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Finnic (Fennic) may refer to Finnish-similar languages spoken close to the Gulf of Finland, i.e. the Balto-Finnic subgroup of the Finno-Ugric languages.

Finnic may also refer to the peoples speaking these languages, and their farmer-hunter culture, traditionally living in Karelia, Ingria, Estonia, Finland, Northernmost Norway and Northern Sweden. Finnic used in this way establish the contrast to the nomadic Samis, but also to the Slavonics, the Balts and the Scandinavians (or the Germanic peoples).

The Finnic peoples include

• Finns
  • Kvener
  • Tavastians
  • Savo tribe
  • Ingrian Finns
• Estonians
• Karelians
• Vepsians
• Izhorians (Ingrians)
• Votes (Votians)
• Livonians

It is debated whether or not the Chudes (mentioned by Jordanes 550 A.D.) were an unidentified Finnic tribe or whether a Finnic group might be considered to be the original Chudes. It has also been considered whether or not (Russian) chud is borrowed from Sami or vice versa.

History

The farming Finnic peoples are believed to have inhabited parts of Balticum before the first millenium. Maybe due to the Germanic and Slavonic Völkerwanderung, maybe due to other reasons, they seem to have migrated into the inland of present-day Finland and Karelia in the first millenium. In the first centuries of the second millenium, they reached the Gulf of Bothnia where their descendents today speak Meänkieli. After the Great Plague, a larger immigrant wave sweeped northern Scandinavia in the 16th–18th centuries, spanning to Lake Vänern in the south and to the Arctic Sea in the north. While their descendants in the rest of Scandinavia have assimilated, they remain as a distinct minority in northern Norway, where they recognize themself as Kvens or Kvener.