Archeology of Folklore: Ancient inhabitants of the East Siberian Arctic

Bravina Rozaliia ORCID: 0000-0002-4902-8288 Doctor of History Head of the Department of Archeology and Ethnography, Institute of Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Minorities of the North of Yakut Scientific Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences   677027, Russia, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Yakutsk, Petrovsky str., 1 bravinari@bk.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction. One of the urgent tasks of historical science in the new geopolitical conditions is the study and generalization of the historical experience of Russia's presence in the Arctic and the Arctic Ocean from antiquity to the present. The purpose of this article is to generalize, systematize and analyze folklore texts about the ancient inhabitants of the Yakut Arctic with the involvement of materials of mythology, toponymy, ethnography and archeology. G. U. Ergis, classifying genres of Yakut folklore, among historical legends, highlighted a cycle of legends and legends about non–Yakut tribes of Yakutia, noting "their values as a source for the study of history northern aboriginal tribes" ^{[26, pp. 244-246]}. Another Yakut folklorist V. M. Nikiforov held a different view, according to whom the Yakut plots are chronologically identical to the late Dolgan legends about "runaway Russians" and for this reason are of no interest either in informative or in source relations ^{[14, pp. 48-49]}. Even from this point of view, any ethno-cultural landscape retains layers of knowledge and ideas about its inhabitants of different times and heterogeneous, different in origin. It is in this context that we have used the concept of "archeology of folklore", derived in the title of this study.

The research is based on materials published by G. V. Ksenofontov (1937), A. P. Okladnikov (1948), I. S. Gurvich (1978), as well as folklore texts and ethnographic plots recorded in the works of polar explorers of the XIX – early XX centuries, in the field materials of the northern expedition (1939-1941) of the Institute of Language and Culture at the SNK YAASSR, stored in the archive of the Yakut Scientific Center SB RAS.

Descriptive, historical-genetic and historical-comparative methods were used in the study.

"Seaside people", the spirit of kuchun. The Yakuts mastered the Arctic territories long before the arrival of the Russians, which is confirmed by the archaeological monuments of the early Yakut culture of "small houses" (XIV–XVI centuries) on the Lower Lena ^{[11, pp. 211-216]}. These data are organically combined with the toponymy of the Laptev Sea coast from the Khatanga River to Cape Svyatoy Nos and the Novosibirsk Islands, where Yakut names account for 85% ^{[23, p. 5]}.

The northern Yakuts recognized the existence of "seaside people" (yak. muora kisi), who were characterized by a very bizarre appearance and the ability to magic. "Grab him, for example, with your hand, and there... is an empty place, the person disappears," says V.L. Seroshevsky's notes made in the Kolyma district in 1883. "Or there are people among them who can split in two, there will be one, and there will be two of them, they don't have a head, but eyes, Their mouths and noses fit under their armpits, which is why they are forced to wave their hands while talking. These monsters dive and swim in the sea perfectly" ^{[19, p. 73]}. According to I. A. Khudyakov, Zhigan Yakuts roaming along the shores of the Arctic Sea and Verkhoyansk Lamuts roaming in the west along rocky mountain rivers call the coastal inhabitants of khuchun and attribute to them a huge growth ^{[25, pp. 81, 100]}. Such stories, the main plot of which is quite stable, largely echo the legends about the "wild people" of chuchun /suchun, which were widespread in the northern regions of Yakutia ^[8].

Allaikhov Yakuts and Yukaghirs, who roamed the coastal tundra, called the spirit of the Arctic Ocean by a close word Kuchun. He is about the height of a man, thin build, with a black face covered with fur. He wears clothes made of fish skin with wool (seals? RB) of the type of Chukchi cook. He is armed with a "thin" primitive bow, carries a quiver with 8-9 arrows with bone tips on his back, has a spear with a shaft wrapped with leather straps. Kuchuna lives in the coastal tundra in summer. He does not know how to speak, only yaps like a fox and makes a shrill whistle. At night he comes to the camp and steals dried venison from the warehouses. One day, the Yukaghirs sent their daughter to bring deer. A year later, her body was found on the seashore. Kuchuna built a skeleton like a plague out of three poles. The spirit tore the girl's body into two parts. The upper half was seated inside the skeleton facing the sea, probably offering a sacrifice to the spirit of the sea. They say that anyone who looks at kuchuna will lose his mind or die soon ^[1].  

