Before the Slavic population reached Lake Ilmen and the Volkhov and the Vikings undertook their first eastern journeys, between Lake Ladoga and Beloozero (Beloye Ozero, Lake Beloye) — the immemorial abode of the Veps - there already existed a Baltic-Finnish population who buried their dead in holes dug in the ground or in 'houses of the dead', low timber blockings built on the ground.

Academician A. J. Sjogren, the first (in 1824) to conduct an expedi¬tion to the Veps, equated the Veps with the ancient Ves, mentioned in the work of the Gothic monk Jordanes (approximately 550 A.D.). In addition, he mentions the Chud, the Meria and the Mordva. This sequence attests that the waterway from Northern Europe along the Volga to the lands of the Arabs was already known in Europe. In the Viking Age, a people called Wizzi or Wiz was well-known already: they are mentioned in the famous chronicle of Adam of Bremen (approxi¬mately 1075 A.D.). The writings of Arab geographers and authors recounted the contacts between the ancient Veps and Bolgaria on the Volga, a trading centre of the Viking Age, Bolgary, a city standing on the boundary between Muslims and northern peoples.

According to the Chronicle of Nestor, the Ves were the first inhabi¬tants of Beloozero. Furthermore, the Chronicle tells how the Ves, along with other northern tribes, took part in inviting (in 862) the Varangians (the Vikings) to rule over the land. The brother of Prince Rurik, Sineus, established himself as the ruler of Beloozero. The ancient Veps, accor¬ding to the record of chronicles, had a powerful influence in building ancient Russia.

In the middle of the 8th century, Staraya Ladoga (Old Ladoga), the Aldeigjuborg of the sagas, rose on the Volkhov as a base of long interna¬tional trade routes and a centre of craft and regional commerce. The Vikings and the Rus transported weapons, slaves and furs along the Volkhov to the south. From the lands of the Arab Caliphate, silver came to ancient Russia, Finland and Scandinavia, produced up to 30 metric tons yearly in mines in the vicinity of Tashkent.

The rapidly developed eastern trade involved the local populace who provided furs for the trading centres and middlemen. Excavations show that, as early as in the 780's, glass beads were manufactured in Staraya Ladoga to be exchanged for valuable furs. Glass and stone beads consti¬tute the largest group of findings over the whole of the extensive nort¬hern area. The eastern trade with its trends and requirements altered the cultural expression of the northern peoples. The original population adopted a foreign form of grave, the barrow (kurgan), and new artifacts appeared among the burial articles: skilfully wrought weapons and jewellery.

The earliest barrows appeared on the southeastern shores of Lake Ladoga in the 860's, soon on the lower Pasa and the Oyat as well. These barrows exhibit vestiges of the old 'houses of the dead': an eastern side assigned to men, a western to women, a fireplace with extensive uten-.sils, a pot, a frying pan and a coal trowel. The number of artifacts is indicative of a lucrative fur trade. A large number of swords, spear tips and battle axes have been discovered in graves from the 1 Oth to the 11th century, which shows that an active group, successful in hunting and trade, had distinguished themselves among the local populace. All this encouraged a local production of metalware and jewellery as well and the development of crafts. Purely Scandinavian graves have been found in this area — the most on the Pasa — which indicates a permanent Scandinavian population among the ancient Veps as buyers and intermediaries in furs.

In Beloozero, the abode of the Ves in the Chronicle, there is only one group of barrows, those from the Kama. The limit of barrows in the east corresponds to the divide of the Baltic Sea and the Volga: south of Lake Beloye along the Chagoda the barrows are those of the ancient Rus whereas the barrows of the Suda were built by the local Finno-Ugric population who had adopted that form of the grave from their neighbours. The influence could also have come from the ancient Veps of the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga, whose culture contained many parallel features.

A local culture of the ancient Veps prospered on the Suda from the 6th to the 13th century with close contacts from the beginning with the Finno-Ugric cultures of the Volga (the Meria, the Mordva and the /Muroma). Up to the 10th century, this people used 'houses of the dead' for burial. It was only at the turn of the millennium that these cultures were subjected to Baltic-Finnish influence. The sole habitation so far examined by archaeologists indicates the manufacture and processing of iron, production of metal jewellery and bone articles, involvement in international trade (Western European coins, jewellery of western and eastern origin and Bolgarian ceramics). Most of the bones found are those of the beaver, which attests to the significance of the fur trade for the local economy.

The oldest known prehistoric relics of Lake Beloye and the Sheksna originate at the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 1 Oth ;century. The excavated habitations and cemeteries, consisting of hole graves, in the area were built by a Baltic-Finnish people, the Ves, or the ancient Veps. Later habitations from the period from the 1 lth to the 13th century, three times as numerous, show an influx of settlers.

