The name Finno-Ugrians (or Finno-Ugrics) refers to peoples in north-central and eastern Europe (as well as some groups in Asia) who speak languages of the Finno-Ugrian language family. The term is thus primarily a linguistic designation, and speakers of Finno-Ugric languages have widely diverse ethnic origins and live in scattered enclaves throughout a vast region. They are also sometimes grouped under the name Finnics, with the Ugrians, or Ugrics, omitted, or as FINNS.
The name Finns, however, is better used for a specific tribal group or for the Finns of present-day Finland (see Finns: nationality). Among the Finno-Ugrians are the SAAMI (also known as Lapps or Laplanders) in present-day northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway, and in northwestern Russia and the Khanti (or Ostyaks) in northwestern Siberia. There are also the Baltic Finno-Ugrians (or Balto-Finno-Ugrians or Western Finno-Ugrians), including the Esths, Ingrians, Izhorians, Karelians, Kvens, Livs, Tornedalians, and Votes. The Volga Finno-Ugrians (or Eastern Finno-Ugrians) include the Mari, Merya, Mordvins, and Muroma. The Permic Finno-Ugrians (or Finno-Permians) include the Komi and Udmurts. The Meshchera are classified by some scholars as Volga Finno-Ugrians and by others as Permics. The Magyars, later to be called Hungarians (see
FINNO-UGRIANS
Location:
Ural Mountains to the Baltic Sea in eastern and central Europe
Time period:
Second millennium b. c.e. to 14th century C. E.
Ancestry:
Finno-Ugrian
Language:
Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugrians time line
B. C. E.
Fifth century Herodotus writes about people who may have been Finno-Ugrians.
C. E.
98 Tacitus refers to Fenni. c. 147 Ptolemy refers to Finnoi.
700 F inno-Ugrians migrate to Karelia.
1202 Germans found city of Riga.
1207 Brothers of the Sword pacify Livs.
1219 Brothers of the Sword pacify Esths.
Hungarians: nationality), also spoke a Finno-Ugric language.
As in the case of so many language groups, studies of the Finno-Ugrians have long been entangled in intellectual, ideological, and political struggles, since the late 18th century. On the one hand, the sciences being used to identify and study ethnic and language groups, such as linguistics, ethnology, and archaeology, were still new and developing. On the other, nationalistic movements for independence being born in a number of the countries where Finno-Ugric languages were spoken, such as Hungary, Finland, and Estonia (see Estonians: nationality), strongly influenced ideas about them. Activists in these countries, longing to escape Russian domination, sought to stress their ethnic uniqueness and distinctness from Russia, while some Russian scholars welcomed the contribution of many varied races, including Finno-Ugrians, to the formation of the Russian people, in a sort of “melting pot.”
In the 19th and earlier 20th centuries as linguistics developed and became more detailed and complex, its practitioners succumbed to a narrowing of focus and elaborated theories almost devoid of input from archaeology, ethnology, or physical anthropology. Finno-Ugrian specialists studied the evolution of this group without considering the history of neighboring peoples, such as the Slavs, or other peoples who may have inhabited the woodland zone of western siberia and eastern Europe, claiming that Finno-Ugrians were the sole, original inhabitants of this region, a notion long since overturned by archaeology.
Finnish researchers sought a Finno-Ugrian culture that was universal among all Finno-
Ugrian speakers, from the Saami to Hungarians to Estonians to the Khanti, while ignoring the considerable evidence that Finno-Ugrian and eastern slavic peoples have long had many elements in common. instead, they and Estonian scholars looked to peoples to the west in Europe for congeners.
A special problem with understanding Finno-Ugrian ethnogenesis is the fact that Finno-Ugrian languages are spoken by such a bewildering variety of peoples. That a language group can be shared by the Saami, some of whom live to this day a hunter-gatherer lifeway in remote sub-Arctic regions, and Hungarians in the center of temperate eastern Europe, whose culture has long been among the richest and most sophisticated in Europe, is indeed hard to comprehend. A partial solution to this conundrum must be sought in the location of the ancestors of the Finno-Ugrians near the circumpolar region of the great Eurasian continent at what became a crossroads of cultures and influences probably soon after the end of the last ice Age. From that time until well into the Common Era, a period during which important groups of Finno-Ugrians had moved south to central Eurasia, peoples across the region experienced both evolutionary changes and sometimes tumultuous and sudden shifts of socioeconomic and historical forces brought to bear on them by peoples from east, west, and south—many of them causing population dislocation and dispersal to the regions where Finno-Ugrian languages are spoken today Perhaps the greater conundrum of the Finno-Ugrians is how they were able to retain their languages through all of these shifts and dislocations.
