ABSTRACT
This chapter has brought to the fore an already familiar tension between traditional and modern practices within revival movements. The activities of the activists, the use of Vepsian spoken and written language in rural and urban locales allow me to make direct links to a discussion on superdiversity and endangerment which was prompted by Vertovec (2007) and later developed by Blommaert, and Toivanen and Saarikivi. Whether consciously or not, superdiversity has indeed become a key concept within narratives of language revival! The chapter provides a brief account of the academic and scholarly work on Finno-Ugric peoples, with a particular focus on Veps. The purpose of such a synopsis is to demonstrate how scholarly cooperation among Finno-Ugric peoples has recently undergone a shift. Such presentation also allows readers to understand how relations among Finno-Ugric peoples have developed over time in connection with the main language ecology in which the scholars and people found themselves.
