For fifteen hundred years, attempts to capture the ancient deity of the peoples of the north of Russia: the Ugrians, Voguls and Ostyaks, the ancestors of the present Khanty and Mansi, did not stop. We are talking about a sacred pagan idol - a statue of the Great Mother cast from pure gold, a goddess who gives a person a soul. She was considered the patroness of life and procreation and was called Sorni nai (in a vulgar translation - the Golden Woman).
Photo: Golden Woman in the Urals - interesting facts
Hide goddess
Nobody knows exactly what the statue of the goddess looks like. Rare sources describe her as a metal statue of a woman, made, apparently, by the method of artistic casting, and emphasize her grace and beauty. Scant information about her is contradictory. According to one version, it is the heritage of the mythical country of Hyperborea. Some researchers have identified her with the Roman goddess of motherhood Juno. They believed that in the motley army of Alaric, who took Rome in 410, there were Ugrians who returned to their homeland, taking with them the statue of Juno and worshiping it as a deity.
Others suggested that it was a statue of the Tibetan Buddhist goddess of immortality, Guan Yin. In the old days, there was a caravan camp of merchants from southern countries who traded with Ostyaks and Voguls near Lake Zaysan in eastern Kazakhstan. The sculpture of a beautiful goddess could well have ended up at the lake, got to the natives of the north and become their deity - a great idol who was worshiped by the neighboring tribes for centuries.
Many mysterious and tragic events are associated with it. A stranger who saw the temple of Sorni nai was destined for an early and inevitable death. The natives had to constantly protect, save and hide her from persistent and greedy adventurers of all stripes.
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Bait for the ages
The search for a deity has always been accompanied by inexplicable and often tragic events. For centuries, adventurers who dared to encroach on the golden statue of the Great Mother disappeared or died without a trace. From the Scandinavian sagas, it is precisely known about three attempts by the Vikings to take possession of the deity: in 820, 918 and 1023. The last raid was led by the treacherous Jarl Thorir Dog. With great difficulty, Thorir's warriors reached the sanctuary, but did not manage to plunder. The people who guarded it appeared, and killed almost all the Vikings, the survivors had to take their feet.
Repeatedly tried to find an idol, wading through urmans and bypassing ingenious traps, Guryata Rogovich and other Novgorod brave-ushkuiniks. In 1481 the Ustyuzhans defeated the Voguls near Cherdyn. Bringing the northern peoples under the sovereign's high hand and imposing tribute on them, in 1499 the Moscow governors Semyon Kurbsky and Pyotr Ushaty zealously searched for a sanctuary in the interfluve of Tavda and Ob. They searched many of the most secret places, but they could not find Sorni nai and her treasures, hidden in hiding places.
To suppress the worship of the golden idol, Christian missionaries were also looking for a "god-loathing" image. Then the aborigines took their deity to the dense forests on the banks of the Konda River, the left tributary of the Irtysh. The pagans with rich gifts were again drawn to him. He strove to find and capture the Golden Woman and Yermak, because according to legend, the one who had the statue of the goddess was unconditionally obeyed by the tribes worshiping her. Ermak's Cossacks, led by the Esaul Bryazga, made several attempts to take possession of the deity, and in May 1583 they found a sanctuary in an area called Belogorie. This place was sacred to the natives and was protected by a spell. But this did not stop the Cossacks. They thoroughly searched the entire sanctuary, but the goddess mysteriously disappeared. And the "guests", returning from the campaign, were ambushed and killed.
Later, according to legend, they brought a shell removed from the deceased Ermak to the Belogorsk sanctuary and laid at the feet of Sorni Nai - a steel chain mail bound with gilded copper. In the Siberian Kungur chronicle, the goddess is described as "… naga with her son on a chair, settling and receiving gifts from her …".
In the 20th century, she was looked for by white chieftains, red commissars and intelligence agents. The gold from which the goddess was made and the bloody mystery surrounding her thrilled the minds, and the centuries-old detective story continued.
