The Finnic languages forms one of the subgroups of the Uralic language family spoken around the Gulf of Finland. It is a dialect continuum, where some of the languages have lost their mutual intelligibility while others have not. Therefore, Finnic group serves us a possibility to study an intermediate phase of linguistic divergence, where the contacts within the group still has a large role. Younger subfamilies of the Uralic tree, such as Finnic, can be studied in more detail than the Uralic family as a whole.
The work with Finnic languages employs both phylogenetic and population genetic methodology as well as data from the Atlas Linguarum Fennicarum (ALFE), available online as part of the Kotus Language Atlas.