by Walther Glodstaf Walther Glodstaf is a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Illinois. Walther's future plans include modeling language change in bilingual contexts and using our knowledge of language both at a mental and societal level to develop better policy specifically for minority language protection. He wrote this blog post in 418 'Language and Minorities in Europe' in Fall 2021. ‘Everyone in Karelia has to respect history and know that we are living in an area which has always belonged to these nations…’ (Andrej Nelidov, November 2010; Helsingin Sanomat, 2010) (Scott, 2012). Though Nelidov – the president of the Russian Republic of Karelia – refers to the Finnish ethnicities in his speech, it is noteworthy that his use of the demonstrative ‘these’ can not only be applied to distance Karelia from Finland but also from Russia. Since it is these nations who have often disputed over the territory and have thus made Karelia a pawn in their international...