At the end of the 80s of the last century, cameraman M. A. Zaplatin from Perm, being in the Northern Urals, near the headwaters of Northern Sosva, met with one of the old residents of the Mansi. The old man warned Zaplatin against going to the mountains - there, they say, the Golden Woman lives. Anyway, said the old Mansi, you won't find Sorni-Ekwa: our old men took her somewhere, and then killed themselves …
SCARY SCREAM
Today, such a mysterious place as the Man-Pupu-Ner plateau with its stone blockheads attracts many tourists. But few people notice Mount Koip, standing alone on the way to the plateau. From the side of Man-Pupu-Ner, it looks like a cone. And on the other hand, you can see the outlines of a lying woman with rough facial features. According to the Mansi legend, one shaman made fun of the Golden Woman - an ancient idol of local peoples - and tried to hinder her when she crossed the Ural Mountains. Angry. The golden woman screamed in a terrible voice, and all living things around immediately died of horror. And the shaman fell on her back and turned to stone.
The fact that this legend has a real basis is evidenced by the memoirs of the Italian Gvagnini, who visited these places in the 16th century. He said that he heard a terrible trumpet roar, chilling blood.
By the way, not far from these places in 1959, the notorious Dyatlov group died. The faces of the dead were frozen in an expression of mortal horror. According to one of the versions, the cause of their death could be high-intensity infrasound.
Eyewitnesses who allegedly saw the Golden Woman described her in different ways. Someone said that she looked like a pregnant woman, someone talked about a mother with a baby, and still others said that she looked like a nesting doll made of golden bells.
As for the origin of the idol, the Italians, for example, believe that this is a statue of the goddess Juno, taken by the Ugrians from burned-down Rome in 410. Orientalists claim that the Golden Woman, or the Tibetan goddess Kuan Yin, belonged to the ancient Aryans. Buddhists see her as a Buddha. Christians also suggest that this may be a statue of the Madonna, stolen from some temple.
Promotional video:
One way or another, because of the value and enormous historical significance of the idol, everyone was looking for it and continues to search
THE UNCATCHABLE IDOL
Legends that somewhere in the North there is a Golden Woman appeared long ago. Initially, its existence was associated with the state of Biarmia, whose people worshiped this idol. According to the same legends, her sanctuary, guarded around the clock by six shamans, was located near the mouth of the Northern Dvina. There were many who wanted to find and appropriate the relic at all times.
At first, the Vikings attempted to attack her and the treasures offered to her, threatening the keepers with death. But they somehow managed to replace the golden idol with a wooden one and hide the shrine.
When Christianity came to Siberia, the destruction of wooden and stone religious statues began, and ancient pagan sanctuaries were destroyed. But no one was able to find the Golden Woman, the keepers took her to the Urals.
Even the legendary Ermak was looking for the Golden Woman. Once he sent a detachment of vigilantes in search of her, who managed to find out that in the city of Nimyan, people pray to the golden god. The city was taken by storm, but the priests again managed to take away the idol. However, the Golden Woman punished people who dared to disturb her peace. The squad was ambushed and destroyed. Centuries later, in the 18th century, the Cossacks again tried to get hold of the idol by equipping an expedition to the Lower Ob region.
But every single one was missing.
Other times came, and the Bolshevik government was already interested in the Golden Woman. More precisely, not with it, but with tons of gold, from which, as they assumed, it was made. In 1933, the Chekists organized an expedition to the place where the idol was kept. But they unexpectedly received a serious rebuff from the keepers, who shot the entire group as soon as it appeared in the taiga village. The Chekists sent a punitive detachment to the scene. All the men of the village were shot, interrogations were carried out with partiality and thorough searches, but the Golden Woman was never found.
And in 1961, the chairman of one of the local collective farms, Semyon Moldanov, accidentally found an idol in a hunting storage near the village of Yuilsk. And, returning from the taiga, immediately reported this to the local history museum. But by the time a group of museum workers arrived, someone had replaced the golden idol with a wooden one. It was the museum workers who took him with them to the city.
And again the Golden Woman took revenge. All who dared to disturb her peace died within three months. Death overtook all Moldanov's children, and he himself was paralyzed. It is said that the keepers hid the real Golden Woman on the island among the swamps. There she remained until the construction of a hydroelectric power station began on the Ob: then the water level in the river rose, and the island with the shrine was flooded.