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...Archaeological remains suggest that this second wave of settlers came from or had contact with what was to become Russia and also Scandinavia and central Europe. Peoples of Uralic (specifically Finno-Ugric) stock dominated two settlement areas. Those who entered southwestern Finland across the Gulf of Finland were the ancestors of the Hämäläiset (Tavastians, or...
...these groups, however, the Sakha (Yakut), raised cattle and horses. The various groups belonged to different linguistic stocks: Turkic (Sakha, Siberian Tatars), Manchu-Tungus (Evenk [Evenki], Even), Finno-Ugric (Khanty, Mansi), and Mongolic (Buryat), among others.
In prehistoric times Finno-Ugric tribes inhabited a long belt stretching across northern Europe from the Urals through northern Scandinavia, reaching south to present-day Latvia. The predecessors of the modern Balts bordered them along a belt to the south, stretching west from a region in what is now central Russia to the area of the mouth of the Vistula River in Poland. Large areas of...
The Russian advance from west to east across Siberia, motivated by commercial rather than political considerations, remains unparalleled in history for its rapidity. The native Finno-Ugrians—Samoyed or Tungus hunters accustomed to paying their fur tribute—were little concerned with the nationality of the tax collectors and found it no more unpleasant to deal with the Russians than...
ancient European religions
The area inhabited by the Finno-Ugric peoples is extensive: from Norway to the region of the Ob River in Siberia and southward into the Carpathian Basin in central Europe and Ukraine. The history of their geographic dispersion is based almost entirely on linguistic criteria, since historical knowledge is recent and archaeological finds are scanty and interpreted variously.
Traces of shamanism may be found among peoples who have been converted to other religions, as in the Finno-Ugric peoples who became Christians, Turkic peoples in Central Asia and Asia Minor who became Muslim, and Mongols who became Buddhists. Among the Finns, the tietäjä, a figure equivalent...