ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on insufficiently explored aspects of ethnic relations in the Baltic region. More emphasis on a comparative approach, weighing tendencies toward convergence versus divergence, could yield particularly useful insights. The impact of multilingualism in both rural and urban settings along with the crucial role of Western Christianity, especially Protestantism with its stress on literacy and education, deserves more attention at the grassroots level in order to help unravel the complexity of the sociolinguistic process taking place across centuries. The changing demographic situation in modern times needs more detailed and nuanced treatment, as the opportunities for population movement and migration increased rapidly by the second half of the nineteenth century.