Taiga gives a sign
According to legend, in the Khanty taiga there is a lake with a bottomless bog with a wooded island in the middle. The wind tears off entire peat fields along with trees and bushes from its shores and drives them across the lake, changing its shape. Finding the lake is not easy, and few knew the way to it. On an island in the center of the lake, there was supposedly a temple of the goddess. The Tyumen ethnographer Arkady Zakharov learned about him from a Khant who came from the taiga river Konda, Alexey Surguchev. As it turned out later, Alexey's father and uncle were friends with the shamans guarding the idol.
In the summer of 1979, Zakharov with his friend Vladimir Romanov and a guide recommended by Surguchev named Sobrin were already sailing along the Konda River in a Kazanka with a Whirlwind motor. In the evening, guessing the fairway from only known signs, the guide found the mouth of a narrow river flowing into the Konda with steep banks, with a blockage of fallen trees and litter. According to him, it was possible to get through it into a large lake, and then along an inconspicuous channel into another, where the mysterious island was located. As it turned out, the blockage was held by two specially cut trees that fell from opposite sides of the river. With the help of axes we made our way through it and again buried ourselves in the same obstacle. It was getting dark, and Sobrin said that you can't burn a fire, but you need to spend the night in a boat, it's safer. On the shore, they tied the hefty dog Burka, taken with him.
At night the men were awakened by the angry barking of the dog. Loading their guns, they fired into the air. The dog, having cut off the leash, disappeared into the taiga, and its barking died away in the distance. In the morning, the guide followed in the footsteps of Burka, but soon returned gloomy and said that the dog was gone, but he would not go further - the taiga was giving a sign. After consulting, Arkady and Vladimir decided to move to the coveted island together. With difficulty they overcame the blockages, working with axes and changing the cut keys and broken screws in the "Whirlwind", and by the end of the day they again buried themselves in an irresistible man-made blockage. The next morning, with incredible difficulty, the men burst out into the vastness of the first lake, then found a channel into the second, on which there were several islets. We went to the nearest of them and, having passed at speed, gliding about 200 meters, we got stuck in liquid bottomless sapropel - black mud, slightly covered with a film of water. The motor stalled, and they climbed out of the mud for almost 24 hours, meter by meter.
With difficulty, completely exhausted, the researchers returned to the place where Sobrin remained. The guide quietly said that the Golden Goddess has three guardians: a water one, a serpent and a compolen - a forest man (by the way, very similar in description to a yeti) who does not want to let them in. Seeing incredulous smiles, Sobrin, apparently, regretted that he let outsiders talk about the secret of the taiga. To their proposal to go to the island next year on big water, he replied that it is not so easy to find the source of the river during the flood, and he still has to live until spring. And in the fall, the guide drowned. Zakharov realized that he had touched some kind of forbidden secret, and no longer tried to find the temple of the great goddess.
Lost world the size of Romania
Ethnographers and historians have always been interested in the mysterious idol of the northern peoples. It turned out that a rich pagan culture had recently flourished in the triangle between Konda, Irtysh and Ob. Numerous admirers of her - Khanty and Mansi - gathered at a secluded clearing with a fireplace to the famous goddess for the annual celebration of the Great Mother, the progenitor of the Ob Ugrians. After noisy shamanic rituals, they killed the sacrificial deer, anointed the idol with living blood and brought rich gifts. And now the goddess is bored alone, inaccessible to the uninitiated.
In the summer of 1990, an ethnographic expedition of the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences visited the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. According to the scant information received from the few survivors and reluctantly recalling the past of the Kazym Khanty, whose family, according to legend, was responsible for the safety of the deity, in 1933 the NKVD arrested the shaman and learned from him the way to the pagan temple. Defending their shrine, the Khanty killed four Chekists, and the shamans once again carried away and hid their idol in an unknown sanctuary somewhere in the upper reaches of the Kazym River, among the swamps.
The authorities' punitive action was brutal. Almost all the men of the clan were killed, and their weapons were confiscated. There was nothing to hunt with and no one to hunt, and almost all children, old people and women died of hunger during the winter. The Khanty and Mansi still retain the cult of Sorni nai, carefully hidden from outsiders.
According to rumors, now the Great Mother is in Taimyr, on the Putorana plateau - in a mysterious place even now. There, in an inaccessible territory of a lost world the size of Romania, eight people constantly live at a weather station near Lake Agata. The shamans hid the idol of their people safely.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №44. Author: Valery Kukarenko