Place of Origin of Proto-Finno-Ugric
The original Finno-Ugric language developed somewhere in the northern forest belt of western siberia and northeastern Europe. Anthropological study of skulls found in this region increasingly makes clear that already by the fourth millennium B. C.E. people there were racially mixed, with ancestors from both Europe and Asia. People from southeast and southwest had probably begun to migrate to northern Eurasia as soon as the ice sheets receded, at first seasonally following herds of caribou and reindeer, then sometime after 7000 B. C.E. more permanently as the climate moderated and the forests grew deep. Asians most probably migrated from central Asia via the Ural Mountain region, and Europeans from the Baltic coast. The apparent kinship of the Uralic languages (of which Finno-Ugric is a subgroup) with the Altaic group from the Altai Mountains in Asia supports this penetration of Asians to the Ural region, as do the Uralic languages spoken east of the Urals in Asia. The different peoples of the northern forest belt probably spoke related languages at least from Mesolithic times (if not even earlier), ranging from those with a more European character (Finnic) in the west to those with a more Asian character (Uralian) in the east. The fact that peoples in what would be the Finno-Ugrian region had from the beginning such a diverse ancestry, the result of part of their homeland’s being so near “the top of the world”—the circumpolar region where all the continents of Earth are close—is perhaps a partial explanation of their great diversity in later times.
The Uralic language ancestral to the Finno-Ugric language could have emerged as a result of this meeting and intermingling in the north of peoples from Asia and Europe in the Mesolithic Age or earlier. The original language could have been a lingua franca made up of elements from east and west used when different language speakers met.
There are several possibilities for the origin of the Finno-Ugric language family, no one of which has been proved. One theory that has been favored by scholars holds that the crystallization of proto-Finno-Ugric (the ancestral language of all Finno-Ugric languages) came about with the adoption of farming in the region sometime in the fourth millennium B. C.E., possibly through a mechanism whereby the dialect of the group that first began to practice agriculture was adopted by other groups along with the technological innovation. Since all languages in the wider region were related, the adoption of one of the dialects by speakers of other dialects would not have been difficult. There is a strong possibility that for many peoples the earliest adoption of farming was intertwined with religious belief, as agricultural practices were undertaken more as a form of religious ritual than as a primary subsistence means. If this was true in the northern forest zone, the first people in the region to adopt farming would have enjoyed great prestige, possibly sufficient to influence other groups to adopt their language along with the strange new practice of controlling the growth of crops and the breeding of animals. Whatever the timing and means by which the Finno-Ugric language first emerged, the Finno-Ugric speakers probably are descended from Mesolithic or Neolithic peoples indigenous since the last Ice Age to Russia and western Siberia.
Most anthropologists believe that the country around the Oka, the bend of the Volga, and the Kama (the Oka and the Kama are tributaries of the Volga River) was occupied by Finno-Ugrians before Indo-European-speaking peoples arrived, and that their early home extended from the headwaters of the Dnieper and western Dvina Rivers to the western slope of the Ural Mountains. Today only the Mari and Mordvins remain in this region. If the ancestral Finno-Ugric language emerged as farming was adopted, it may have happened at that location.
This territory differed from the important steppe zone to its south, along which contacts and influences between Europe and the Near and Far East traveled for millennia, in being more forested and therefore more isolated from cultural trends elsewhere. It was probably just one enclave in the vast northern forest zone that existed in the territories of present-day Russia, including Siberia and Finland and extending to the northwest into most of Scandinavia. From about 4500 to 3500 b. c.e. a sub-Neolithic subsistence economy in which foraging remained important continued in this vast region when, to the southwest in the North European Plain, a fully Neolithic way of life had been adopted, and, to the south in the Pontic Steppe, copper working had been adopted from the Balkans and domestication of the horse had been achieved.
In the Baltic region, including Karelia (in northwestern Russia) and Finland, the adoption of pottery making in about the sixth millennium b. c.e. shows contacts with the Finno-Ugrian region. It is in a style called Comb or Combed Ware, from its impressed comblike decorations, which derive from a ceramic tradition of the Upper Volga region, probably via the Lake Ladoga region. It is possible, although there is no direct evidence for it, that the arrival of Combed Ware was accompanied by adoption of a Finno-Ugric language. Some archaeologists have seen this development as eventually leading to the emergence of the Saami. Some have seen affinities of Combed Ware with pottery made throughout the circumpolar region, including the northern forest zone of North America, possibly evidence of the existence of an interconnected cultural province of boreal, nonagricultural peoples encircling the Arctic region.
Role of the Corded Ware Complex in the Spread of Finno-Ugric Languages
In the fourth and third millennia b. c.e. most of the southern part of the northern forest zone
(not including present-day Finland and Scandinavia) had contact with a momentous change emanating from central Europe associated with what is known as the Corded Ware culture, from the cord impressions used to decorate pottery. Corded Ware users, still following a Neolithic lifestyle, were now spreading that lifestyle by engaging in pastoralism (consisting mostly of cattle grazing) and longer-dis-tance trade than had ever been known before. Travel using the innovation (from the Near East) of wheeled carts, and domestication of horses adopted from the Pontic Steppe, gave Corded Ware users contact with different peoples on an unprecedented scale. The impact of this shift on hitherto isolated societies is symbolized by two elements of material culture that were found in burials: a more or less standardized set of drinking vessels, and the substitution of the forester’s axes of the past by heavy stone battle-axes. The drinking vessels to hold alcoholic beverages were possibly used in hospitality rituals intended to avert the need to use the battle-axes.
