In the photo: Sirte is remembered only in the form of walrus bone figurines.
“In some places, among the trunks of deadwood and moss, ladders stood upright, so that the gods could descend to the ground to people. But it seemed to the memory that these staircases were pushed from the depths of the underground little Sirtea: apparently, they felt so creepy to live in a numb mountain that they fled from the depths to the sky”© Aleksey Ivanov“Heart of Parma”
According to legend, this mysterious people once lived in the tundra of Western Siberia and the Urals. The inhabitants of the Far North called them sirtya (or sikhirta) and attributed many strange properties to them.
Syrtya were small in stature with light, upright-set eyes and lived in high sandy hills. According to legends, before going underground for unclear reasons, Sirtha lived on the surface, but avoided meeting people. Strange creatures came to the surface of the tundra at night or in the fog. They wore beautiful clothes with metal pendants, they often presented people with metal products, because they were wonderful blacksmiths and jewelers.
So who are these mysterious Sirteas? It is known that the Samoyeds (or Samoyed peoples) - the Nenets and other peoples - relatively recently settled on the coast of the Arctic Ocean (from the 11th to the 18th century), who lived here before them?
The encyclopedia "Myths of the Nations of the World" mentions the mysterious "small people". Samoyedic mythology is an anthropomorphic creature of small stature that lives underground. In the underworld, they own herds of mammoths ("earthen deer"), going to the surface, avoiding meeting people. There is an assumption that the image of the Sirte reflects the memories of the Nenets about the pre-Samodian population of the tundra.
And here is another interesting description of Sirte, recorded by researchers in Nakhodka on the basis of local legends. “Sirtea are people of very short stature, but stocky and strong, who lived a thousand years ago. In everything they differed from the Nenets: they did not keep domesticated reindeer, hunted deer-“savages”, wore different clothes: for example, yagushki (swinging women's clothes made of reindeer hide), like the Nenets, did not have, they dressed in otter skins (a hint of a deaf outerwear).
Once a large water appeared, flooding all the low-lying places on the Yamal. The subsoil of elevated hills - "sede" (according to another version, the Sirte "went to the hills" because with the appearance of "real people" - the Nenets - the old land turned upside down) became the dwellings of the Sirte. Having become underground inhabitants, the Sirta were afraid to go out into the daylight, from which their eyes burst. They began to consider day as night, and night as day, because only at night they could leave the hills, and even then, when everything is quiet in the vicinity and there are no people.
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Nowadays there are few sirte left, and less and less they come to the surface. Under the ground, they ride dogs and graze mammoths ("I am the chora"). Only a shaman can determine in which weave there is sirtya, and in which not."
According to experts, Syrtya is a real people, which was confirmed by archaeological excavations and notes of travelers. Archaeologists find iron and bronze objects of exceptional manufacture in the places of the alleged habitats of the Sirte, made according to their data not earlier than the middle of the first millennium AD.
Recently, the Yamal reindeer breeder Mee Okotetto discovered the site of an ancient man - Sirta. In the northern part of the Yamal Peninsula, he found arrowheads, a metal harpoon and an ax, and pottery.
An experienced tundra man believes that these items can only belong to a hunter-fisherman, since the places of discovery are not suitable for grazing deer. But according to legend, the Sirtea were not only blacksmiths, but also excellent tradesmen, hunters.
They say that sirtya can be met even today. Here is what an amazing story the writer Grigory Temkin heard from an elderly Nenets woman in 1987.
“… And that grandmother was eighty years old. She no longer wanders, she spends the winter in the village, in the house, and in May with her younger sister Pavel - the very grandmother, the eldest, Galina's name - Galina Nikolayevna Vyucheyskaya - goes into the tundra and catches fish almost to the freezing point. They set up a chum for themselves there behind a bumpy hill, they have a small boat on every lake, small nets - big grandmas are not capable of, although they are still strong, but everything is not what it used to be.
However, sometimes a lot of fish is brought in: pike, sorog, since the grandmas have noticed: fish on one lake disappears from the nets. It is caught everywhere, but this one is empty, only scales in the meshes. We decided to guard the night, to spy on the thief. Brave grandmas! They put the net again, hid in a dwarf birch on the bank, sit. And the nights are bright, you can see everything … How long they waited, shortly - they hear someone whimpering, like this: “Uh-hoo-hoo! Yu-yu-yuh … It is thin, like a child is crying. Sister Pavel, she was scared, let's go, whispering, from here. And Galina is fighting: no, she says, we'll see.
We sat there for a while, waited - and waited. It was like snow from the hill. But it was summer, and there was snow. And the cloud to the lake is getting closer, closer … Then it went on the water, stopped above the net, the grandmas - and froze. This is not a cloud, but a man. Small, like a child, the hair is also white, but it goes over and over, and the fish itself leaps from the net into the sack towards it.
The grandmothers in the bushes are neither alive nor dead, they are afraid to move, but the peasant has chosen a fish, and he looks at the attendants! I knew, it was clear that they were hiding here. He shook his finger like this: they say, my lake, and my fish. And he was gone. And above that place between the lake and the sky, a pillar stood out of light, as if someone had turned on a lantern.
The grandmas came to their senses - and faster from that lake, while they were safe. They were very frightened. Don't go there anymore, though. Galina remembered how her grandmother had told her: they always lived in these hills. Who are they"? Yes sirtya, who else. Devil is not devil, man is not man; hides underground during the day, walks at night, goes out to hunt. Earlier, the old people said, there were a lot of them on the tundra …"