The Veps were forgotten by science for a long time, until the beginning of the XIX century, when they were “discovered” by the Finnish ethnographer Anders Jugan Sjögren. After visiting the Olonets province in 1823-1824, he made a detailed report, calling the Veps “a wonder, a people depicted in Scandinavian chronicles and Russian annals as skilled fishermen, hunters and seafarers.” Their oikumene (inhabited world) is southern Zaonezh and the coast of the White Sea (currently the Republic of Karelia, Arkhangelsk, Vologda and Leningrad Oblasts of the Russian Federation).
After the Moscow occupation, they lost their own businesses, seeking happiness from their neighbours: they went to Estonia, Livonia, and Finland to earn money, where they worked as hired workers in agriculture, felled wood or built furnaces. Soon the term “odd” (Fin. tšuudit) became the official name of the Veps, used by scientists and the tsarist authorities until the revolutionary year of 1917. This is how Sjogren described this northern people:
“…I discovered this special tribe, still completely unknown to researchers, and it is all the more noteworthy that it is still called Chudya (wonder) by the neighbouring Muscovites for some reason. This prodigy speaks with a special accent, which is noticeably different from the neighbouring Olonets-Karelian, but essentially similar to the neighbouring Finnish-Karelian. It is close to the southern main dialect of the Finnish people itself…”.
Sjogren openly called the Veps “primitive Finns”, who failed to preserve their ethnic core in the so-called “Slavic sea”. Namely, because of the assimilation carried out by Moscow. It is noteworthy that according to the 2001 census, 281 veps lived in Ukraine; how much now is unknown.