An emerging theory postulates that the proto-Indo-European language ancestral to the Indo-European language family was born out of the nexus of these new wide-ranging contacts in central Europe, perhaps as a lingua franca or trade language to allow communication among strangers, perhaps as they engaged in ritual drinking and feasting. If so, the spread of the Corded Ware cultural complex could have been accompanied by the spread of protoIndo-European.
From about 3500 b. c.e. the Corded Ware culture was quickly adopted over a wide region, including present-day Russia and southern parts of the northern forest zone, perhaps by about 3000 b. c.e. This cultural dissemination is not thought to have been by force, through invasion or migration of peoples, but rather through the movement of ideas, as people eagerly adopted horse domestication and copper implements on learning about them from far-ranging herders or traders. Perhaps the fact that Finno-Ugric speakers adopted these innovations but not the proto-Indo-European language, for reasons still unknown, is negative evidence that the Corded Ware complex was spread through emulation rather than by force. A Corded Ware way of life may have been adopted in Finno-Ugrian regions by people still living a sub-Neolithic, foraging way of life, for whom the mobility of herding would have come naturally. For the forebears of the reindeer-herding Saami, for example, the shift from following wild herds to capturing and domesticating reindeer may not have been great.
A possible mechanism for the spread of Finno-Ugric beyond its original homeland is the new mobility characteristic of the Corded Ware way of life. Corded Ware arrived in Finland by around 3000-2800 b. c.e. The one-quarter of the Finns’ genetic stock that is Siberian may have been contributed by Finno-Ugrians following the mobile Corded Ware way of life. Again the Corded Ware culture seems to have spread not through invasion or large-scale migration, but through the attractiveness of its elements, which were quickly adopted by some groups. (Corded Ware was actually slow to replace Combed Ware in Finland.) The arrival of the Corded Ware way of life in Finland may not have had a major impact on Finnish racial makeup but could have led to a shift there to a new language, in this case Finno-Ugric, as elsewhere in Europe Corded Ware may have been responsible for the spread of Indo-European. Finno-Ugric may have permeated the northern forest zone in the same way. If, on the other hand, a form of Finno-Ugric had already arrived in Finland, the Corded Ware lifestyle could have spurred the development of the Balto-Finnic branch of Finno-Ugric.
The Finns and Saami may have begun diverging into distinct cultures as coastal groups began to adopt a Corded Ware way of life, while those in the interior continued to practice the foraging existence of the past. This divergence would help to explain why the languages of the two groups occupy separate branches of the Finno-Ugric language family.
Bronze Age
The Finno-Ugrian territory remained isolated from trends to their south and west in the Early Bronze Age, from 2500 to about 1800 b. c.e. lacking bronze and maintaining a Corded Ware lifestyle and culture. Bronze making entered the steppe region to the south of the forest zone from the Caucasus Mountain region (with its proximity to the urbanizing Near East) by about 2500 b. c.e., and on from there to the metal-rich Carpathian Mountain region in central Europe. During this period Carpathian bronze industries steadily increased their productivity and technical skill, exporting huge numbers of metal objects to the steppe zone in return for horses. By the end of the third millennium b. c.e. steppe peoples had transferred knowledge of metalworking to people in the copper-rich southern Ural Mountains. From there knowledge of metalworking and other steppe influences probably filtered through to much of the forest belt, by 1800 b. c.e. giving rise to the Abashevo culture located between the Don and the Volga Rivers, which by now was probably a Finno-Ugrian region. This culture had wealthy elites, who may have gained their wealth through raiding the rich trade routes reaching from the Urals across Abashevo territory to the east-west steppe zone, traversed by a trade network that extended from Carpathian and Caucasus bronze industries to the Pontic Steppe and on to the borders of Mongolia and even northern China. Thus although the Finno-Ugrian region continued to be a relative backwater largely bypassed by the major socioeconomic forces of the time, it was not out of touch entirely.
Burials of the Abashevo culture show the moderate wealth of their elites, and their links with the steppe-dwelling makers of multiple relief band pottery and timber graves who lived in the steppe zone to the south. A burial located in the Tzna basin (the area between the Don and the Oka in central Russia) had grave goods that included bronze daggers and a spearhead, richly decorated bone cheek pieces for horse bridles, and flint arrowheads. Multiple burials were collectively enclosed beneath a mound. The assemblage has many analogies in Don-Volga Abashevo culture sites and in some synchronous sites in the steppe and forest-steppe areas of eastern Russia and the southern Urals.
