The farther from the boundaries of “civilization”, from the influence of Western culture and places, whose inhabitants were first of all crushed and planed under the foundations of “unobtrusive” Christianity, the brighter and more vividly the images of the primordial gods who once lived in this territory appear before man. The names of many of them were remembered and honored until recently, but alas - human memory is weak and fleeting, several generations that have changed lead to a complete change in consciousness. How many remember Sorni-nai, the famous Golden Woman?
And, meanwhile, her idol is still being sought - after all, according to the legend, the "Siberian Pharaoh", as Sorni-nai was called in Siberia, is made of pure gold! But those are legends and works of art. And in the written sources on which modern researchers rely, the Sorni-nai idol is wooden, but with a golden crown on its head. This is what the Scandinavian "Saga of Olav the Saint" says: Thorir Dog and his Vikings learned about the "Golden Woman" and her sanctuary. But can you believe the legends and chronicles if they all place the famous idol in different places? Someone - beyond Vyatka, others - not far from the mouth of the Ob, and she always looks different, “turning” into a pregnant woman, then into an old woman with children, or even all at once - into a pregnant old woman with a couple of children. Moreover, this is not always a statue in the usual sense of the word "idol":sometimes Sorni-nai was mentioned as a rock with a clearly visible female silhouette.
Whatever it was, but the truth about her appearance is not known - according to the notes of G. F. Miller and I. I. Lepekhin, the pagans who did not want to accept Christianity, took the Golden Woman away from human eyes, wanting to preserve the idol of the ancient deity. The halo of mystery attracted the attention of creative people: Sorni-nai became the heroine of several books and films, and her idol and altar can be found in the Uvat Museum of Local Lore, where a “personal” exposition of the goddess is located. In a word, in narrow circles this is a rather famous character (and in wide circles too), but one can hardly say so about other deities of Ugra, who are in no way inferior to Sorni-nai in antiquity and power.
Menkwy and company
The Khanty and Mansi worshiped Numi-Torum as the supreme god - a gray-haired old man in golden robes, who sat on a golden chair and from the height of his seventh heaven watched through a hole everything that happens on earth. I just watched - the deity was not going to interfere in human squabbles, except for cases when it came to sacrilege, a craft, which was banned and false oaths. Otherwise, Numi-Torum relied on human prudence, so people, in fact, were left to themselves. As in Vysotsky - “the Hindus invented a good religion”, so here - if everything is fine even without Christianity, then what kind of baptism can we talk about? True, it is not particularly advertised that the people of Numi-Torum did not turn out right away, but the menkwas were the result of the first experience in creating living beings.
It was believed that the menkwas guard the sanctuaries of the old gods, so their statues were placed nearby, changing every seven years for new ones - people believed that the strength of the menkw was weakening over time. Some researchers believe that the sharp head of the sculpture is not a skull shape, but a helmet.
Numi-Torum had seven children - sons and a daughter. Ay-As-Torum, the Ob old man, was revered as the fifth son. His temple stood right at the mouth of the Irtysh: being the patron saint of fishermen and their trade, Ay-As-Torum gazed with glass eyes at all his possessions. Admirers dressed him up in a red cloth caftan, and around the mandatory laid out fishing tackle, a bow with a quiver of arrows, chain mail and a spear. The old man was considered an inveterate briber - the fishermen received exactly as much fish as Ay-As-Torum estimated their offerings, and therefore immediately after the end of the first May trade, people tried to appease the harmful celestial, and generously smeared the image of the idol with fish oil. Numi-Torum's assistant and friend, Ortik, whose idol was assembled from metal, furs, wood and fabric, stood in front of the temple, and in the Belogorsk yurts, in an improvised nest,the brass goose was sitting - the hunters were sure that they owed the abundance of feathered game to him.
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Approximately 75 km from the town of Obdorsk, now known as Salekhard, there were two - a man and a woman. Dressed in traditional outfits, adorned with special silver ornaments, they were each in their own temple, and the Ostyaks, if they happened to sail by along the river, tried to keep strictly to the middle of the stream, so that God forbid not offending the deity by touching the oar to the water. Why, they were even afraid to drink here. But, no matter how strong the calamity - pestilence, hunger, death of livestock - with everything one could turn to idols and not meet with refusal.
The local gods preferred silver to all other offerings - it is not surprising that gradually it accumulated such an amount that more greedy neighbors in the lands could not ignore. Ugra has become a magnet for lovers of easy money.
Resistance
… and walking with him were people who were willing, and Prince Vasily Vymsky Yermolich from Vymichi and from Vychegzhany.
This is exactly how the Astrakhan Chronicle speaks of Vasily Skryaba's campaign to Ugra. Moscow needed tribute - silver, furs, and hunting birds. Scriaba, on the orders of Ivan III, was supposed to lead the Ugra princes to the oath, but Asyka, the Vogul prince, who gave the invaders a lot of trouble, but in the end still suffered defeat, stood in front of him as an indestructible obstacle. Other princes swore the oath, and, charged with tribute, returned home from Moscow.
If Ugra became geographically and financially dependent, then the locals were in no hurry to go to church, and the fight against idolatry could only be conducted where the idols were in the access zone. And then they will drag the statue somewhere to a secret island in the marshes, and look for it - you can be left without a head, but not a penny, because right there, on a neighboring island, there will be five such statues for five temples.
But there is always some “but”.
With this order, Peter I sent Metropolitan Philotheus to Tobolsk. Power and the Church against paganism and idols - the outcome of such a battle is predetermined, but the battle took centuries. Idols were burned, melted and broken, the population was baptized by coercion and starvation, they looked for hidden idols and shamans. They could not find only one - the Golden Woman.
Kazym Khanty said: “We have weed-nai”. The Sosvinskys assured: "We have." The Yuganskys kept repeating: "We have somewhere." And only the Kondinsky Mansi declared: “We have not had her for a long time. Our old men took her somewhere and then died without telling anyone. Now we don't know where it is hidden."