Other, alien Omuk tribes also belonged to the seaside people. Verkhoyansk Yakuts, for example, referred to them as Evens and Evenks ^{[6, p. 285]}, and Allaikhov Yakuts – Chukchi ^[2]. There were people with strange habits among the omukas. In 1908, P. V. Sleptsov recorded a story about Tungus, who migrated to the west and met people of omuk, quite normal in appearance. He married his son, and they took the young one with them. At parting, the father-in-law told his son-in-law not to try to visit them in the winter. The young man was surprised, but instigated by curiosity, as soon as winter came, he said nothing to his wife and went to his father-in-law.  Driving up, I noticed that the snow near the house was not trampled, no one walked on it. When I flew into the house, I saw that all the household were sitting with their heads bowed, legs crossed, and icicles hanging from their noses, frozen to the floor. Frightened, the son-in-law broke an icicle from his father-in-law and he silently fell. When he returned home, he told his wife about everything. She cried and said he had killed her father. "That's what strange people have been, they say far to the North. In winter, when icicles fell down from the nose, they died, in spring, when the ice floes thawed, they resurrected" ^{[10, p. 114]}.

Spirits are the hosts and inhabitants of the sea islands. With the beginning of the industrial development of the sea islands at the end of the XVIII century. from among the northern Yakuts and Russian Arctic old-timers, artels for the extraction of fossil mammoth bone began to be created, and the Arctic geolandscape gradually began to be filled with the archetypal matrix of the Yakut culture. In the archaic perception of the Yakuts, the Arctic Ocean of Muus-Kudulu was equated with the "other" world. In the Yakut epic olonkho, it is located in the north, at the very edge of the earth, "at the source of death itself." Its borders are guarded by the spirits of the sea Muus Soluonai (yak. muus – ice, ice; soluonai – iskazh. russ. salty) and Muus Suorun (yak. suorun – raven) ^{[15, p. 15, 427]}. Epic texts describe the inhabitants of the depths of the sea – "toothy fish monsters", "sharp-fanged huge beasts", as well as "spirits of underground darkness with never unpronounceable menacing names" ^{[15, p. 200, 202]}. The latter included a mammoth and a polar bear. It is noteworthy that among the Arctic toponyms, the Yakut name of mammoth salii is not found, but the allegorical muos — horns or the distorted Russian maaman are used. For example, due to the abundance of fossil mammoth bones, the Yakuts called the Novosibirsk Islands "Muostuur ary" (lit. islands where horns, i.e. mammoth tusks, are hunted). In the toponymy of the Arctic, there are most "bear" names, there are about a hundred of them, but nevertheless, only one of them is Yakut — lagoon Eselyakh (yak. Bear). According to the Yakuts, the bear is the master spirit of the Lower World, bound by eternal ice. M. I. Brusnev wrote that Yakut industrialists do not eat the carcass of a slain polar bear, unlike the black taiga, but cut into pieces and bury them in the ground separately, the heart is cut into four parts according to the number of cardinal directions, the eyes they are cut out so that the beast cannot come and take revenge ^{[22, p. 126]}.

There was a taboo on the Yakut names of spirits-ichchi islands. Thus, the Yakuts considered Mr. Yumyuchyugyun and Mrs. Nyidyigin to be a spirit or deity "releasing a mammoth bone from the ground" ^{[25, p. 288]}. According to the explanation of S. I. Sharina — Ph.D., Senior researcher of the Department of Northern Philology of the IGIiPMNS SB RAS, if you etymologize the above word forms, then you can go to the Even words "eyumettei" — to swim on the surface of the water and "niderday" — to press in, sink down, fail ^{[18, pp. 350, 192]}. In places where a lot of mammoth bones were found, in honor of these spirits, the Yakuts hung ritual ropes of dalbirge and bunches of horse hair, as evidenced by the names of the island localities of Dalbirgaleh (with a ritual rope), Sielleh (with a bunch of horse hair).

The Yakuts considered the Kisileh peninsula (yak. kisi - man) to be the abode of the spirits—owners of the ichchi sea islands, bordered by a wall of granite remnants in the form of human figures, intricately processed by the wind, at the foot of which local artisans left sacrifices — playing cards, ribbons, sweets, small money. When at one time A. A. Bunge tried to recapture samples of Kisilakh granites, they strongly resisted, fearing the wrath of stone giants ^{[22, p. 26]}.