Meanwhile there is evidence of migration of peoples to the northern forest zone from the Volga-Oka confluence region in south-central Siberian Russia from the third to the second millennium b. c.e.; because their skull types point to an origin north of the Black Sea, it is likely that they spoke an Indo-European language. Place-names that still exist in the Volga-Oka region are of Indo-European origin, in a language possibly related to Scythian (see SCYTHIANS); people there, nevertheless, spoke a Finno-Ugrian tongue. Later in the Bronze and Iron Ages peoples of an eastern Mediterranean skull shape also moved north to the Finno-Ugrian region, while migration from beyond the Urals introduced more Asian peoples to the region as well.
Three basic anthropological types are recognized in the Finno-Ugrian region in prehistoric times, identified by analysis of skulls: (1) a transitional group in which Asian (Mongoloid) and European (Europoid) characteristics are commingled, who lived in the Volga-Kama region (with scattered communities in the eastern Baltic along the Gulf of Finland); (2) a clearly European group with northern characteristics to the south and west of the first, from the Baltic coast to the middle Volga: and (3) peoples with eastern Mediterranean traits south of the Volga-Oka region. The first of these is often called the Uralic type; peoples of this type include the Khanty (Ostyaks), Mansi (Voguls), Udmurts, Mari, and isolated groups of the Mordvins and Komi. The Saami are a subtype of this group. The second group, the White Sea-Baltic, includes Estonians and Finns and is found today in speakers of non-Finno-Ugric languages, such as Lithuanians, Poles, and White Russians. A name recently proposed for the third group, which probably is made up of peoples from the Pontic Black Sea region and from the eastern Mediterranean, is Atlanto-Black Sea, as some of its people have traits that seem to derive from the western Atlantic region of Europe, perhaps introduced to the eastern Mediterranean by migrants. The Black Sea component of this group shares features with non-Finno-Ugric speakers, such as Russians and TATARS of the Volga region, as well as peoples from the Balkans such as the Bulgars and the Caucasus. One subtype of this complex is well represented among Hungarians. It is also seen in some Slavic and Germanic speakers.
LANGUAGE
Finno-Ugric languages, along with Ugric (or Ugrian) languages, are part of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. The Uralic family is considered by some linguists to be part of an even larger group, the Uralic-Altaic language family, named for the European Ural and the Asian Altaic Mountains. Important common linguistic characteristics of the two and a small vocabulary of shared words, including personal pronouns, kinship terms—mother and father, for example—and names of plants and animals, further support the idea that they share a common ancestor, perhaps originating in the central Asian Altai range. This grouping is not accepted by all linguists, however. The Uralic group is thought to have emerged in the Ural Mountains. The other branch of the Uralic group is Samoyedic, the first Uralic subfamily to separate from Uralic, spoken by the Nenets and various Arctic and sub-Arctic Asian peoples.
The Finno-Ugric subfamily includes the Balto-Finno-Ugric, Permic, Saami, and Volgaic groupings. The Ugric subfamily includes the Hungarian language of the Magyars. The linguistic and cultural similarities among the various Finno-Ugric peoples suggest that one great tribe splintered into various smaller groups, who then migrated to different areas. Although Finno-Ugric peoples may have started with the same language base, there are only a few tribes who are linguistically compatible enough for communication.
The original homeland of the Finno-Ugric languages is believed by some linguists to have been the region extending from the headwaters of the Dnieper and the western Dvina to the western slope of the Ural Mountains, about 5,000 years ago. There is evidence that before the immigration of Slavic-speaking tribes in their present territory in central and eastern Europe in about the sixth century c. e. Finno-Ugrians inhabited the whole territory from the Urals to the Baltic Sea.
Most linguists believe that unlike most of the languages spoken in Europe, Uralic languages are not part of the Indo-European family of languages. Some researchers now believe, however, in an alternative theory, that early Finno-Ugric was one of the two elements that blended to form basic Indo-European. They maintain that some among them mingled with caucasic-speaking peoples (see Caucasians) to produce Indo-European.
Evidence is wanting, however, as to direct contact between caucasian peoples and Finno-Ugrians, and such a connection is unlikely because the two did not inhabit neighboring territories; rather, the vast steppe region lay between the two. (There is much evidence of relations between caucasians and steppe peoples in the late Neolithic, the period when Proto-Indo-European most likely emerged.) If the complex Caucasian societies on the periphery of the urban Near East had had substantial contacts with Finno-Ugrians, a more likely outcome would have been the absorption of the latter into the more advanced Caucasian culture and even the disappearance of their language.
It is difficult to see how the language of such remote, isolated, and primitive societies as lived in the Finno-Ugrian homeland could have had the very large impact over a wide region of more developed societies to the south and west where the Indo-European language is known to have been influential. The most common way primitive societies historically have been able to impose their culture and language on more advanced ones is through large population movements, displacing indigenous languages in other territories either by forcible invasion or (as in the case of the slavs in the mid-first millennium c. e.) by exploitation of a power vacuum left by the collapse or migration of a previous warrior elite society. However, there is no trace of evidence of such a scenario for Finno-Ugrians, either in the most likely time frame for the emergence of Indo-European—that is, the fourth to the third millennia b. c.e.—or at any other time. On the other hand, another possible mechanism for language spread in the relevant period is clear in the archaeological record: the rapid spread over the territories concerned of the distinctly new and different cultural complex called corded Ware. This eventuality, which has been characterized as among the most momentous that occurred in prehistoric Europe, furnishes a more likely mechanism for widespread language change.
