The population of the Kola Peninsula is an estimated 1,
067, 100. As one might expect, the majority of people, 92. 4%, live in the town while only
7.6% live in the countryside. Just over 660, 000 people live in the Murmansk region, 407,
000 of whom live in the city of Murmansk itself. Men outnumber women by 13, 400. Children
under the age of 15 make up 23. 4% of the total population, 30-40 year olds - 20. 4% and
those over 70 - 1. 9%. In the past few years there has been a general decrease in the
overall population. The Murmansk Region, the city of Murmansk in particular, is
multinational. There are 392,480 Russians, 43,956 Ukranians, 15,506 Byelorussians and
5,166 Tatar nationals who live in Murmansk.In addition, there are also Germans, Spaniards,
Finns, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Turks, Arabs, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, 1
Dutchman, 1 Frenchman, 1 Englishman, 1 Austrian and 1 Croat as well as representatives of
many other nationalities.
Lapps, or Laplanders, are the indigenous people of the Kola Peninsula. In Russian this
northern race is sometimescalled Lopary. Centuries ago they also settled in the northern
territories of Finland, Norway and Sweden, where about 50,000 Lapps still live
today.Throughout the whole of the Murmansk area there are about 1,700 Laplanders, 200 of
whom live in Murmansk itself. Nine centuries of assimilation of the Kola Lapps with the
Slavonic population has taken its toll. Their number has dramatically decreased, their
original way of life has been lost, their national traditions and culture erased and their
native language barely preserved. The 1980s saw the beginning of a period of positive
restoration of the national spiritual values of the Lapps. In 1982 a new elementary
schoolbook for teaching Lapp children to read was published and an attempt made to create
a way of writing the Lapp language, based on the Cyrillic alphabet. In the village of
Lovozero, a national school for Lapp children was opened, a national press appeared and
broadcasting began in the Lapp language.In 1989 the Association of Kola Lapps was created
and a national flag was designed. In 1992 this association joined the Union of Laplanders
of the three northern states of Norway, Sweden and Finland.
The more prosperous Western Lapps are striving to help their Kola kinsmen to restore their
spirituality, mentality and national rights. The language barrier though does pose a
problem.Western Lapps have offered to create a written language for them, based on the
Latin rather than the Cyrillic alphabet, in order to help with communication.
The Kola Lapps however still face considerablean problems. Unlike their Western
counterparts they are deprived of many basic rights. There isn't a single Lapp
representative in the Regional Duma. They don't have an opportunity to fish and breed
reindeer on an independent basis. There are still many moot points concerning the spoken
and the written form of the language.
Many Lapps, especially those who live in the town, have lost command of their native
language, even though there are a certain number of textbooks and special courses on the
Lappish language. It is taught at St.Petersburg Pedagogical University as well as in
Murmansk, Lovozero and in the settlement of Loparskoye.
Since 1992 the Kola Lapps together with the Western Lapps have celebrated their national
holiday on February 6th,The Lappish Peoples' Day.