Nenets

Nenets is the northernmost language of the Uralic family, belonging to its Samoyedic branch and split into Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets. Its speakers moved from southern Siberia to the Arctic coast before the twelfth century and came to occupy the tundra from the Kanin Peninsula to the Yenisei River, living by hunting and reindeer herding.

Russian fur traders reached them in the sixteenth century, and in 1601 Mangazeya was founded on the Taz River as a base for collecting tribute. After the sea route was closed in 1619 the town declined and was abandoned in the 1670s, partly after Nenets attacks on its tax collectors.

Large-scale reindeer herding, the economy that came to define tundra life, spread among the Nenets during the eighteenth century, while the language absorbed loans from Komi, Khanty and Russian.