Variations of Finno-Ugric are the official languages in Finland, Estonia, and Hungary. Pockets of Finno-Ugric speech are found elsewhere in European and Asian Russia.
In the fifth century b. c.e. the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of peoples presumed to be Finno-Ugrians as “long possessed of the soil.” some of the tribes described by him have been claimed as Finno-Ugrian, mostly based on their probable location to the far northeast of the Greek world. Herodotus mentions the Issedones and Arimaspians and says that beyond these lived the Hyperboreans, who worshipped Apollo. (He distinguishes the Hyperboreans from the others as being peaceful.) His authority for this information, however, is a very uncertain one. He learned of this region from a tale concerning one Aristeus of Proconnessus (an island in the Propontis), who may have lived in the sixth or seventh century b. c.e. It was said that Aristeus died suddenly one day, but when his relatives came to take his body for burial it had disappeared. seven years later Aristeus came back to his city and told of having been possessed by Apollo; in this possession he traveled to lands approaching the territory of the Hyperboreans, finally coming to these Apollo-worshippers themselves. confusingly, Herodotus later qualifies this by saying Aristeus had learned about the Hyperboreans from the Issedones. In the end, Herodotus says, no one knows for sure about these lands, and he was unable to interview anyone who had actually been there.
Some details of Aristeus’s account are plausible and may well have derived from travelers’ and traders’ tales, for Proconnessus, in the approaches to the Black Sea, was a natural stopping point for ships. He describes a lofty chain of mountains where gold, guarded by griffins, is to be found. These could well be the mineral-rich Urals, and the abundant gold from burials by Scythians at this time could have come from there. There is a curious lapse in Aristeus’s story, however, for nowhere does he mention the other principal feature of the Finno-Ugrian homeland besides the Urals: the mighty Volga. Surely any traveler who had actually been to the region would have remarked on this great river. It seems likely that the travelers and traders passing through Proconnessus from whom the Greek Aristeus could have derived information mostly traversed the Black Sea and, Greek-like, did not stray far from their ships, let alone journey across the steppes to the far north.
Aristeus says that the Issedones were being expelled from their territory by the Arimaspians, the Scythians from theirs by the Issedones, and that the Cimmerians, who live on the southern sea (i. e., the Black Sea), abandoned their territory under pressure from the Scythians. This movement of peoples, too, is plausible, for it accords with the ripple affect that for millennia fanned out across the steppe region as disturbance among peoples in one region affected their neighbors. As mentioned above, both possible Scythian place-names and skull types found in the Volga-Oka region have affinities with the area north of the Black Sea.
The Finno-Ugrians extended at one point in their history from the Gulf of Livonia to the Ural Mountains, and from the Arctic coastline to the Black Sea. By the fourth century b. c.e. the Finno-Ugrians were in contact with the Scythians, who lived west of the Don, and with the Sarmatians, who occupied the plains to the east of it.
In the late centuries b. c.e. the Finno-Ugrians migrated westward to the east shore of the Baltic Sea, where they occupied the country north of the Western Dvina and the northern half of Courland, territory that included most of present-day Latvia and Estonia. Later some of them crossed the Gulf of Finland and settled near present-day Turku (Abo) and in the Kokemaki and Kyro valleys of present-day Finland. The Finno-Ugrians absorbed the indigenous Iron Age population.
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote about people under the name Fenni as early as 98 c. e. His description of them as having no horses, houses, or weapons and dressing in skins fits the Saami of the time rather than people in southern Finland. On the other hand, Tacitus wrote that the Fenni had no religion, an assertion that was certainly not true of the Saami, then or at any other time. His description may have reflected Roman prejudice against barbarians living far from Rome on the edge of the world. For Romans such people were closer to animals than to civilized man. In Geographia, a work written in 127-147 c. e., Ptolemy used the name Finnoi.
In the first century c. e. the Huns entered the Volga country and remained along its lower and middle course, having an impact on some of the Finno-Ugric groups. In the fifth century the Bulgars, who had settled on the Lower Volga and Kama, had contacts with and influence on the Komi, Mari, Mordvins, Udmurts, and the Finno-Ugric-speaking Magyars.
In about 700 the Finno-Ugrians reached the present-day region of Karelia in northwestern Russia.
From the eighth century Vikings from Sweden made strikes by sea eastward into Finno-Ugrian territory, primarily using the river systems. In the ninth century the Slavs also expanded from settlements in the Ukraine northeast up tributaries of the Dnieper River into Finno-Ugric lands.
