The Permians [lower-alpha 1] are the peoples who speak the Permic languages, a branch of the Uralic language family, [3] and include Komis, Udmurts, and Besermyans.
The Permians [lower-alpha 1] are the peoples who speak the Permic languages, a branch of the Uralic language family, [3] and include Komis, Udmurts, and Besermyans.
The ancestors of the Permians originally inhabited the land called Permia covering the middle and upper Kama River. Permians split into two groups, probably during the 9th century. [4]
The Komis came under the rule of the Novgorod Republic in the 13th century and were converted to Russian Orthodoxy in the 1360s and 1370s. From 1471 to 1478, their lands were conquered by the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which would later become the Tsardom of Russia. In the 18th century, the Russian authorities opened the southern parts of the land to colonization and the northern parts became a place to which criminal and political prisoners were exiled.
The Udmurts came under the rule of the Tatars, the Golden Horde and the Khanate of Kazan until their land was ceded to Russia, and the people were Christianized at the beginning of the 18th century. [5]
A connection between Permians and Bjarmians, a northern people mentioned in Old Norse sources, has been suggested. [6] Recent research on the Finno-Ugric substrate in northern Russian dialects suggests that in Bjarmaland there once lived speakers of other Finno-Ugric languages beside the Permians. [7]
Finno-Ugric is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such as Tapani Salminen and Ante Aikio. The three most spoken Uralic languages, Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, are all included in Finno-Ugric.
The Uralic languages, sometimes called the Uralian languages, form a language family of 42 languages spoken predominantly in Europe and North Asia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Other languages with speakers above 100,000 are Erzya, Moksha, Mari, Udmurt and Komi spoken in the European parts of the Russian Federation. Still smaller minority languages are Sámi languages of the northern Fennoscandia; other members of the Finnic languages, ranging from Livonian in northern Latvia to Karelian in northwesternmost Russia; and the Samoyedic languages, Mansi and Khanty spoken in Western Siberia.
The Komi are an Indigenous Permian ethnic group whose homeland is in the northeast of European Russia around the basins of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama rivers. They mostly reside in the Komi Republic, Perm Krai, Murmansk Oblast, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the Russian Federation.
Komi-Permyak language, also known as Permyak, is one of two Permic varieties in the Uralic language family that form a pluricentric language, the other being Komi-Zyryan.
Mordvins is an official term used in the Russian Federation to refer both to Erzyas and Mokshas since 1928.
Bjarmaland was a territory mentioned in Norse sagas since the Viking Age and in geographical accounts until the 16th century. The term is usually seen to have referred to the southern shores of the White Sea and the basin of the Northern Dvina River as well as, presumably, some of the surrounding areas. Today, those territories comprise a part of the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Russia, as well as the Kola Peninsula.
Komi, also known as Zyran, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan, is the native language of the Komi (Zyrians). It is one of the Permian languages; the other regional variety is Komi-Permyak.
The Besermyan, Biserman, Besermans or Besermens are a numerically small Permian people in Russia.
Chud or Chude is a term historically applied in the early East Slavic annals to several Baltic Finnic peoples in the area of what is now Estonia, Karelia and Northwestern Russia. It has also been used to refer to other Finno-Ugric peoples.
Udmurt is a Permic language spoken by the Udmurt people who are native to Udmurtia. As a Uralic language, it is distantly related to languages such as Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, Khanty, and Hungarian. The Udmurt language is co-official with Russian within Udmurtia.
The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550,000 speak the most widely spoken language, Udmurt. Like other Uralic languages, the Permic languages are primarily agglutinative and have a rich system of grammatical cases. Unlike many others, they do not have vowel harmony.
Great Perm or simply Perm, in Latin Permia, was a medieval historical region in what is now the Perm Krai of the Russian Federation. Cherdyn is said to have been its capital.
The Russian North is an ethnocultural region situated in the northwestern part of Russia. It spans the regions of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Murmansk Oblast, the Republic of Karelia, Komi Republic and Vologda Oblast. It is known for its traditions of folk art - in particular, wooden architecture, wood and bone carving and painting. Due to its remoteness, the rural parts of Russian North preserve much of the archaic aspects of Russian culture during the 19th and 20th centuries, making it of particular interest to historians, culturologists and ethnographers.
The Volga Finns are a historical group of peoples living in the vicinity of the Volga, who speak Uralic languages. Their modern representatives are the Mari people, the Erzya and the Moksha Mordvins, as well as speakers of the extinct Merya, Muromian and Meshchera languages.
The Komi-Yazva language is a Permic language closely related to Komi-Zyrian and Permyak, and spoken mostly in Krasnovishersky District of Perm Krai in Russia, in the basin of the Yazva (Yodz) River. It has no official status. It is the most divergent of all the Komi varieties. About two thousand speakers densely live in Krasnovishersky District.
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate refers to substratum loanwords from unidentified non-Indo-European and non-Uralic languages that are found in various Finno-Ugric languages, most notably Sami. The presence of Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate in Sami languages was demonstrated by Ante Aikio. Janne Saarikivi points out that similar substrate words are present in Finnic languages as well, but in much smaller numbers.
The Finnic or Fennic peoples, sometimes simply called Finns, are the nations who speak languages traditionally classified in the Finnic language family, and which are thought to have originated in the region of the Volga River. The largest Finnic peoples by population are the Finns, the Estonians, the Mordvins (800,000), the Mari (570,000), the Udmurts (550,000), the Komis (330,000) and the Sami (100,000).
The Bjarmian languages are a group of extinct Finnic languages once spoken in Bjarmia, or the northern part of the Dvina basin. Vocabulary of the languages in Bjarmia can be reconstructed from toponyms in the Arkhangelsk region, and a few words are documented by Norse travelers. Some Saamic toponyms can also be found in the Dvina basin, and Permic peoples also inhabited Bjarmaland.
The Meschera were a Finno-Ugric tribe in the Volga region, who assimilated with the neighbouring tribes around the 16th century.