The island spirit was represented in the form of an old man dressed in white furs, who rode a sled drawn by white dogs. He was a passionate gambler. The Yakuts say that sometimes the spirits who own the islands and nearby mainland lands get together to play cards. When the island ichchi loses, and the mainland wins, there are a lot of arctic foxes on the mainland, and they disappear on the islands. The unevenness of the appearance of herds of wild deer and their numbers is also explained. The Yakuts believe that the Ichchi lost not only arctic foxes and deer, but also mammoth tusks ^{[22, p. 195]}.

During the expedition of 1925, G. V. Ksenofontov recorded legends and legends about their ancient inhabitants - hairy giants among the Zhigan and Ust—Yan Yakuts who hunted on the nearby islands ^{[12, p. 387]}. The plots of these legends are homogeneous. A hunter (in different versions – Yakut, Tungus, Dolgan, Cossack), who traveled around the arctic fox mouths (on the islands of New Siberia, near the Russian Mouth, on the Olenek River), coming to his winter quarters, finds a stranger of enormous height with a bearded face. Secretly following him, the hunter arrives at a settlement consisting of several dwellings. He enters the last house and finds fur clothes hanging in the hall. The inhabitants of the house, lying in their beds, listen to the singer, encouraging him with the Yakut exclamation "noo". From a conversation with a white-faced woman whose body was completely covered with wool, he learns that he came to the "hairy people". At parting, the woman gives the hunter a bag stuffed with furs. The informants' notes are also of interest. One of them mentions the name of Baron Toll, who allegedly died while searching for this mysterious people. Another adds that when the bearded people are found, there must be a great battle with them ^{[13, pp. 288-291]}.

This plot has its development in the legend recorded by A.P. Okladnikov on the Lower Lena. In Tumatsky nasleg, locals told that eighty years ago, i.e. in the middle of the XIX century, the captain of a ship, presumably American, was killed by a shot from the island. After that, the Russians built a building for a guard post against a possible attack by a wild island tribe ^{[17, p. 100]}.

Among the folklore texts of this cycle, the legend that existed among the Olenek Evenks about the small tribe of kirbas omuk (yak. kirbas — a piece, a crumb) from an Icy mountainous country located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean stands apart. These people were so small in stature that one fur coat was sewn from the skin of a squirrel, a fox — three, a wolf — five, a polar bear - ten. It was a populous tribe, headed by a wise leader. They rode dog sleds, lived in houses made of snow and ice, hunted seals, polar bears and beluga. One day the leader gathered his people and told them that under the eternal ice there was some kind of rumble, accompanied by the trembling of the seabed, and offered to migrate to the mainland. As soon as people left the island, the mountain erupted with a terrible roar, a column of fire rose to the heavens, and everything collapsed. Small Tunguses descended from the surviving small people ^{[3, p. 92-93]}.

Discussion. The texts analyzed above indicate that in traditional society the collective consciousness remained deeply mythologized and perceived aboriginal tribes as inhabitants of other worlds. Archaic ideas about the "half-human, half-animal" chuchun/suchun are close to the common motives of the asymmetry of demonic characters and chthonic spirits in the olonkho epic. For example, in the Olenek version of the legend, the one-legged and one-armed chuchuna/suchuna are akin to the epic heroes of the Lower World ^[7]. At the same time, the headless "seaside people" in the record of V. L. Seroshevsky, whose mouth and nose are under the arm, resemble the ancient description of the "Samoyeds" from the composition of the late XIV–XV century. "About people unknown in the eastern country and about the language of the roses", written before Ermak. "The self-food is like this: mouths are at the top, the mouth is on the crown, and they do not speak ...; and if they eat, ... they move their shoulders up and down" ^{[21, p. 4]}.

Despite the fact that such stories were preserved in the north of Yakutia until the end of the XIX century, chuchuna gradually acquires a completely anthropomorphic appearance and is "domesticated". In one of the later versions of the legends of this cycle, he differs from people only by his huge, larch-sized growth and such power that he tears a deer in half with his bare hands ^{[10, pp. 116, 117]}. In another version, the chuchuna forcibly takes a young woman from the camp to his house, which is a traditional dwelling of the holomo, "but covered with moss and branches, with one door and three windows" ^{[10, pp. 115-116]}. Further transformation of ideas about the chuchun was recorded by A. A. Savvin in 1940 among the Allaikh Yakuts, who admitted that the chuchun is an "earthly cheat of the Chukchi" (Yakut. ser Albyna Chukcha), who wanders alone in search of new deer pastures. The Chukchi, when meeting the locals, chuckled, told where, when and under what circumstances they saw him ^[2].