The ancient territory of the Avars in the Lower Danube region and the Carpathian basin was occupied at the end of the ninth century by the Magyars or Hungarians. The Magyars were politically organized by an aristocracy of Turkics. Arab geographers of the medieval period distinguish two Magyar groups, one of which remained in the Ural Mountains, where the Vogul still live today, while the other emigrated first to “Levedia” north of the Sea of Azov and later to “Atelkuzu,” the plain surrounded by the Lower Dnieper, the Carpathians, the Seret, the Danube delta, and the Black Sea. At this time the same Arab geographers (and also Constantine VII Porphy-rogenitus of the 10th century) speak of the “Majghari” as Turks, no doubt because both groups of these Finno-Ugrians had been organized by Bulgars: those of the Urals by the Bulgars of Kama, those of Atelkuzu by the Onoghundur or Onogur, who in the ninth century occupied the southeastern region of the
Carpathians. The name Hungarians, to denote the Magyars, may have originated from these Onogur, who mingled with them in the second half of the ninth century Other sources link these Finno-Ugrian Magyars with another Turkic tribe, the Kabars, who are associated with the Khazars and who are believed to have given the Magyars their royal family, the Arpads. The presence of an Onogur or Kabar Turkic aristocracy among the Magyars would explain the protocol of the Byzantines by which, in the exchange of ambassadors under Constantine VII, Magyar chiefs were always referred to as “Princes of the Turks.”
In the 10 th century some Finno-Ugrians occupied, with the Khazars, the shores of the Sea of Azov and of the Caspian Sea.
By the 12th century the Baltic-speaking Letts had reached the region known as Livonia (part of present-day Latvia and Estonia) and absorbed some of the more southerly Finno-Ugrians or pushed them northward.
In the late 12th and early 13th centuries German military and religious orders launched crusades to the Baltic region. In 1202 the invaders founded the city of Riga on the Gulf of Riga in Latvia, and the next year they established the Brothers of the Sword to Christianize the peoples. The Livs were the first to be pacified, in 1207. In 1214 the Letts fell, after which the Esths turned to Russia for support against German expansion. The Esths themselves were vanquished in 1219. In 1237 the Brothers of the Sword united with the Teutonic Knights, becoming known as the Livonian Order of Teutonic Knights. During the next century some Finno-Ugrians, migrating northward, reached Sweden. Kingdoms and nations would form over the next centuries.
Meanwhile the Saami continued to live a nomadic lifestyle in extreme northern Scandinavia, Finland, and western Russia.
Economy
Economic subsistence among Finno-Ugrians has followed the same developmental trends as among other Europeans but in a later time frame because of their location in the far north. Skilled in hunting and fishing, they followed a foraging way of life for millennia after agriculture had been adopted in the rest of Europe. An important feature in some areas was stream and river fishing, in which great seasonal runs of species such as salmon fostered a sedentary existence in which people lived in large villages focused on the prolific source of food. Elsewhere, such as in Karelia and Finland, sealing played the same role.
Later as Finno-Ugrians moved into new territories, considerable regional differences in economy developed. The pastoral economy typical of the Corded Ware culture that entered Finno-Ugric areas from about 3500 b. c.e. caused the people in forest steppe regions south of the northern zone to take up cattle rearing. This activity has long been important to Estonians south of Finland, and Udmurts and Cheremis in the southeast. In northern lands among the Finns, Karelians, and Komi, hunting to supply furs for trading to both western and southeastern Europe maintained its importance into the modern era, long after they had adopted agriculture. The amber trade generated foreign goods and wealth for coastal Finno-Ugrians from the Bronze Age until well into the Common Era. The fur and amber trade in Finland expanded greatly as traders from Sweden and Denmark pioneered trade routes southward through the Russian interior, first to Baghdad in present-day Iraq and then to the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean region. During this period people in Finland began to bury their deceased in graveyards with abundant grave goods. Finnish culture spread inland to Tavastia and Ostrobothnia, through trade and settlement. Estonians, too, benefited from the trade networks fostered by the Vikings, and in the medieval period by the German Hanseatic League.
Fishing continued to be a mainstay; in the medieval period the periodical fasting from meat required by the Christian Church across Europe increased the importance of the cod and herring fisheries. It is thought that ancestral Finno-Ugrians from central Russia took knowledge of cereal agriculture northwestward with them to Karelia and Finland. In the early centuries C. E. Baltic Finno-Ugrians (Western Finno-Ugrians) became active in the east-west trade. Early extensive trade relations lasted until the decline of the Roman Empire and the wide-ranging migrations of the Germanics.
