Russia is |
Peoples of Russia
Ingrians
Ingrian Finns (Ingrians, Ingermanlanders) are according to one version a subethnic group of Finns formed in the 17th century on the territory of the historical region of Ingria, and according to another version, an independent ethnos formed on the territory of Ingria.
Language
The language of the Ingrians is one of the eastern dialects of the Finnish language.
Dispersion
They live in Saint Petersburg, in the Leningrad and Pskov regions, in Karelia and Western Siberia.
Traditional occupations
Agriculture, cattle raising, plant growing, making and selling dairy products, fishing.
Clothes
In summer, men wore linen trousers, and in winter, woolen ones. The shirts were made from cloth and had a straight cut on the breast which was buttoned or tied. Over shirts they wore long-waisted poddyovka undercoats and sheepskin coats or long woolen caftans. They wore wide-brimmed felt hats as well as peaked and flat caps. The footwear was made from leather and was homemade, store-bought boots were festive footwear and were considered to be a sign of richness. The female costume of Äyrämöiset Ingrians contained many archaic traits introduced from the parishes of the northern part of the Karelian Isthmus (Muolaa, Pyhäjärvi, Sakkola, Rautu). Women’s shirts had a special trapezoid rekko plastron embroidered with colored wool thread on a red background. The collar was cut to the left of it and fastened with a round fibula, the shoulders were also often decorated with embroidery. Over the shirt, a red or blue sarafan sleeveless dress was worn, and on top of it, an apron with red ornament. Savakot women usually wore not sarafans but red, white, blue or green checkered or striped skirts. Their shirts were white, with a straight opening and elbow-length sleeves, with a sleeveless corsage or a jacket worn over them. The most colorful of these were the clothes of women of the North Ingria parishes: Keltto, Rääpyvä and Toksova, the prevailing color there was red. In the Markkova and Järvisaari parishes the main colors were yellow and green. With the spreading of store-bought fabrics in the end of the 19th century the clothes of the Äyrämöiset became more like the clothes of the Savakot. Switching to such clothes became a kind of a sign of being well-off.
Food
The traditional Ingrian cuisine preserved the traits of the Baltic-Finnish cuisine but at the same time was significantly influenced by the Russian peasant cooking and also Saint Petersburg city cooking. In the 19th century Ingrian villages, in the early morning people usually drank surrogate coffee from ground chicory roots or roasted rye grain with milk. Then, about 9 a.m., they breakfasted with boiled potatoes with linen or sunflower seed oil. Between breakfast and dinner they drank tea. Around 2 p.m., dinner was served, which included soup, porridge and tea. About 4 p.m., many Ingrians once again drank tea, and on Sundays store-bought grain coffee was drunk almost everywhere. After 7 p.m., they had supper, which usually consisted of warmed-up dinner dishes. Since the middle of the 19th century, the main foods of the Ingrians were potatoes and cabbage, they were considered to be even more important than the bread. Each house had a samovar, and often it was used to make coffee, not tea. On Mondays, bread for the whole week was usually made from sour rye dough in the shape of tall loaves. They often made scones from rye or barley flour, eating them with egg butter. The most popular soup was sauerkraut shchi, more rarely pea soup, potato soup with meat, ukha fish soup or a soup with dried mushrooms were made. Porridge was most often made from barley, and also from millet, buckwheat and semolina. The oven was used to stew the sauerkraut and to bake turnips, rutabaga and potatoes. They also ate sauerkraut, salted mushrooms, salted and cured fish. The Ingrian cuisine was especially rich in dairy products: milk, curdled milk, sour cream, curd, even though the majority of those was sold on the market. The oatmeal starch drink was widespread; it was eaten warm and cold, with milk, with cream, with oil, with berries and jam and with fried pork rinds. They mostly drank tea and also grain coffee, in summers kvass. On holidays they baked wheat bread and various pies – open, closed, with fillings of rice and eggs, cabbage, berries, jam, fish and meat and rice. They cooked broth jelly and made meat-and-potatoes hotpots. Besides usual dishes, the Ingrians made “solid milk” (sour milk baked in an oven); it was often eaten with milk and sugar or used as a filling for cheesecakes. They made cranberry starch drink and homemade beer. For the Easter feast, they made salted milk, mixing it with the smetana sour cream and salt, and ate it with bread, potatoes or crepes instead of butter and cheese.
