Bjarmian

The Bjarmians were Finnic speakers of the White Sea shore and Northern Dvina basin, the country the Norse called Bjarmaland, around later Arkhangelsk. The Norwegian merchant Ohthere visited around 890, finding settled farmers whose language resembled Sami. Viking expeditions followed, including Tore Hund's in 1026, which bought squirrel and sable furs, then plundered a sanctuary of the god Jómali.

The trade routes of the Bjarmians ran down the Dvina and Volga to the Bulgar market, where furs and walrus ivory were exchanged for silver. In the thirteenth century the Bjarmians became Novgorod tributaries, and as Slavic settlers fleeing the Mongols moved north, displaced Bjarmians sailed to Norway, where Haakon IV granted them Malangen fjord land in 1240.

Norwegian raids of 1217 and 1222 had already broken their old trading centre, and the name Bjarmaland disappears from Norse sources after the 1220s, though Finnic speech survived in place-names and loanwords of the Russian north.