The great difference of Finno-Ugric languages from the Indo-European ones that predominate in Europe, as well as the location of most Finno-Ugric speakers in territories on the periphery of that continent, have isolated them to some extent from social and cultural trends elsewhere. Their political organization remained tribal until well into the Middle
Ages. As a result, Finno-Ugric speakers were dominated by outside powers—principally Sweden and Russia, but also Germany—in the early medieval period before they had a chance to form states of their own. Christianity, in the Middle Ages a civilizing force, was introduced late and by force as part of political annexation. Finno-Ugrians in areas under Russian rule remained almost totally separated from the outside world. In the southern parts of Karelia and Ingria the Karelian, Vote, and Ingrian populations were bound to the land as serfs of Russian-speaking masters. The cultural isolation of the Ingrians and Votes was exacerbated by their living in an area that was a mosaic of peoples speaking different languages. The Estonians were also bound to the land as serfs but in a feudal system handed down from the period of German rule and harsher than that of the Russians. Educational opportunities and the right to travel were for most speakers of these languages almost nonexistent until the 19 th century and then only in restricted circumstances.
Finno-Ugrians in the forest steppe zone were greatly influenced by Scythian steppe art. This spread toward the forest region of the Upper Volga, influencing the Finno-Ugrian Ananino culture near Kazan (c. 600-200 B. C.E.). A rich burial ground discovered there has yielded, in addition to the bronze spiked axes and daggers commonly found, some objects with animal motifs in which the animals’ bodies are curled up; these have Scythian affinities, though executed here in a somewhat simplified form. The Scythian animal style was only partially adopted at Ananino, and the decoration continued to be based on geometric patterns. But depictions of animals have been common among a number of Finno-Ugric peoples to the present. Among Saami in coastal areas the most prevalent images were of the reindeer, small mammals, or fish; in the deep forest the most popular image was the elk. On the other hand, the geometric style continues among Udmurt women, who are renowned for their weaving and embroidery, with geometrical ornamentation using the traditional Udmurtian colors of red, black, and white.
The Mari have two musical instruments unique to their culture. One is a many-stringed zither called the kusle, the other a shyuvr bagpipe.
Their musical traditions include song lyrics that mention the Volga and reflect a love of nature, especially of the forest and the rainbow.
The Udmurts had no written language but a strong oral tradition that has saved many myths, legends, and fairy tales. Much of Udmurtian folklore, history, and daily life is preserved in song, and the Udmurts are known for their singing ability
The Kalevala Speakers of Finno-Ugric languages in the northeast Baltic region share a distinct poetic tradition with common themes, motifs, and forms, called the Finnish oral tradition or Kalevala-meter poetry, after the most famous work of the tradition, the Kalevala. Many examples of this tradition have been recorded in writing in five of the seven closely related Finno-Ugric languages in the region: Finnish, Karelian, Estonian, Ingrian, and Vote. The similarities of these works suggest that the tradition dates to a time before these languages differentiated from a common ancestor, probably the Finno-Ugrian dialect taken to the region in prehistoric times. There is no clear agreement among students of this poetry as to when and where this happened. The consensus of opinion among them points to an area on the southern side of the Gulf of Finland at least 2,500 years ago. On the other hand, it is possible that the Finno-Ugric ancestor of these languages arrived in the region—or began to filter in—much earlier, by about 3000-2800 B. C.E., so that the Kalevala tradition could be much older. Poetry in this style continued to be composed well into the Common Era, used to promote Christianity and even for political propaganda.
Poetry of the Kalevala tradition has lines in tetrameter consisting of two metrical feet each beginning with a strong or stressed syllable followed by two feet each beginning with an unstressed or weak syllable; a caesura (pause) is placed in the middle of the line between the second and third feet, that is, after the “strong” feet and before the “weak” ones. Alliteration is important in this poetry, abetted by the fact that Finno-Ugric languages have relatively few consonants—Finnish has only 13.
The Kalevala was first compiled in literary form by the Finn Elias Lonnrot. In 1827 he traveled from western Finland as far as eastern Karelia collecting folk songs, which he published the next year in Helsinki under the title Kantele (Harp). Common themes running through many of these songs gave him the idea of uniting them into larger units. His first such compilation consisted of tales about the hero Lemminkainen. In subsequent years as a result of further researches in Karelia, Lonnrot compiled songs into an epic cycle usually referred to as the Old Kalevala. In 1849 he published a greatly expanded version comprising 22,795 lines and 50 songs. When referring to the Finnish epic, commentators mean this New Kalevala; the Old Kalevala is primarily of historical interest.
The Kalevala’s form is entirely Lonnrot’s invention. The main material of the work consists of about 30 different epic songs, tales of adventure and great deeds, each of them in numerous variants. In addition, he used lyric songs, charms (incantations), wedding songs, laments, and proverbs. About one-fifth of the whole epic is made up of charms, such as one used to cure Vainamoinen’s knee wound and another chanted by a female character to drive oxen.
Finno-Ugrian peoples of the northern forest zone had an animistic religion in which all things, especially animals and plants, were imbued with spirit. Animals—especially water-fowl—were deified. The Mordvins of the Volga region preserve this animistic religion; they have rituals of Sun worship, called Shkay The Moon, trees, water, thunder, and frost are still considered integral to religious belief. The pagan religion of the Veps celebrated animals, such as the bear and the pike (fish).
