Norwegian alfars, Danish and Swedish elves, Anglo-Saxon gnomes and elves, Germanic Albs … Sages, sorcerers, the greatest metalworkers, makers of magic items … Legends about these mysterious creatures are widespread among the peoples of Northern Europe.
In many parts of the Earth, there are legends about dwarfs as the original inhabitants of these areas, who, with the advent of people, always gave way to them, disappearing without a trace, going … underground.
In Russia, legends about the one that went underground were spread throughout the North.
What is hidden behind the numerous legends about dwarfs? And why the focus of these legends is the north of the European continent, washed by the waves of the Arctic Ocean?
The very possibility of the existence of small people should not surprise anyone - this phenomenon is well known and described many times.
Small stature, dwarfism, called in biology by a scientific term, is a phenomenon that has not yet been sufficiently studied. According to modern concepts, nanism is an adaptation to various environmental factors, including low temperatures and lack of food. It is interesting that under the same conditions both nanism and its antipode - gigantism can manifest itself. In our time, tribes - pygmies live in equatorial Africa and the Andaman Islands (Indian Ocean).
In Europe, at first, the Lapps and Nenets were considered dwarfs.
Hanseatic merchants brought from Novgorod the stories of Russian industrialists that pygmies live on the other side of the Hyperborean (Ural) mountains. The Finns called the Lapps, and in Europe in the 16th century. Samoyed Nenets were portrayed as dwarfs. Later, convinced that this was not the case, they began to place it in the far north. On the map of the Norwegian navigator Olai the Great, made in 1567, north of Norway, above Lapland, Scriclinia is shown - a country of scrickling dwarfs with the inscription: ().
Some strange people, and speaking an incomprehensible language, were met by people from Novgorod, Gyuryaty Rogovich, who were sent to collect fur tribute.
Folklore is, among other things, also the historical memory of the people. The peoples of the North of our country have similar testimonies.
N. M. Karamzin noted that. Karamzin based himself on the evidence of ancient Russian sources about sorcerers, soothsayers, and sorcerers from among the Finno-Ugric peoples who lived in the north of Russia. You can recall from the poem by A. S. Pushkin, who comprehended the teachings of sorcerers. Meanwhile, the Finnish peoples have always had the conviction that local sorcerers owe their magical knowledge in many respects to some underground dwarf spirits.
Legends about dwarfs living in caves or underground existed among all Finnish peoples, of which the Laplanders (Sami, Lop, Lapps) are the most ancient inhabitants of the North.
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In Finnish, the underground dwarfs were called, in Lapp -.
Laplanders are nomadic people. Having stretched out their light dwelling in a convenient place, they could sometimes hear dim voices and the clink of iron coming from under the ground. This served as a signal: to immediately move the yurt to a new place - it closed the entrance to the underground dwelling of the saivok. With dwarfs - underground inhabitants who were afraid of daylight, but powerful wizards, the Lapps were afraid to quarrel.
The Sami also talk about the Uldr dwarfs - the inhabitants of Lapland. The Uldr spend the winter in their underground shelters. Laplanders are nomadic people. Sometimes in their dwellings made of reindeer skins, they hear the Uldrs worried underground - which means that the dwelling must be moved from this place, it closed the entrance to the underground dwellings of these small creatures. If this is not done, the Uldr can do much harm - tear the reindeer skins, steal a child from the cradle and put their freak in his place. In this case, it is recommended to treat the little uldr gently - then the uldr mother will have mercy and return the child to its place.
During the day, the Uldr are blinded by the light and therefore come to the surface at night. When encountering an Uldr, you must be as careful as possible and do nothing that he may not like, because Uldr are powerful wizards.
In the legends widespread in the North, Chud and Pans often turn out to be completely identical to each other and denote in the aggregate the ancient aborigines of the region, foreigners, whose generalized image is equally archaized and exaggerated. There is no doubt that historical legends about the Polish Time of Troubles have mixed and intertwined with the memories of the Chudi. Sometimes both chud and lords are presented as simply robbers.