Signs of the Slavic culture can be discerned from the 10th century onward, but the actual influence begins only in the 1 lth century and even then in combination with Finno-Ugric elements in jewellery as well as in ceramics. The habitations and cemeteries of the era were possessed by small communities of 15 to 40 people. Agriculture had arrived in the area at the turn of the millennium with settlers from Novgorod.

In the 10th century, two major settlements grew on the Sheksna, Beloozero in the upper reaches and Krutik, 30 kilometres to the south. Both were centres of crafts and trade, as well as locations for controlling and serving trade routes. At the oldest cultural stratum of Beloozero, foundations of log buildings and the remains of wood-covered streets and the diagonal pilework lining them have been discovered. These piles represent the earliest occurrences of the traditional Finno-Ugric type of fence. The findings include traces of processing iron, precious metals, bone and timber and of pottery making. There are numerous imported artifacts: glass beads, many of Scandinavian origin, western silver coins, Scandinavian and Baltic-Finnish types of buckles, locks, steels with ornate bronze handles from the Kama, Frisian combs, By¬zantine glass bracelets, Bolgarian ceramics and amphorae from the Black Sea, amber from the Baltic Sea and walnuts.

In the first quarter of the 11 th century the ancient Veps city burned down. A new city, built on its ruins from the 12th to the 13th century, was inhabited by the ancient Rus, and its inhabitants were called belo-sertsy, inhabitants of Lake Beloye. At the end of the 14th century the city's populace moved to a new location on Lake Beloye where the present Belozersk rose.

Krutik had been an ancient Veps centre of crafts and trade which expired as early as in the first third of the 10th century when the Slavs had not yet arrived in the area. There were no findings related to agri¬culture, yet many furnaces and crucibles for manufacturing and proces¬sing metals, the tools and products of smiths and jewellers, horn and bone artifacts and semifinished goods have been discovered at the habitation. Findings related to trade include glass and stone beads, Scandinavian, Baltic-Finnish and eastern jewellery, Bolgarian ceramics, Arabian coins, pans and weights. The great significance of hunting is indicated by javelin and arrow tips, birdcalls and amulets: beaver figures made of horn, pierced teeth of bear and marten. Of the bone artifacts, two thirds are from wild animals, mostly beaver bones. Arabian sources describe beaver pelts being imported to Bolgaria from the 'land of Visu'.

In the Viking Age, the habitation of the ancient Veps extended from the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga to Lake Beloye and the headwa¬ters of the Volga, where the Meria, one of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Volga, were their neighbours. Although the divide of the Baltic Sea and the Volga lay between Lake Ladoga and Lake Beloye, connections were possible by dragging boats overland for short distances. From the Oyat one could travel to the Suda, from the Pasa to the Kolp and from the Syas to the Chagoda and the Mologa, from there via the Sheksna to the Volga. Also hoards of coins from the 9th to the 11 th century found along these water routes attest to their use. As early as in the 11 th century, the ancient Veps population of Lake Beloye was overrun by settlers from Russia. The ancient Russian state was anxious to seize strategic and advantageous routes of communicati¬on. There were good connections from Lake Beloye to Lake Onega, to the Northern Dvina and, via the Sheksna, to the south. Thus, from here one could travel mostly unhindered to Savolotsye (to the hinterland), the White Sea or the Urals. There had been resistance to the impending change in the 11 th century but a rebellion in the land of Suzdal, of which Lake Beloye region was a part, was subdued by Prince Yaroslav in 1024. Some of the Ves moved from here to the highlands of the Veps at the headwaters of the Oyat, the Pasa and the Suda, where they were assimilated by their kindred tribes already living there, later to become the people of the Veps. On the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga and on the Suda, ancient Veps habitation and culture evolved rather peace¬fully until the 13th century.

Related to the Veps and the entire region of the present Northern Russia inhabited by peoples of Finno-Ugric origin is the issue of Biar-maland and the Biarm, a wealthy merchant people, who had had contacts especially with the Norwegians since the Viking Age. The best known and earliest source which mentions the legendary Biarmaland is an updated translation of the history of the world by Orosius, commis¬sioned by King Alfred the Great at the end of the 9th century. There Ottar the Norse recounts his voyage (probably from 870 to 899) from Northern Norway along the shore of the Arctic Ocean to the east. The voyage took 15 days but where Ottar travelled remains unclear and subject to extensive scholarly debate. Some scholars believe that he arrived at the mouth of the Varzuga in Kandalaksha, others assert that the Biarm lived to the south of the Kola Peninsula and the White Sea, meaning that Ottar arrived at the Northern Dvina. The saga of Saint Olav depicts another expedition around 1026 during which Karle, Gunstein and Tore Hund of Norway reached Bjarmaland and cast ashore along the Vinu where they could purchase quantities of squirrel skins, beaver skins and sable fur. During the night after the market the men plundered the cemetery and the gifts to the god of the Biarm, Jomale.