Ancestor Worship Some Finno-Ugric peoples have beliefs that may have originated in ancestor worship. Many Mordvins still believe that dead family members return briefly on the 40th day after death. Some venerated their dead by representing them as polycephalic (multipleheaded) and holding communal banquets in their honor. There was a belief that after death one’s spirit is turned into trees. Women were absorbed into fir, pine, and aspen; men turned into oak, maple, and ash.
Many omens were observed during Votic funerals. If the horse pulling the casket started walking with his left leg, the next person to die would be a woman. Living men never put their left sock or shoe on first, as that sequence was reserved for when dressing the dead for burial. The condition of the body in the coffin was a sign of how soon the next death could be expected. A stiff body meant it would be a while until the next burial unless the sleigh or horse cart toppled over upon returning from the graveyard, in which case another death was predicted to follow soon. A copper coin thrown into the grave would help the dead person gain a better place in the next world. There was also a custom not to remove anything from cemeteries; even the berries growing there belonged either to the dead or to the god’s birds.
At home the places that the dead body had touched were washed with soap and a rag, which was subsequently destroyed. All objects that had touched the corpse were thrown into a fire or into water. Yet there were good omens associated with having a corpse in the house. Anyone who had a cyst on the arm or leg had only to touch the same spot on a dead body, after which he or she could hope to recover.
Many Finno-Ugrians had or have spoken charms for healing. Omens govern much of their behavior, such as in the building of their homes. These are signs of a belief in an unseen spirit world that surrounds and influences all human actions and must be taken into account during all activities.
Shamanism It is believed that before Finno-Ugrians spread to other regions from their northern homeland, they practiced shamanism, depending on a priestlike man or woman of special powers that allowed him or her to communicate with the spirit world. Shamanism has occurred throughout the circumpolar region, including Siberia and North America. The shaman uses special techniques to transcend the limits of time-bound, space-bound mortality and enter the spirit world through a soul flight. Shamans used deprivation of food, sleep, shelter, and companionship, and sometimes intoxicants, drugs or drink, to attain a trance state. The shamans’ visions transport them into the surrounding invisible world of the dead, and they speak their language. Through this they master the natural living world.
The famous Paleolithic painting in the cave at Lascaux, France, showing a recumbent human figure, it has been argued, is a depiction of a shaman in a trance, possible evidence of the great antiquity of such practices and their relation to a tundra existence lived by peoples all over ice-free Europe during the last Ice Age, which continued afterward in the circumpolar region. The shaman, while in a trance, is thought to have died temporarily During the absence of its spirit the shaman’s abandoned body must be protected by members of the tribe so that the soul will have a living form to reenter. Many feats of endurance of cold and pain that have been reported from Siberia and elsewhere in the circumpolar region are thought to be related to such techniques of ecstasy.
The Saami still have shamans among them. The shaman mediates between humans and the spirit world. In times of trouble people turn to this central figure in the society To connect with the other worlds, he enters a trance through what is commonly referred to as joika, a type of singing without words that attempts to capture the essence of nature. The term joika actually applies to only one of several modes of singing; the other modes, lavlu/laavloe/vuelie, have words and narratives. Drums accompany the singing and chanting, as do the bullroarer and the flute. Through the music a soul travels with the help of protective spirits, typically a totemistic animal. Men’s rites focus on the hunt and control of wind and weather; women’s rites center on home and family The Veps had a type of shaman called a noid, who bore a staff made of alder to preside over weddings and other rites.
The geographical location of Finno-Ugrians in the far north both brought into being their unique blend of European and Asian genetic and cultural traits and, for those who remained there, engendered an isolation that protected their culture from usurpation by more dominant peoples with more advanced societies. Even most of those tribes who moved southward to the Volga region and westward to Baltic lands occupied peripheral areas, the forest steppe of central Eurasia and, in the case of the Saami, the boreal forests of northern Scandinavia. Even after Volga Finno-Ugrians were taken over by Russia, they shared in the great insularity and isolation from the outside world of that nation. Unlike other tribal peoples such as the Celts and Germanics, who were utterly transformed by contact with Greco-Roman civilization, Finno-Ugrians preserve to a remarkable degree a tribal, pre-Christian outlook that once was common over the entire European continent.
Further Reading
Pekka Ervast. The Key to the Kalevala (Nevada City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin, 1999).
Casper De Groot. Aspect Bound: Voyage into the Realm of Germanic, Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Aspectology (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris, 1984).
Peter Hajdu. Finno-Ugrian Languages and Peoples (London: Deutsch, 1975).
Lauri Hakulinen. The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language (Bloomington: indiana University, 1961).
Alo Raun. Essays in Finno-Ugric and Finnic Linguistics (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1971).
Denis sinor. Studies in Finno-Ugric Linguistics (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1997).
Arnold S. Spekke and Omeljan Pritsak. Viking Relations with the Southeastern Baltic/Northwestern Russia: The Perspective of the Slavs, Finns, and Balts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, 1982).
Rein Taagepera. The Finno-Ugric Republics and the Russian State (London: Routledge, 1999).
World History
