| Description : In Europe, the Indo‐European languages dominate. As well
as the isolated language Basque and the Semitic Maltese and Turkish spoken in Eastern Thrace, there is a second language
family, the Finno‐Ugric languages. It includes Finnish, Estonian, Livonian (which is native to the Latvian Courland)
and Hungarian. Sami, spoken in Lapland, also belongs to the Uralic languages. The ancestors of the Finno‐Ugric peoples
came from Siberia east of the Urals. Around 1840, on granite rocks on the shores of Lake Onega in Karelia (called
Äänisjärv in Estonian) Estonians discovered about 1,200 Neolithic petroglyphs ‐ about 6,000 years old
‐ which depict the symbolic life cycle of the Finno‐Ugric people. For example, a swan carries the sun across the
sky. Waterfowl, moose and hunters form other motifs. In 1970, Lennart Meri ‐ President of Estonia from 1992 to 2001
‐ made a documentary film entitled Waterfowl People about the Finno‐Ugric peoples and their ancient traditions.
The sculptor Al Paldrok, who together with the graphic designer Madis Pöldsaar designed the coin which
used the swan as the central motif. in 1984 as part of a scientific expedition they made tracings of the symbols depicted
on the coin (using a process called brass rubbing which involves rubbing of the surface structure onto a laid paper). On
the day the coin was issued, the World Congress of Finno‐Ugric and Sami Peoples ‐ held every four years
alternately in Russia, Hungary, Finland or Estonia ‐ was opened in Tartu. At the bottom left is the reason for the
issue, "FENNO‐UGRIA" and at the top right, the country and year of issue "EESTI 2021". The coin was produced by the
Lithuanian mint Lietuvos monetų kalykla in Vilnius. |