Biarmaland voyages by the Norse ended in the beginning of the 13th century. Around the same time, tales were told of the Biarm fleeing to Norway before the Mongols of Genghis Khan. Medieval Scandinavian sources have told of two Biarmalands, 'the nigh' and 'the yonder', of a closer one, probably situated on the coast of the Kola Peninsula, and of a farther one beyond the White Sea. Therefore, the Biarmaland of the sagas was on the White Sea, between Lake Onega and the Varzuga, on the lower Northern Dvina. From Biarmaland one could travel to Lake Ladoga and to the Volkhov, to Aldeigjuborg.

Information of the location of Biarmaland is open to interpretation, and no signs of such habitations or trading posts as told in the sagas have been found on the shores of the White Sea. It is then probable that the concept of Biarmaland has evolved with time and meant a land known for trade in valuable furs beyond the currently inhabited areas, growing smaller and smaller as the expanse of the taiga was being inhabited. Scholars have pondered who the Biarm were. The sole point of agreement is that they were Finno-Ugrians. The tale of Ottar reveals that the Lapp and the Biarm spoke approximately the same language. It is commonly assumed that biarm is a Scandinavian adaptation of the word perm. There were good connections from the Northern Dvina to the Kama, the Perm region, where a prosperous culture rose during the Iron Age, with its influence extending as far as Finland and Norther Fennoscandia. According to Kustaa Vilkuna, the word biarm, or perm, signified an occupation, not ethnicity, and therefore the Perm were Karelian hunter traders. According to Heikki Kirkinen, the name Biarm applied to northern groups of Komi, Veps and Karelian fur suppliers and tradesmen.

In the mysterious land of'the Chud of the hinterland', situated in the Middle Ages to the north of the Sukhona, bordering on the middle and lower Northern Dvina in the east and on the Vaga in the west, and having the best resources for agriculture in the entire northern region, hole graves have been discovered from the 1 lth to the 13th century with both Baltic-Finnish and Eastern Finnish artifact types among the findings. The timber blockings of the graves — a basic element of the graves of the traditional Finno-Ugric population of the northern region - attest to an indisputable link with the Baltic-Finnish peoples.

New evidence on the activities of the ancient Veps and the influence of their culture have been discovered in the excavations of barrows during the last few years on the peninsula beyond Lake Onega and on its northern shore. Clear links with the barrow culture of the southeas¬tern shore of Lake Ladoga were found and they show that habitation spread from the south to the north.

Two interesting cemeteries have also been discovered on the sout¬hern coast of the Kola Peninsula, on the left bank of the Varzuga, in the village of Kusemen. The earlier of the cemeteries dates from the 1 lth to the 13th century and the later from the second third of the 12th centu¬ry to the first quarter of the 13th century. The jewellery among the findings are those typical of the southeastern shore of Lake Ladoga and of Lake Beloye, with indications towards the Volga. The Baltic-Finnish, the Finno-Ugric of the Volga and the Permic traditions are combined in the artifacts. Anthropologically, the dead resemble the Lapp. Are they Lapps who adopted a Finno-Ugric culture — or do they represent yet another population group involved in northern fur trade?

In the 12th century, most of the region had already been annexed to the administrative system of the ancient Russian state. A document from 1137 lists the pogosty, or tax collection districts, of Novgorod in the area beyond Lake Onega, on the Onega and the Northern Dvina. The large area originally inhabited by the Finno-Ugrians had been cut into pieces of which the ancient Veps held those regions where they are known today. Archaeological findings have long been the sole source for the early history and culture of the Veps. After Christian burial was adopted in the 13th century, archaeological findings cease and the Veps "disap¬pear". Neither medieval tax records nor written sources of the Modern Age tell us anything significant about the Veps. The Veps fell into centuries of oblivion, which was ended by A. J. Sjogren in 1824 when he "discovered" the groups of people who called themselves vepsldized, lydikeled'and tshuharid* These peoples were identified by Sjogren as the descendants of the ancient tribe of the Ves.

Alexandr Saksa
VEPSÄ/ Vepsänmaa
MIKKO SAVOLAINEN, Atena, 1998.