Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Weichselian glaciation reached its Last Glacial Maximum extent 17 thousand years before present. This massive ice sheet arrived five thousand years later than it did in Denmark, Germany and Western Poland.
Before modern times most transport occurred via river systems including the Volga River, Northern Dvina, Pechora River, Kama River, Neva River, and Volkhov River. The trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks formed the main axis of Kievan Rus' connecting these waterways.
During the Middle Ages the core of this area formed the Novgorod and Pskov merchant republics. These political entities dominated the region while the western side served as the main source of squirrel fur which had large demand then.
Various Baltic-Finnic tribes were known in Russian chronicles as the Chudes with the Ves living east of Lake Ladoga and being pushed toward the Dvina by Novgorod expansion after 1100. Other groups included the Vychegda Permians on the Vychegda and Great Perm on the upper Kama who later became known as Zyryans and then Komi.