Pomorcy wczoraj i dziś. Słowiański etnos na wybrzeżach Północy
The Pomoryans Yesterday and Today. A Slavonic Ethnos at the Northern Shores

Summary/Abstract: The Pomoryans inhabiting the White Sea coasts constitute a very interesting group. Their origin goes back to late Middle Ages when the Slavonic settlers from Great Novgorod and Rostov-Suzdal Rus began to arrive at the shores of the White Sea. There they superimposed themselves on the population speaking Uralic languages, adopting many language and culture elements of other peoples, first of all the so-called Tchud’ Zavolotska. The natural condition forced them to base their economy on fishing, hunting (mostly sea animals) and cattle breeding. They developed ship building and navigation, making long sea journeys already in XVI c, travelling to such places as West Siberia, Novaya Zemla and Spitsbergen. They belonged mostly to Old Faith and very religious, thoug with numerous residual elements of pagan cults.Most of them lost their group self-identity aftre the creation of the USSR. At the beginning of the XXI c the local elite came up with the idea of reconstructing the group identity and turning it into a national one, based on the Pomoryan ethnolect. This brought sharp resistence from the Moscow government, and the question whether the Pomoryans are a nation or not became the political one. The las two censuses showed a clear drop in declaring belonging to the Pomoryan identity

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