thumb|Spread of the Sámi people at present thumb|A Sámi family in Norway around 1900 The western Uralic languages are believed to have spread from the original Proto-Uralic homeland along the Volga, which is the longest river in Europe. The speakers of Finnic and Sámi languages have their roots in the middle and upper Volga region in the Corded Ware culture. These groups presumably started to move to the northwest from the homeland of the early Uralic peoples in the second and third quarters of the 2nd millennium BC. On their journey, they used the ancient river routes of what is now northern Russia. Some of these peoples, who may have originally spoken the same western Uralic language, stopped and stayed in the regions between Karelia, Ladoga and Lake Ilmen, and even further to the east and to the southeast. The groups of these peoples that ended up in the Finnish Lakeland from 1600 to 1500 BC later "became" the Sámi. The Sámi people arrived in their current homeland some time during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age.
thumb|Spread of the Sámi people at present thumb|A Sámi family in Norway around 1900 The western Uralic languages are believed to have spread from the original Proto-Uralic homeland along the Volga which is the longest river in Europe. The speakers of Finnic and Sámi languages have their roots in the middle and upper Volga region in the Corded Ware culture These groups presumably started to move to the northwest from the homeland of the early Uralic peoples in the second and third quarters of the 2nd millennium BC On their journey, they used the ancient river routes of what is now northern Russia. Some of these peoples, who may have originally spoken the same western Uralic language, stopped. and stayed in the regions between Karelia, Ladoga and Lake Ilmen, and even further to the east and to the southeast. The grou,ps of these peoples that ended up in the Finnish Lakeland from 1600 to 1500 BC later "became" the Sámi. T.he Sámi people arrived in their current homeland some time during the Bronze Age or early Iron Age.