According to legend, the legendary Chud pamy went underground along with the Chud. And among the Finnish peoples - Zavolochskaya Chudi, Komi-Zyryans, Vepsians - priests, wise men, sages began to be called Pamami …
Komi miracles
Legends about small underground inhabitants who know how to work with iron and possess supernatural abilities have survived among all peoples inhabiting the North of Russia. Thus, the Komi living in the Pechora lowland know about the existence of little people who work miracles and predict the future. They came from the north.
At first, the little men could not speak the Komi language, then gradually they learned. They taught people how to forge iron. Little people are called miracles here. Miracles are powerful sorcerers who create magic and predict the future.
Their sorcery possessed a terrible power. By their order, the Sun and the Moon faded, day turned into night, and night into day.
SIIRTYA Nenets
On the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the Nenets take over the Komi legends about dwarfs. “A long time ago, when our people were not here, there lived“siirta”- small people. When there were many people, they went right through to the ground”. This is how they tell about the Siirta - a strange, mythical people who once allegedly inhabited the space from Kanin Nos to the Yenisei.
Traveled at the end of the 18th century. for the European North of Russia, academician I. Lepekhin wrote:
This is how the Nenets tell about the Siirta - a strange semi-mythical people who once inhabited the areas of the North from Kanin Nos to the Yenisei.
The ancestors of the Nenets, the people of the Samoyedic language group, began the development of Western Siberia 8 thousand years ago. In their movement to the north, the Nenets faced the Enets (), Tungus (), Khants and Mansi (), Selkups (), Nganasans () and the strange little people of Siirta (Sirta, Sikhirta). If everything is simple with the first nationalities - they exist even now, then scientists are still puzzling over the riddle of the Siirt.
The Nenets met Siirt on the northern coast of Yamal. If in the folklore of the Nenets there are quite a few episodes of the struggle with other tribes, then there are almost no plots about the war of the Nenets with the Siirta - the mysterious dwarfs-Siirta, the Nenets say, are able to disappear, become invisible. Finally, the Siirta moved underground. For some time they lived underground, where they owned herds of mammoths.
Siirta came to the surface only at night, avoided meeting people, but some of the Nenets were lucky enough to communicate with the Siirta and learn from them grains of their knowledge. Then the siirta disappeared completely.
Traces of Siirta have survived throughout the tundra: in the names of many rivers (- the Siirta river), hills, tracts (-). It is known that Siirta is a wealthy people: they have an abundance of silver, copper, iron, lead and tin. They live in the earth and extract them from the earth. In their dungeons, siirta bask in front of a small blue fire. On the surface of the Siirt you can only see from afar, and if you come closer, they will hide, and where - no one knows, - the Nenets think.
In the legends about Siirta, two layers are easily visible ~ - the first, about the pre-Samodian population of the tundra (there is a hypothesis that these were Yukaghirs), and the second, more ancient, which has common roots with the northern legends about Chudi. The reality of Siirta is so clear that some researchers are even trying to find archaeological traces of this people. Of all the nationalities with whom the Nenets came in contact in their history, only Siirta remain a mystery …
Underground inhabitants of Yakutia
There are traces of mysterious underground inhabitants in distant Yakutia, in the basin of the Vilyui River, in a place bearing the meaningful name of the Valley of Death. Rare explorers who have reached this mysterious place tell about the amazing metal bells that cover the passages leading to the unknown depths.
Mikhail Koretsky from Vladivostok was lucky - he visited the Valley of Death three times. He got there not from a good life - in this place most people could wash gold without fear of getting a bullet in the back of the head. “I saw,” says Koretsky, “seven“cauldrons”. Their size is from six to nine meters in diameter. They are made of an incomprehensible metal that does not even take a sharpened chisel. The top of the metal is covered with a layer of unknown material, similar to emery, which can neither be chipped nor scratched. The Yakuts say that earlier from under the domes it was possible to get into rooms located deep underground, where thin one-eyed people in iron clothes, frozen through and through, lay.
Chud white-eyed north of Russia
Legends about Chud are widespread throughout the North.
Russian legends of the White Sea, Ladoga, Urals and Siberia tell that a white-eyed miracle lived here long before the arrival of the Russians.
