Early stages of the settlement of Karelia
The origin of the Finno-Ugric peoples and languages and the time of their settlement here have been research challenges for several different disciplines since at least the 19th century. Archaeologists, linguists, historians and more recently also palaeoanthropologists have put forward several different theories regarding the settlement of Karelia and Finland and the history of the Finnish language.
The initial settlement of Fennoscandia began towards the end of the last ice age, when most of the region was still covered by the continental ice sheet. Influenced by the Gulf Stream, an ice-free strip had formed along Norway's Atlantic coast, extending all the way to the Arctic Ocean, and via this route, Northwest European reindeer hunters migrated as far as Finnmark. There, these people developed the Komsa culture, which, however, did not spread to the territory of Finland or Karelia.
The first humans to Karelia from the south
One of the floats from the Antrea net.
The Baltic Basin and Lake Ladoga formed a unified Baltic Ice Lake, out of which the highest points of the terrain, including the Karelian Isthmus, a sandy ridge piled up by the ice age, rose above the water level. The first people engaging in fishing, seal hunting and hunting moved to the surroundings of Lake Ladoga and the territory of Finland across the sea from the south, via the Isthmus from the southeast, and from the area between Lake Ladoga and the White Sea from the east about 10,000 years ago. Researchers particularly emphasise the significance of the Isthmus as the earliest settlement route to the Finnish territory.
From this era originates the Antrea net, which was found in a bog on the Karelian Isthmus in 1913 and is one of the oldest signs of human settlement directed towards Finland. Based on radiocarbon dating, the bast of the grey willow used as the twine of the net grew between 8,560 and 8,240 BC. From the same era, signs of settlement have been studied south of the Salpausselkä ridge in Lahti's Ristola, Joutseno's Kuurmanpohja and Orimattila's Myllykoski.
In the periodisation used by archaeology, the earliest settlement of Karelia and Finland dates back to the Mesolithic, or aceramic, Stone Age. Habitation sites and artefacts have been found along the labyrinthine water route between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. On the Ladoga side, the central Stone Age habitation areas included Kaukola and Räisälä, right next to Käkisalmi. Finds have also been made in Jaakkima and Sortavala, as well as in Salmi on the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga.
The spread of pottery-making skills around 7,100 years ago initiated the Neolithic period, which lasted for about 3,300 years. The oldest decoration method for clay vessels, namely the Comb Ceramic style, spread to Karelia from the direction of Lake Onega. According to the Estonian archaeologist Valter Lang, ancient DNA studies show that Comb Ceramic pottery was brought to Karelia by people who came from the east and mixed with the people already settled in Karelia. They did not yet speak any ancestral form of the Sami or Finnish languages.
The Finnish language from the West Uralic
The ancestral home of the Western Uralic languages, from which Finnish has also developed, is located in the region of the Volga, Oka and Kama rivers. According to Valter Lang, the first speakers of Western Uralic languages began to move towards Fennoscandia in the late Stone Age, around 1250–1750 BC. They travelled along river routes to the north-west: as far as the Lake Ladoga region, Karelia and Inner Finland. Later, these groups who made textile pottery evolved into the Sami.
Around 1750–100 BCE, during the Early Metal Period following the Stone Age, another group set out from the same region, but slightly further south, advancing along ancient routes towards the Baltics and apparently along the Daugava towards the Baltic Sea. From the area of present-day Latvia, these people spread to the shores of the Gulf of Finland in northern Estonia, and along the way, Baltic and Germanic loanwords were adopted into the language they spoke. Researchers use the term Late Proto-Finnic for the language that developed in northern Estonia.
Late Proto-Finnic and therefore the Proto-Finnic population spread slowly across the Gulf of Finland into southwestern Finland and from there further east to the Karelian Isthmus and the northwestern shore of Lake Ladoga. From the northwestern shore, the Old Karelian language advanced further to the southeast of Lake Ladoga, where it developed into Old Veps.
The amount of archaeological material interpreted as Western began to increase on the Karelian Isthmus from the 6th to 7th centuries AD onwards, and by the 12th to 14th centuries a distinct culture had formed in the region, the livelihood of which was based on arable farming, animal husbandry and hunting. This era is known as the golden age of Karelian culture, from which many magnificent items of jewellery belonging to women's costumes, among other things, originate.
Sources:
Valter Lang (2020): Homo Fennicus
Timo Miettinen (2025): The development of European prehistoric cultural and demographic flows and their arrival in Finland via the Karelian Isthmus: the fate of cultures under the pressure of global crises
Photos: Finnish Heritage Agency and Sakari Pälsi
