News

The director and actor Jaan Tooming, who considered Finno-Ugric ways of thinking important to Estonians, has passed away. Inspired by the work of Uku Masing, he reflected these thoughts in his theatre productions.

The Russian children's animation series Be-be-bears ('Mi-mi-mishki' in Russian) will have several episodes translated into Nenets.

At the end of last year, sad news came out of Udmurtia of the passing of the eminent Udmurt linguist and Finnougrist Valei Kelmakov (14 January 1942–28 December 2023).

The Statistical Office of Bashkortostan used the last census, in 2021, to find out which ethnic groups in the republic have the highest number of children.

The Udmurt Language Day was initiated by the Udmurt representative organisation Udmurt Kenesh and first celebrated on 27 November 2018.

The 2023 Uralic Ethnic Studies Award was awarded to Eva Toulouze and Nikolai Anisimov for their research into 21st century Udmurt culture.

On 10 September 2019, Albert Razin - a Udmurt sociologist and philosopher - set himself on fire in front of the Udmurt State Council building.

This year, there has been progress in developing modern software for the Uralic languages. Programmes related to Udmurt and Mari are being developed, in addition to a Uralic-language machine translation engine at the University of Tartu.

Mordvins living in Estonia celebrated the Erzya Language Day on April 14. The event was organised by the Estonian Mordvin Culture Society and the Erzya Cultural Association Syatko at the Tallinn Folk High School.

The Kindred Peoples’ Programme’s Ethnic Science Award goes to linguist and anthropologist Roza Laptander for her research on the silence of the Nenets.

For the first time, only Sámi artists will be presented in a national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and for the first time, the Sámi will be recognised as a nation in a pavilion that bears their name.

This marks the first time that the Finno-Ugric Capital of Culture will be located in Finland. Kuhmo expects the title to boost cultural tourism in the region and to support the preservation and revitalization of languages and cultural heritage across the wider Finno-Ugric world.