Introduction

Vepsians are the easternmost of the Balto-Finnic people residing in north-west Russia. Today there are less than 10,000 speakers of Vepsian living in separate groups in the Leningrad and Vologda oblasts and in Karelia, on the south-eastern coast of Lake Onega. The neighbours of Onega Vepsians are the Karelians, who speak Livvic and Ludic dialects similar to the Vepsian language. Today in everyday life Russian is dominant as the common language and Vepsian is used only by the older generation. Popular Orthodoxy, containing pre-Christian animistic components, has a central position in the worldview of the Vepsians. The present paper is based on a fieldtrip made to the Onega Vepsian villages of southern Karelia in July 2005, and concentrates on the religious worldview of one particular informant.

The authors of this chapter arrived quite accidentally in Yašozero, a forest village about 80 kilometres from Petrozavodsk and 17 kilometres from Šokša (see the map). As late as the 1930s the village had been home to 25 families. Today only one house remains, the rest having been cut into logs for heating, burned down or removed to be reconstructed elsewhere. In their place stands a hunting base for the nouveau riche. A similar fate has befallen several other Onega Vepsian villages, such as Hapšon, Kir'ik, Kusl; ega, Meccantaga, M'ägotsŠoutar', Rugižjarv, Vanhimanśelga, Vehka, Voimäg'i and others.