Ingria (Russian: Ингрия, Ингерманландия, Ижорская земля, romanized: Ingriya, Ingermanlandiya, Izhorskaya zemlya; Finnish: Inkeri, Inkerinmaa; Swedish: Ingermanland; Estonian: Ingeri, Ingerimaa) is a historical region including, and adjacent to, what is now the city of Saint Petersburg in northwestern Russia.

The earliest known inhabitants of the region were indigenous Finnic peoples, primarily the ancestors of modern Izhorians and Votians, who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity during the late Middle Ages.

[2] Historic Ingria covers approximately the same area as the Gatchinsky, Kingiseppsky, Kirovsky, Lomonosovsky, Tosnensky, Volosovsky and Vsevolozhsky districts of modern Leningrad Oblast as well as the city of Saint Petersburg.

The names of the region are: In the Viking era (late Iron Age), from the 750s onwards, Ladoga served as a bridgehead on the Varangian trade route to Eastern Europe.

In the 860s, the warring Finnic and Slavic tribes rebelled under Vadim the Bold, but later asked the Varangians under Rurik to return and to put an end to the recurring conflicts between them.

Folk etymology traces its name to Ingegerd Olofsdotter, the daughter of the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung (995–1022).

After the Swedish conquest of the area in 1617 the Ingrian Finns, descendants of 17th-century Lutheran emigrants from present-day Finland, became the majority in Ingria.

In the modern era, Ingria forms the northwestern anchor of Russia—its "window" on the Baltic Sea—with Saint Petersburg as its centre.

Although Sweden and Novgorod had fought for the Ingrian lands more or less since the Great Schism of 1054, the first actual attempt to establish Swedish dominion in Ingria appears to date from the early 14th century, when Sweden first founded the settlement of Viborg in Karelia[4] and then the fortress Landskrona (built in 1299 or 1300) at the confluence of the Ohta and Neva rivers.

The townships of Ivangorod, Jama (now Kingisepp), Caporie (now Koporye) and Nöteborg (now Shlisselburg) became the centres of the four Ingrian counties (slottslän), and consisted of citadels, in the vicinity of which were small boroughs called hakelverk – before the wars of the 1650s mainly inhabited by Russian townspeople.

[7] Ingermanland was to a considerable extent enfiefed to noble military and state officials, who brought their own Lutheran servants and workmen.

Near the location of the Swedish town Nyen, close to the Neva river's estuary at the Gulf of Finland, the new Russian capital Saint Petersburg was founded in 1703.

This was to a large extent due to the work of Leander Reijo (also Reijonen or Reiju) from Kullankylä [fi] on the new border between Estonia and the Soviet Union, who was called "The King of Ingria" by the Finnish press.

[9][10] In 1945, after the Second World War, Estonian Ingria, then in the Soviet Union, was transferred to the Russian SFSR and incorporated into the Leningrad Oblast.

[2] The 1926 census also showed that the Russian population of central Ingria outnumbered the Finnic peoples living there, but Ingrian Finns formed the majority in the districts along the Finnish border.

[6] In the early 1930s the Izhorian language was taught in the schools of the Soikinsky Peninsula and the area around the mouth of the Luga River.

To facilitate it, in 1929–1931, 18,000 people (4320 families), kulaks (independent peasants) from North Ingria, were deported to East Karelia, the Kola Peninsula as well as Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

[6][12] On 25 March 1935, Genrikh Yagoda authorized a large-scale deportation targeting Estonian, Latvian and Finnish kulaks and lishentsy residing in the border regions near Leningrad.