Ingrian

The Ingrians are the Baltic Finnic people of Ingria, around the Neva, the southeastern Gulf of Finland and southwestern Lake Ladoga. In the fourteenth century these were chiefly the Izhorians, who had moved from Karelia around 1000 and spoke the Finnic tongue called Ingrian.

Novgorod absorbed western Ingria in the twelfth century, and its Finnic population adopted Eastern Orthodoxy while Novgorod and Sweden fought repeated wars across its rivers and fortresses, including Koporye; after Moscow annexed Novgorod in 1478, some Izhorians were deported inland. The 1617 Treaty of Stolbovo gave Ingria to Sweden, and as Orthodox families fled east, Lutheran settlers from Karelia and Savonia took their place, a Finnish-speaking majority by the 1670s, the Ingrian Finns.

Russia reconquered Ingria in 1703 and founded Saint Petersburg, and the 1721 Treaty of Nystad confirmed its rule, under which the Ingrian Finns became serfs but kept their Lutheran church.