Finnic

The Finnic group includes the Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Livs, Vepsians, Ingrians and Votes. Their languages are thought to have come from the Volga region, and the peoples spread west into northwestern Russia and the Baltic coast.

The Finnic lands lay between Sweden, Novgorod and the German crusading orders. By the Treaty of Nöteborg in 1323 Sweden and Novgorod divided Karelia. Estonians rose against the German knights and Danes in 1343, and the Livonian War of 1558 broke the order's state. Sweden took Ingria in 1617, and Russia took Estonia, Livonia and Ingria in the Great Northern War and Finland in 1809.