Many hypotheses have been expressed about the origin and essence of the legends about Arctic giants. According to G. V. Ksenofontov, the legend was probably brought to high latitudes either by the deer Tunguska clans who came from the Amur, or by Cossacks who went hiking on the Sea of Okhotsk and met bearded Ainu in the southern part of Sakhalin ^{[12, pp. 388-390]}. In the myths of the peoples of the Amur region, the spirits-masters of water were depicted as gray-haired people with long beards and hair, to whom sacrifices were made during the "feeding of water" holiday. And the "fish-skinned" nivkhs living on the seashore and the Oroks of Sakhalin placed rods obliquely to each other near the seashore, at the ends of which stylized images of male and female faces were cut out ^{[20, p. 77]}. The described ritual could be one of the plot-forming motifs of the legend about the kuchun offering sacrifice to the spirit of the Arctic Ocean.

In the version of the legend recorded by B. O. Dolgikh, the hunter sees in the vestibule of the dwelling of bearded people "many bears of different colors, mammoth fangs folded like a woodpile." Russian Russians, in his opinion, indicate the fact of a very early appearance on the northern coast of Siberia to the east of Taimyr, secretly engaged in collecting mammoth tusks, which is manifested, in particular, in the motive of secrecy and isolation of hairy inhabitants. A. P. Okladnikov, who included his article as an appendix in his monograph on Russian sailors of the XVII century., did not accept such an interpretation of the legend, noting that it is based on mythological ideas about hunting deities and forest owners — givers of hunting happiness, widely spread among many hunting tribes of Siberia ^{[16, 151-152]}. It should be noted that similar legends are also recorded in the folklore of the Ents and Nganasans ^{[9, 150-153]}.

Hairy giants from the Arctic islands, although they have a somewhat fantastic appearance, have houses, wear fur clothes, hunt reindeer, arctic foxes, marine animals and mammoth bone, ride dog sleds. Their life as a whole resembles the economy and occupations of the carriers of ancient cultures of the circumpolar world. Among the finds found at the archaeological sites of the Yakut Arctic, in addition to the remains of elk and reindeer, there are bones of wolf, arctic fox, waterfowl, partridges, etc. Near the village of Tumat in the Yana River basin, the remains of dog puppies were found in late Pleistocene sediments, and a fragment of a sledge was found at the Zhokhovskaya parking lot. It can be assumed that this is a detail of a dog sled ^[5].

The famous Russian geographer, ethnographer and archaeologist D. N. Anuchin noted that the ancient records "About people unknown in the eastern country" are of great interest for the ethnography of the peoples living along the lower reaches of the Ob and along the Taz River — "about the Yuraks, Kamensk Samoyeds and other tribes", and primitive history. In a special work devoted to this work, he, commenting on the records of the Samoyed "pygmies" by P. Petrei, a Swedish diplomat and historian (1570-1622), compares these stories with German (Gothic) and Finnish (Karelian) legends about dwarfs ^{[4, p. 45]}.

In this regard, the story about the little men from the folklore of the Olenek Evenks is of particular interest. The description of dwellings made of snow and ice, hunting seals and belugas indicates the way of life of the northeastern Paleoasiates, which is enhanced by the description of the eruption of an ice mountain like a volcano. By the way, the geographical name Kamchatka, although rare, is found in the folklore texts of the peoples of Yakutia. The territory adjacent to Yakutia for the spread of such legends is the north of Western Siberia. So, in the upper reaches of the Lower Tunguska before the Tungus lived the so—called churi - "dwarfs", who, unlike them, ate raw fish and dog meat, removed the skin from live wild deer with a stocking (for fun), etc. Other names are also known – chulure, chulure-selergun (evenk. sele — "metal", "iron"). It follows that the "dwarfs" were familiar with metallurgy. This plot also correlates with the legends of the Nenets about the little people of Sihirtya, Sirtya, who live in caves in the mountains, where their "treasures" are found — brass and copper cups and plaques. They grazed ground deer (mammoths), traveled by dog sled, fished. Girls and women sewed a lot of metal bells on their sleeves. Comparing these legends with the archaeological materials of ancient settlements on the territory of Yamal, some researchers consider this people to be ancient inhabitants of the Subarctic, seasonally nomadic from the taiga to the seashore, where they were also engaged in fishing for sea animals ^[24].

