One of the most ancient peoples of the Russian Arctic - the Nganasans - is now one of the smallest. According to the latest census, there are only 800 of them. Now their main occupations are hunting and fishing. But for many years they carefully preserve the traditions of the ancient shamans, for which their ancestors were once famous.
One of the last shamans of the Taimyr Peninsula donated his costume and magic items to the museum over 25 years ago. Since then, there are no more shamans on these lands.
Shamans of the Avam Tundra
The ancestors of the Nganasans, hunters of the Stone Age, once came to Taimyr after herds of wild deer. They settled in the Avam tundra at the foot of the northern Byrranga mountains, behind which, as local legends say, the land of the dead begins. Now representatives of this ancient people live in the Taimyr villages of Volochanka and Ust-Avam.
Among them is Lydia Aksenova, a descendant of the Ravens (Ngamtusou in the local language), one of the five Nganasan clans living in the depths of the Taimyr tundra. She is the granddaughter of the shaman Dyuminme, her great-grandfather Dyukhade Kosterkin was considered one of the strongest spirit spellcasters in Taimyr. Now Lydia Aksenova works as a curator of the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore.
According to the current guardians of traditions, shamans played an important role in the society of the indigenous people of Taimyr. They were spirit spellcasters, fortunetellers, healers, storytellers. According to Stanislav Stryuchkov, head of the Taimyr Explorers' Club, the fate of the entire tribe depended on them. People in these places stubbornly adhered to traditions, which at one time made it difficult to consolidate Soviet power in the north; in 1932, the tribes of the Avam tundra, led by shaman Roman Barkhatov, even raised an anti-Soviet uprising.
But the scientists managed to establish a dialogue with them. Aksenova recalls that “I first recognized Russians as cameramen, photographers and filmmakers.” With the help of the Kosterkin family, the researchers were able to collect a huge amount of information about the traditions of the Nganasans, hundreds of northern epic legends, still studied by folklorists, ethnographers, linguists and musicologists.
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The gift is beyond our powers
For more than a quarter of a century, shamans have not existed in Taimyr. In 1982, Lydia's great-uncle Tubyak Kosterkin donated his ritual vestments and magic items to the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore, because he had no one to give his gift to. According to the beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Taimyr, before accepting a gift, a person must endure a very difficult condition, the so-called "shamanic disease." At the same time, according to local beliefs, a person's personality is torn between two worlds, and not everyone is able to withstand this.
As Lydia's great-grandfather Dyukhade Kosterkin said, he became a shaman even before he was born.
“My mother, being pregnant, saw herself in a dream as the wife of the spirit of Smallpox. She told her people, who prophesied that her unborn child should become a shaman from the spirit of Smallpox. When I grew up a little, I was ill for three years, during my illness they took me to different dark places, where they threw them into water, then into fire,”he said. By the end of the third year, when he lay motionless for three days and those around him had already decided that he was dead, Duhade woke up, and after that his initiation took place.
“In our family, the gift was passed on through the male line, and in order to accept it, it was necessary to endure a shamanic illness. Nobody took the gift,”says the museum curator. Although shamanic items continue to be used, for example, metal fish, which must be placed under a man's berth, and it will bring good luck on fishing, says Lydia Aksenova.
As a curator of the museum, she makes sure that the shamanic objects that have become exhibits are properly looked after. Tubyaku took such a promise from the museum. At first they were “fed” with reindeer blood and fat, then they began to spray with vodka. And several times a year the museum staff pledged to knock on the tambourine. The shaman's son Leonid Kosterkin had the right to come and take family relics at any time. He came and talked to his father's suit.
Now Lydia talks to the ancestor every morning. “We, the Nganasans, cannot pronounce the name of an older person. I always come in the morning, mentally talk, I apologize to Tubyak for pronouncing his name in conversation with people,”she told TASS.
Manuscript of the Ravens
Now Lydia Aksenova and the performer of Nganasan folk songs Svetlana Kudryakova, whose ancestors also belonged to a shamanic family, are collecting materials for a book about Taimyr shamans from the Raven family. The book describes the image of the Taimyr shamans, their traditions, way of life, and lists the shamanic dynasties.
“According to ethnographers, the earliest evidence of a shamanic clan dates back to the 17th century. There is a family tree. Now I'm collecting people's memories of my great-grandfather. I myself remember my grandfather and his brother, I heard and saw them,”Aksenova says.
According to her, the book should become a monument to the history of the ancient shamanic clan. The authors have been working on it for several years, and now the manuscript is close to completion. According to the director of the Taimyr House of Folk Art Lyubov Popova, they plan to publish the book later.