The Taimyr Peninsula is one of the most unsociable places not only in Russia, but in the whole world. And here lives the most northern Turkic-speaking people of the world - the Dolgans.
Nosed, light-eyed
Surrounded by high icy mountains, adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, immersed in the endless tundra, Taimyr seems to be frozen through and through. What kind of life is possible amidst the ancient frightening white silence and freezing winds?
Beautiful, the Dolgans will answer you. They are one of those heroic peoples who have lived on a harsh land for many centuries and are not going to leave it. Today the Khatangan region of Yakutia is recognized as their ethnic territory.
As a separate ethnos, the Dolgans (there are eight thousand of them left) were formed in the 19th century as a result of a mixture of Yakuts, Evenks and tundra Russian peasants - real old-timers of Taimyr, who had lived here since the 16th century.
Nansen wrote that the original Dolgans have bright eyes, they are very tall and nosed.
The very same word "Dolgan" comes from the name of one of the Evenk clans ("Dulgan" means "middle"). In 1935, in the Taimyr National District, they received their second name, already official, - Sakha.
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Dolgans speak the dialect of the Yakut language; writing based on the Russian language was approved only in 1970. The dictionary was completely late: it was published only in 1981.
With or without windows?
How can you live where winter temperatures reach minus 62 degrees, where winds whistle for weeks, there is almost no summer, and winter seems endless? The climatic zones of the peninsula are the coldest on the planet.
Surprisingly, Dolgan life is not survival at all; it is full-fledged and interesting in its own way, although it does not forgive mistakes and frivolity.
They always bred deer and roamed with them in search of new pastures. In the summer they went to the tundra, and preferred to spend the winter in the forest-tundra. Nomadic traditions are still alive.
They lived in makeshift houses that could be quickly assembled and disassembled. Most often it was a conical tent covered with birch bark in summer and reindeer skins in winter. Other types of dwellings, frame, made of boards without windows, were easily transported by a team of five or seven deer and set up in a matter of minutes.
But the Dolgans also had one more dwelling - a balok borrowed from the Russian old-timers of the North. This frame house made of rails mounted on sledges had glass windows, a stove, a table, chairs and bunks on which to sleep, and was even divided into a kitchen part and others. It did not have to be assembled and disassembled, and today it is here - the main dwelling of reindeer herders.
In winter, the Dolgans united into large families, and some of them often stopped to live in wooden Russian huts, but in the spring the families broke up into nomadic groups in order to hit the road again.
Bullets with poison
In addition to reindeer herding, the Dolgans, like other peoples of the north, were engaged in hunting, fishing and fur trade, mainly for polar foxes. Hunters often used poisoned arrows, the poison for which was extracted from the rancid fat of wild deer. When firearms hit Taimyr in the 19th century, they began to lubricate the bullets: as they say, a bullet is a fool, and poison is a fine fellow.
However, even having acquired rifles, the Dolgans mostly hunted in the old fashioned way, especially for deer: they arranged the so-called beatings, killing animals with spears while crossing the river.
In winter, they chased wild herds on light sleds. The gambling chase could go on for hours.
Fairy tales for the patient
As for the extraordinary duration of the usual activities, the same can be said about oral folklore - epics. They are called olonkho - and this is a special story about mythical times and heroes, where direct speech is sung. Only storytellers, who are considered the chosen ones of good spirits, are capable of performing olonkho.
But do not think that you will be able to just walk into the tent and listen to a fairy tale. Olonkho requires a special setting. Firstly, the true masters tell tales only after dark. Secondly, listeners are required to cover their heads with a cloth. Thirdly, olonkho lasts for several nights, and if you already undertake to listen to them, then you must sit to the end, because unsaid and unheard olonkho shortens the life of the narrator, taking away years of life.
The Dolgans believe that everything told can become a visible mirage, and it's good if this mirage is kind.
The songs of the Dolgans are also varied. In love, you can hear amazing diminutive forms of verbs, which the Russian language lacks. Therefore, it is impossible to convey the subtlest shade of sadness and tenderness of Dolgan songs in Russian.
Hunters and fishermen who went fishing started their improvisational songs. As a rule, they sang about what they saw: about fifty shades of snow, about mountains and forests, about a bird galloping on branches. Sometimes the song came out very short and consisted of one repeating phrase, or even just a melody.
The so-called "long songs", close to shamanic spells, were sung by special song people. This could bring danger, because such songs could attract an evil spirit - the abaasu, who begins to sing along. Hearing the voice of the spirit, the singer must stop singing in time, decisively saying: “I still surpassed you!” So that the last word remains with him, otherwise there is a risk of getting sick and dying.
Deer antlers taste
The culinary delights of the Dolgans most often unpleasantly amaze Europeans, and in vegans they can even cause a heart attack.
However, we are talking about the most real Arctic food, which arose in the conditions of this harsh climate, scarce vegetation and taking into account the main occupations of the population. It would seem that Dolgans should walk hungry, swaying in the wind. No matter how it is!
The main food is venison in baked, smoked, dried, ice cream and even cheese - with blood - form. The peoples of the North began to cook meat only under the influence of Europeans.
The Dolgans also have their own original dishes, like stroganin made from reindeer liver or kidneys: the thinnest layers of liver are frozen in the snow and then eaten with salt. And the best food on the road is dried reindeer guts turned inside out and melted lard.
Fresh deer brains are frozen and absorbed with salt and pepper. Not bad are the lips of a deer, fried with horns and hooves. Or maybe you will taste kanygi - the half-digested contents of a deer's stomach, seasoned with lingonberries or blueberries?.. But the Dolgans' favorite delicacy is young deer antlers, slightly roasted over the fire. Their skin is healthy and nutritious.
The Dolgans still eat a lot of frozen fish today. In the summer they prefer raw freshly caught or slightly salted. Children here traditionally loved not semolina porridge, but a miracle dish - byokyo: fish intestines and stomachs, which, having squeezed all the contents out of them with a finger, were finely cut and mixed with salt.
The Dolgans' diet has always included all the main berries of the Russian North: cloudberries, blueberries, lingonberries, cranberries, cumanberries, crowberry, crow berry, bearberry and northern raspberry. Until the twentieth century, mushrooms were considered food for deer - the northern peoples tasted them only thanks to the Europeans.
So, no matter how meager the Dolgan diet may seem to you, they consume a full set of vitamins and nutrients, do not know vitamin deficiency and scurvy, and do not suffer from the absence of a healthy blush on their cheeks.
Maryana Vovk