She was engaged in the mining of gold and silver in the mountains, and a long time later the ancient mines in Siberia, where gold, silver and copper were mined, were popularly called.
The legends of the Urals indicate Chud fortresses, settlements, graves.
Sometimes Chud is called the Finnish tribes that lived here before the arrival of the Russian population, but researchers have long established that Chud is a general concept for all aboriginal aliens, a generalized name for a variety of ethnic groups.
At the same time Chud Chud strife - some folk legends paint Chud as a strong, mighty, heroic tribe, others - weak, sluggish, slow-moving, not trying to fight for its existence. In the stories of local Russian residents about the strength, power and sorcery of the ancient inhabitants of the North, echoes of the most ancient Chud (Finnish) beliefs and legends are heard.
Some legends about Chud are more than specific, they indicate the settlements, tracts that have survived to this day, as well as peasant surnames and clans originating from the Chud clans. Other legends about chuds are mythical in nature, completely losing any real features. Obviously, there are several Russian legends about the Chud, one of which is the legends about the Chud people. G. Kulikovsky writes about I. This last one is the most interesting to us …
This, as the legends say, came from somewhere in the north. When the Russians came, then.
According to the stories, it was like this: they dug a hole, put posts in the corners, made a roof over the pit, covered it with earth and stones from above, then went into the pits with property and, having chopped up the supports, perished.
It is difficult to say how effective this method of mass suicide is. And why did you have to take property with you? In the next world it is all Equally not needed. There are numerous reports that no treasures were found after the death of the Chudi. Where did they go? But everything falls into place, if we assume that by constructing a canopy over the pit, the chud thereby simply closed the entrance to the dungeon under construction from bad weather and prying eyes. And in the indicated way - by chopping off the columns - it is very convenient to fill up the finished entrance to the underground labyrinths, where the legendary eccentric went, capturing his property …
And then - chud everywhere left behind not pits, but hills, mounds. In different places they showed the places of chudi - picturesque hills, which are very similar to. How can you not remember the seeds ~ the magical hills of the Irish, where dwarf lepracons live! According to legend, many mysterious phenomena are associated with the Chud mounds. At night, these mounds often glow with a blue flame, and sounds can be heard from them - screams, howls, tapping, and hum.
In some legends, it is said that a chud went into the ground through underground passages:.
In the foothills of the Urals, where the chud disappeared, there is one place - the Sumgan cave, with which a "feeling of horror" is associated, as in the case of the hole found by the OGPU expedition on the Kola Peninsula. Russian explorers, who appeared in the Urals later, also have legends and tales about people of small stature, beautiful, with unusually pleasant voices living in the mountains.
Just like the saivok on the Kola Peninsula, they do not like to be in the daylight, but some people hear the ringing coming from the ground. And this ringing is not accidental. Speleologists who have stormed this cave more than once and reached its second bottom recall the feeling of incomprehensible, unfounded fear that grips them in one of the cave passages. And to this day, the narrow gap into which this move passes has not been passed by anyone.
What did the same one look like? In addition to her small stature (mentions of a small stature of chuds are rare in northern legends), she was. Sometimes they call it simply. What it is?
Large whites of the eyes, or whites of solid eyes, or something else? In any case, this is a very characteristic and important detail. One of the Pomor legends says that it is a chud. This people moved to Novaya Zemlya, where they still live, hiding in inaccessible places or, when meeting people, becoming invisible.
The fact that the fishermen saw monsters on Novaya Zemlya still speaks of a legend recorded in the North in 1969. This Pomor story about a red-skinned invisible chud living on Novaya Zemlya opens a cycle of other legends about chud ~ mysterious little people living under the ground, in the caves of granite rocks.
You can rarely meet them - Chudins avoid people and can become invisible to them, or turn into an animal (mouse, squirrel). But sometimes an eccentric can come to the aid of a person with wise advice or magic.
A distant echo of these legends is the wise and good-natured Russian fairy tales, who helps Ivan Tsarevich with the help of a magic ball to find the way to the beauty kidnapped by Kashchei, gives him an invisibility hat, and then suddenly disappears underground.