The Ingrian Culture Society has stimulated Vod language and culture during last years. This summer (June 26-30, 2013) a course on Vod language and culture will be arranged for the fourth time in the village of Luzhitse in Ust-Luga. Dr. Heinike Heinsoo of the Tartu University, Estonia, is one of the rare experts who can teach this vanishing language. She has kept the courses and brought there groups of students studying Finno-Ugric philology in Tartu, to do some field work, which means e.g. recording the speech of the last speakers of Vod language. The Vod participants of the courses are mainly elderly people, but some schoolchildren have participated, too. The courses contain practicing to speak Vod as well as singing Vod songs and dancing Vod dances. The next project is to create and publish a Vod ABC book.

The Vod are a Baltic-Finnish group of people that have lived on the south shores of the Baltic Sea since times immemorial. In the Middle Ages they were an important actor that played a central role in the wars between East and West typical on those areas. In the principality of Novgorod their area was called “The Vod Fifth”. 

Many small native or language groups of Russia have totally disappeared or diminished very small in the overturns of history (like the Livonians). Like all other Ingrian groups the Vod suffered much during the oppressions of Stalin: they were arrested, killed and sent to work camps. During the 2nd World War their area was a battlefield between the Germans and the Russians. A part of the Vod was evacuated to Finland, but the majority was expelled out of their homesteads into far-away places around Soviet Union. Many died. Some could return to their homes after Stalin´s death, but the war had destroyed their villages.

The present time of Russia has focused some light on the case of the small nations. Groups that were believed to be extinct appear now and then. But how is the fate of these groups like? Has their mother tongue survived? How is their life today? There is different information of the number of people speaking Vod as their mother tongue. Maybe there are 700 of them, maybe only 7? The life of the surviving Vod people has been turned upside down by the construction of Russia´s new main port of the Baltic Sea in Ust-Luga.

Besides, the Ingrian Culture Society has organized memory workshops for the Vod seniors, assisted to publish a Vod calendar, a Vod primer and coloring book and a paper doll. The great project of the latest years has been to establish the Vod virtual Museum in the Internet. It already exists, but it is promoted continuously. Those interested in this rare language can learn “one Vod word a day” in the Facebook. This page gets visitors around the world!

The address of the Vod virtual Museum;