T.C., Majander, K., Jeong, C. et al. (2018). Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe. Nature Communications 9, 5018. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07483-5
- ^ Laakso, Johanna (2001). "The Finnic languages". In Dahl, Östen; Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds.). The Circum-Baltic languages. Vol. 1: Typology and Contact. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p. 180. ISBN 9027230579.
- ^ Golden, Peter B. (1994) [1990]. "The peoples of the Russian forest belt". In Sinor, Denis (ed.). The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 230. ISBN 9780521243049.
- ^ "The languages of Europe". Encyclopedia of European peoples, Volume 1. Infobase Publishing. 2006. p. 888. ISBN 9781438129181.
- ^ Ekaterina Goldina & Rimma Goldina (2018) On North-Western Contacts of Perm Finns in VII–VIII Centuries, Estonian Journal of Archaeology 22: 2, 163–180
- ^ Lallukka, Seppo (1990). The East Finnic minorities in the Soviet Union. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. ISBN 951-41-0616-4.
- ^ The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, 1894, vol. IX p. 191.
- ^ Fenno-Ugria Foundation