- 1096: mention in the Russian Primary Chronicle of a Novgorodian tale of a peculiar people who live in the north and speak a strange language.
- Late 1200s: Novgorodians claiming the “Ugrian lands” of northern Urals as their own.
- 14th century: Muscovite Grand Princes challenge Novgorod’s primacy in the north.
- 1499: Ivan III mounts large expedition into the Ugrian lands.
- Mid-16th century: English discovery of a Northern route to Russia leads to founding of Arkhangel’sk.
- Late 16th century: Chingiside Khan Kuchum collecting tribute from hunters and fishermen on lower Ob’.
- 1581-1582: Ermak Timofeevich leads a Cossack army across the Urals and sacks the capital of the khanate.
- 1640s: Ivan Moskvitin reaches the Sea of Okhotsk and Semen Dezhnev circles the now-named Dezhnev Cape.
[Compiled by Frederick Corney; source: Yuri Slezkine, Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Arctic Mirrors (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)]