News

Fenno-Ugria Project Manager Janno Zõbin spoke to Tõnu Seilenthal after the Finnish-Russian Society seminar in Kuhmo on 14 June, about what was said at the …

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.

In May, the Estonian Language Board suggested eight proposals regarding the legal status of the South Estonian languages, Võro and Seto.

The XIII Estonian Youth Song Festival “Holy is the Land” took place in the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds from 30 June to 2 July. The …

Udmurt musicians Maria Korepanova, Pavel Kutergin and Mari Anna Makeev performed at the Ukrainian Freedom School in Tallinn on 8 June. Fenno-Ugria's project manager Anna Kuznetsova talked about the Finno-Ugric peoples.

The seminar "How to conceptualise Russia" was organised by Fenno-Ugria in Maarjamäe Castle in Tallinn on 31 May. The seminar was supported by the Open Estonia Foundation/Active Citizens Fund and it took place within the framework of the project "Democracy School for Finno-Ugric communities in Estonia".

After many years of work, the Norwegian Truth and Reconciliation Commission handed in its report to the country’s parliament on 1 June. The commission investigated the Norwegianisation policy and its effects on the Saami, Kvens and Forest Finns.

The crisis and traumas related to Russia's aggression in Ukraine affect not only representatives of Finno-Ugric minorities living in Estonia with Russian citizenship, but also Estonians: there is mutual learning. Estonians and Finns, as small nations and Finno-Ugric people, have been forced to adapt to very rapid social changes due to the changed geopolitical situation and the war, and that is not always easy. This was discussed at the OEF/Active Citizens Fund project seminar held on 13 May in Tapa.

The Saami community in Russia was divided in half after the war in Ukraine began. Some of the Saami have taken part in protests in support of the Russian attack, Justas Stasevskiy reports on YLE.

The Sami Language Support Centre has been opened at the Institute of Linguistics of the Murmansk Arctic State University. The university is the only institution in Russia that teaches the Sami language in the master's degree.

On March 28, Jaak Prozes and Andres Heinapuu will give a lecture on the Finno-Ugric national movements from the end of the 1980s to the early 2000s and the Finno-Ugric World Congresses in the 1990s and 2000s at the Academy of the Finno-Ugric youth organisation MAFUN.

The festival reaches its apex on the third Saturday of October – this year on October 15th – the day that the national flags of Estonia fly in honour of our fellow kindred peoples living all around the world.