During 1984‐1989 I interviewed women in the Estonian villages at the coast of the Black Sea in the Caucasus, in Estonia, Ingria and Mordvinia on the topic of birth traditions. The accumulated material has been compiled into an overview of the birth traditions of the Izhorians of the Soikkola Peninsula (Mikkor 1999a) and the Finnish of the Kurgola Peninsula, as well as of the beliefs related to childbearing and midwifery (obstetrics) of the Caucasian Estonians (Mikkor 1996, 1998a, 1999b). In 1988 and 1989 I collected material on life’s notable days in the Erza-Mordvinian villages of Sabajevo and Povodimovo; the recorded accounts have resulted in an article about the burial and birth customs in the villages (Mikkor 1994, 1998b). Both Sabajevo and Povodimovo are located in a region with a relatively mono-ethnic population where the Erza folk culture has survived for the longest time. This characterisation is most typical to Sabajevo village where the traditional folk costumes were worn at festive rituals as late as in 1980s. Povodimovo was considerably more “urbanised” than Sabajevo: instead of the rustic wooden cottages people often built brick houses, the tradition of wearing traditional costumes became obsolete already in 1920s‐1930s, also, the dialect of Erza villagers contained a larger number of Russian loan words.