Prehistory Archeological and linguistic studies suggest that Vepsians lived in the valleys of the
Sheksna, the
Suda, and the
Syas rivers, developing, according to
Kalevi Wiik, from the proto-Vepsian
Kargopol culture to the east of
Lake Onega. They probably also lived in
East Karelia and on the northern coast of Lake Onega. It is possible that the earliest mention of the Veps dates to the sixth century CE, when the
Gothic historian
Jordanes mentioned a people called
Vasina broncas, which may have indicated the Vepsians. One of the eastern routes on which the
Vikings went through their area, and the
bjarm people mentioned by the Vikings as inhabiting the coast of the
White Sea may have referred to the Veps. Evidence from tombs proves that they had contact with
Staraya Ladoga,
Finland and
Meryans, other
Volga Finnic tribes and later with the
Principality of Novgorod and other Russian states. Later Vepsians also inhabited the western and eastern shores of Onega.
Later history s. An approximative map of the non-
Varangian cultures in Eastern
Europe, in the 9th century. In medieval Russian chronicles, they are known as
ves (); in some Arabic sources, they are called
Wisu. It is assumed that
Bjarmians were at least partly Vepsians. From the 12th century, their history is connected with first
Novgorod and then
Muscovy. Russian settlement reached the Onega Veps in the 14th or 15th century. Eastern Vepsians in the
Kargopol area merged linguistically with the Russians before the 20th century. The existence of the Vepsian people was not widely known until the mid-19th century. Despite its close relationship to the
Karelian and the
Finnish languages, the Vepsian language was thus one of the last
Uralic languages to be recognized as one. Vepsians numbered 25,607 in 1897. Some 7,300 of them inhabited
East Karelia. In the beginning of the 20th century there were some signs of national awakening among Vepsians. Early Soviet nationality politics supported this progress, and 24 administrative units with the status of national village soviets were formed. The alphabet and the written language were developed. Teachers started to instruct in Vepsian in some elementary schools. The Soviet authorities started to oppress the Vepsian culture in 1937. All national activities were stopped and the national districts were abolished. When Finland invaded East Karelia in the
Continuation War, some Vepsians joined the so-called Kindred Battalion of the Finnish Army. These troops were relinquished to the Soviet Union after the war. In the post-war period, many Veps moved from their historic villages to larger cities. In 1983, on the initiative of national academics, an inquiry was carried out which showed that there were nearly 13,000 Veps in the Soviet Union, 5,600 of whom lived in Karelia, 4,000 in the Leningrad region and just under a 1,000 in the Vologda region. The new Vepsian
primer Abekirj and other elementary school books were published in
Petrozavodsk in 1991.
Kodima, a newspaper in Vepsian, has been published since 1993. The
Vepsian rural community was formed in East Karelia in 1994, encompassing 8,200 square kilometers of land and 3,373 inhabitants, 42% of them Vepsian. The authorities of the
Republic of Karelia granted some budgetary autonomy to the Vepsian community in 1996. The language was taught as a subject in two schools, in
Shyoltozero and . However, the cultural revival slowed in the second half of the 1990s and the federal authorities abolished the autonomy in 2006. Nowadays the younger generation in general does not speak the language. ==Geography==