Everyday Treasures

Everyday Treasures from Ingria

An Exhibition of Photographs and Objects from Ingrian Finnish Families

The exhibition brings together photographs and stories of objects that Ingrian Finns carried with them from their homes in Ingria and preserved within their families. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 5 August, at 5:00 p.m. and will remain on display until 13 September.

The exhibition explores family traditions, memory, and values. The objects and the stories connected to them were collected from Ingrian Finnish families living in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden between 2022 and 2024.

Between 1943 and 1944, shortly before nearly 80,000 people fled Estonia during the Great Escape, almost an equal number of Ingrian Finns passed through Estonia as war refugees. Of these, approximately 63,000 were evacuated from Paldiski to Finland, while around 3,000 remained to work on Estonian farms.

Under the terms of the 1944 Moscow Armistice between the Soviet Union and Finland, those evacuated to Finland were forced to return to the Soviet Union. About 56,000 returned, while approximately 5,000 escaped to Sweden in fishing boats. The roughly 3,000 Ingrian Finns who remained in Finland joined the community of refugees who had fled mainly from Northern Ingria to Finland during 1919–1920.

Those repatriated to the Soviet Union were subjected to severe persecution. The entire ethnic group was labelled either as “traitors to the homeland” or as a “socially dangerous group,” designations that were entered into their identity documents under Articles 38 and 58. Ingrian Finns were classified as so-called special settlers and were resettled in the interior regions of Russia. They were deprived of freedom of movement and prohibited from living in major cities, within a 100-kilometre radius of them, or in the Baltic Soviet republics.

Despite these restrictions, the first Ingrian Finns began arriving in Estonia as early as 1946–1947. In defiance of official regulations, they found shelter and employment on Estonian farms. However, the KGB continued to pursue them, and many were deported from Estonia back to their former or newly assigned places of exile. Nevertheless, many managed to remain hidden and gradually assimilated into the wider population.

From 1990 onwards, a new wave of Ingrian Finns and their descendants arrived in Finland under the so-called return migration programme. More than 30,000 settled primarily in the Helsinki metropolitan area. In Sweden, several regional Ingrian Finnish associations were established during the post-war decades, later united under the umbrella organisation, the Ingrian Association in Sweden.

The exodus of the Ingrian Finns has now continued for more than a century. Today, only a handful remain in historical Ingria, and due to the current geopolitical situation, maintaining contact with them has become increasingly difficult, in some cases impossible.

Despite the many twists of history and decades of harsh persecution, Ingrian Finns in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden continue to seek their roots. They preserve their connection to Ingria through oral tradition, archival research, and their material cultural heritage.

This exhibition presents objects originating from Ingria that were collected during 2022–2023 from Ingrian Finnish families living in Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. These items accompanied their owners on their journeys as refugees and are now displayed together with their present-day custodians.