Finnic Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Finnic (Fennic, sometimes Baltic Finnic) may refer to Finnish-similar languages spoken close to the Gulf of Finland, i.e. the Balto-Finnic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages.Finnic may also refer to the settled peoples speaking these languages, and their farmer-hunter culture, traditionally living in Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, Finland, Northernmost Norway and Northern Sweden. Finnic used in this way establish the contrast to the akin but historically nomadic Samis, and also to the Slavonics, the Balts, and the Germanic Scandinavians.
According to the Estonian Fenno-Ugria Foundation, the Finnic peoples include (from South to North):
- Livonians (in the Riga-region and along River Daugava)
- Estonians (South of Gulf of Finland)
- Votians (River Narva – River Inger)
- Ingrians (Gulf of Finland – River Narva – River Neva – Lake Ladoga)
- Vepsians (South-west of Lake Onega)
- Karelians (Gulf of Finland – Lake Ladoga – Lake Onega)
- Finns (North of Gulf of Finland)
History
The farming Finnic peoples are believed to have inhabited parts of Balticum before the first millennium. Maybe due to the Germanic and Slavonic Völkerwanderung, maybe due to other reasons, they seem to have migrated into the inland of present-day Finland and Karelia in the first millennium. In the first centuries of the second millennium, they reached the Gulf of Bothnia where their descendents today speak Meänkieli. After the Great Plague, a larger immigrant wave swept northern Scandinavia in the 16th–18th centuries, spanning to Lake Vänern in the south and to the Arctic Sea in the north. While their descendants in the rest of Scandinavia have assimilated, they remain as a distinct minority in northern Norway, where they recognize themselves as Kvens or Kvener.
This is an Article on Finnic. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Finnic