In the very heart of the mountains of the Northern Urals, there is a mysterious place - the Man-Pupuner ridge. The Mansi reindeer breeders who roam here call it the Mountain of Lesser Gods.
And this name is not accidental. Seven bizarre stone outliers rise on the flat surface of the ridge. One resembles a petrified woman, the other a lion, the third a wise old man with a raised hand …
Tourists from different cities of Russia hurry to see the famous Pechora "boobies" and hurry past the lonely high conical peak of Mount Koyp. In Vogul, Coyp is a drum. One of the legends of the Mansi people connects this peak with its famous neighbors. Once seven giants-Samoyeds went through the mountains to Siberia to destroy the Vogul people. When they climbed the ridge Man-Pupu-ner, their leader, a shaman, saw in front of him the sacred mountain of the Voguls Yalping-ner. In horror, the shaman threw his drum, which turned into Mount Koyp, while he and his companions froze in fear and became stone blockheads.
But there is another legend that can be heard from rare Mansi families, who still continue to drive reindeer along the Ural ridges in the summer. The Koype looks like a conical mountain from the side of stone blockheads. But if you look at her from a small, nameless ridge located to the west, you can clearly see a woman lying on her back. This is a petrified shaman, punished for trying to insult one of the most ancient idols, once revered by all the peoples of the North - the Golden Woman. When the golden idol climbed over the stone belt of the Ural Mountains, the shaman, who considered herself the mistress of the Stone Belt, wanted to detain him. The idol cried out in a terrible voice, all living things died of fear for many miles around, and the presumptuous shaman fell on her back and turned to stone.
What is this golden idol and why did he have to climb over the Stone Belt?
Legends about the Golden Woman hiding somewhere in the North appeared a long time ago. They are associated with the legendary country, which stretched in the 9th-12th centuries in the forests that undermined the valleys of the Northern Dvina, Vychegda and the upper reaches of the Kama. In Russia it was called Great Perm, in the Scandinavian sagas - the powerful state Biarmia, or Biarmalandia. The peoples inhabiting it worshiped a huge golden idol - the Golden Woman. Her sanctuary, located, according to the Scandinavian sagas, somewhere near the mouth of the Northern Dvina, was guarded by six shamans day and night. Many treasures were accumulated by the servants of the idol, which bore the name of Yumala in the sagas. The Great Perm was rich in skins of valuable fur-bearing animals. Merchants from Khazaria, lying in the lower reaches of the Volga, and Vikings from distant Scandinavia paid for them without stint.
But time passed. The strengthened neighbors of Perm the Great stretched out their tenacious hands to this rich, but sparsely populated area. First, the Novgorod ushuyniki, then the squads of the Moscow Grand Duke, increasingly began to make their way into the once protected northern forests. Fleeing from Christianity, the admirers of the Golden Woman transferred their idol first to the Ural ridge, and then to the lower reaches of the Ob. The Golden Woman ended her journey, according to some researchers, in the inaccessible gorges of the Putoran Mountains in Taimyr. It was here that the last servants of the idol could hide him.
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Where did the Mansi get such a strange deity? It is so unusual for the customs of this people that it seems to have fallen to them directly from heaven. Most scholars believe that the Golden Woman is the Mansi goddess Sorni-Ekva, whose name is translated into Russian as “golden woman”.
As for its origin, the researcher of the history of Biarmia Leonid Teplov suggests that the golden statue could have been carried away from the burning plundered Rome in 410 AD. during the attack on Italy, the Ugrians and Goths. Some of them returned to their homeland to the Arctic Ocean, and an antique statue brought from a distant southern city became the idol of the northern people.
They did not pass by the amazing Golden Woman, completely different from the other idols, roughly cut out of wood by shamans, and ufologists. They knew that the amazing idol was worshiped, and is still worshiped, by the peoples of the Khanty and Mansi. The golden woman seemed to have fallen from the sky. Or maybe she really fell?
This version of the origin of the golden idol was given a few years ago by the ufologist Stanislav Ermakov. He believes that Golden Woman is an alien robot, for some reason, maybe due to a partial malfunction, abandoned by the owners. For some time, the Golden Woman could move, and it is with this property that the Mansi legends about the “living” golden idol are connected. Then, it seems, the robot began to gradually fail. At first it could still make sounds, and then finally turned into a golden statue.
I had a chance to work for five years in the Northern Urals, in places where, according to researchers, a golden idol hiding from the persecution of Christians passed. There, from the Mansi reindeer herders, I heard several stories, unknown to S. Ermakov, but confirming his hypothesis.
In the Northern Urals, there is a domed mountain Manya-Tump, covered with dense forest. Until very recently, reindeer herders who drive their herds along the Ural ridge in the summer did not come close to the mountain. According to them, the sanctuary of the Golden Woman is located here. Sometimes she starts screaming. A person, hearing her voice, falls ill for a long time, and then dies.
A little north of Mount Manya-Tump, another mountain rises, with which the legends about the terrible cry of the Golden Woman are also connected - Koyp. I already talked about it at the beginning of the article. The surroundings of this mountain are surprisingly suitable for the origin of the legend of the Golden Woman's temple. A completely round lake lies at the foot of the mountain. This is no longer in the Northern Urals. On its banks you can see boulders covered with lichens, in which, with a little imagination, you can guess the remains of a sanctuary. The Mansi reindeer breeders who drive herds in summer must stop by the sanctuary to leave their gifts on a rectangular granite block, as if cut by a man.
And the last event, already related to our time. Between these two mountains, near which, according to the Mansi legends, the cry of the Golden Woman can be heard, there is a third - Otorten. This is the highest point in the Northern Urals. In the winter of 1959, an experienced, well-trained group of skiers from the Ural Polytechnic Institute perished here.
Rescuers who went in search of tourists found a tent with a cut back wall and the bodies of nine participants in the hike, lying in deep snow. The faces of all the victims were frozen in an expression of mortal horror. In the opinion of the commission investigating this tragedy, one of the reasons that led to such a terrible death could be the effect of infrasound.
Three remote, inaccessible corners of Russia are traditionally called the last refuge of the Golden Woman: the lower Ob, the upper Irtysh in the Kalbinsky ridge and the impassable gorges of the Putoran mountains on the Taimyr Peninsula. But, perhaps, an idol with a terrible, killing voice is much closer. It hides somewhere in the triangle between the mountains Koip, Otorten and Manya Tump.
Mikhail Burleshin