In the above-mentioned early Russian essay about the "unknown people" there is also a description of people "falling asleep" for the winter. "In the same country, behind those people, there is another Samoyede, such as other people; in winter they die for two months, they die the same way: as soon as they find someone who enters me, then he will sit down, and the water will come out of his nose, like the departure of the stream, so that it freezes to and if a person does not know other lands, then he will reflect, he will lose his place, then he will no longer come to life; and if he does not lose his place, then he will come to life and know and say to him: "0 what have you done to me, brother?“ And they come to life as the sun turns for the summer" ^{[21, pp.4-5]}.

The question arises about the possible ways of penetration of the designated plots into the folklore of the peoples of Yakutia. The simplest of them is borrowing from the folklore of the Russian–Ustin people, whose ancestors arrived in Indigirka on kochs along the Arctic coast back in the XVI century, fleeing from the oprichniks of Ivan the Terrible. For example, the image of the Yakut spirit-khaziain of the Ichchi sea islands resembles the mythical spirit of the tundra sendushny among the Russian-Ustinians, dressed in all white and riding dogs. He is afraid of the Cross, but he loves cards. The bravest of the Old Russian fishermen, if they meet him, give him cards, alcohol and ask him to give them a "bigger arctic fox" in return. "Only those who know sendushny will go to Satan in the next world" ^{[8, p. 69]}.

Two layers can be distinguished in the legends about the Sirte and "falling asleep for the winter": the first is about the pre—Amodian population of the tundra (there is a hypothesis that these were Yukaghirs), and the second is an earlier one that has common roots with the legends of the oldest inhabitants of the North — Laplanders (Sami, Lapps). It is noteworthy that waffle ceramics of the late Neolithic of Yakutia are found on a vast territory from Yamal to Fennoscandia, including the northern territories of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. It is believed that at the turn of the Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age, the ancestors of the Ural-speaking Yukaghirs moved from Taimyr to Yakutia and, settling on a vast territory from Anabar to Chukotka, entered into close contacts with local Paleoasiatic tribes. The high level of mobility and adaptability of Arctic cultures gave such a high impulse to communication that an innovation that arose in one part of the Arctic could migrate to another in a short time. As a result, a unified historical and cultural heritage of Arctic Eurasia was formed, in which folklore occupies an important place. An example is the Khosun legends of the northern Yakut reindeer herders about interaction during the "reindeer herding revolution" of the XV-XVII centuries. with the alien tribes of Samai (Samoyeds), Mayaat (Nganasans), Gyuraah (Yuraks, Nenets), Yungkeebil (Yukagirs), Yuren/Yuren, Hanaay (Evenks). The existence of legends close to the plot among the Dolgans and Evenks of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Nganasans of Taimyr testifies to the existence of a single folklore space in northern Eurasia.

Conclusion. The analysis of legends, legends and stories of the Yakuts about the ancient inhabitants of the Arctic reveals a layering of chronologically and ethnocultural folklore texts. They contain layers of mythological ideas and knowledge about the nature and way of life of the peoples mastering the circumpolar world, inherent in both the Yakuts and Tungus-Manchus, Paleoasians, Samoyeds and Finno-Ugrians, which are of different times, including deeply archaic ones. Such a wide areal distribution can be explained by the fact that in the past almost all of Northern Eurasia was a single cultural space. At the same time, the plots of legends and legends were constantly developing, absorbing archaic mythological ideas about the surrounding world, real features of the life of Arctic hunters and reindeer herders, fragments of Early Russian, so—called "schismatic" (according to A.P. Okladnikov) folklore, in which images from mythological characters - spirits-owners of peripheral border territories, wild "half-human, half-animal" chuchun to representatives of alien tribes about the Muk with their unusual appearance and habits.

The potential of folklore materials for studying the early stages of the ethnic history and culture of the peoples of Arctic Eurasia, its settlement and development is far from exhausted today, which opens up new prospects for further interdisciplinary research.