Encountering the Tsar: Nenets Epic Singing as a Representation of Historicity

This article discusses Nenets epic songs, focusing on two texts collected at the beginning of the twentieth century in relation to the divergent historicities they represent. The process of gathering and publishing folklore is analysed as folklorisation, whereby the texts have come to represent a negation of the modern, but not giving voice to the singers or their communities. Nenets epic songs have served Finnish nationalism and Russian imperialism in creating hierarchies between Finns and their linguistic relatives and between different Russian ethnic groups, including Russians and the Nenets. The process of traditionalisation is discussed as a local strategy of recreating meaningful narration that relates both to tradition  and other contextually relevant discourses. The songs discussed are shown to depict not specific past events, but rather Nenets historical experiences and understandings about their subaltern position and agency within the imperial context. Keywords: Nenets, epic poetry, historicity, folklorisation, traditionalisation, imperialis

Soviet voices in Nenets literature

Peer reviewe

Rendering comfort and control in Tundra Nenets sambadabc

This article approaches Nenets sambadabc, shamanic ritual songs, bringing together current understandings about Tundra Nenets language, folklore and singing with discussions about reindeer herding. The research material consists of ten texts gathered by Toivo Lehtisalo in the beginning of 20th century. The analysis concentrates on the Nenets language ideologies and the ways singing is objectified and commodified; on Nenets honorific registers and the ways in which spirits are interacted with; and on the interrelationship of the ways spirits and reindeer are interacted within the frames of sentient ecology. As a result, the article draws a spectrum of differing materialities that are inherent in understanding the performance and revoicing of the sambadabc and in informing the interaction between human and variable non-human others.Peer reviewe

Between field observations, notes and knowledge: Content and contexts for M. A. Castrén’s ethnographic notes and lectures

This article discusses M. A. Castrén’s (1803‒1852) ethnographic notes and lectures on Samoyed peoples as part of the development of ethnography and Arctic research in the early 19th-century Russian Empire. Castrén produced several types of texts based on his two Russian expeditions, including travel narratives, letters, linguistic transcriptions and ethnographic notes. In addition, he gave lectures about the peoples he studied. The article describes the types of data Castrén collected, the way he organized it and subsequently presented to academic audiences. The academic and societal background of Castrén’s ethnography illustrated in the article, relates him to A. J. Sjögren and to the Imperial Russian and European development of ethnography. It is argued that the tensions between nationalistic aims and broader academic discussions that split Russian discussions over ethnography represented a fruitful context for imperial subjects, such as Castrén

Voice and frames in Soviet Nenets' Auto/Biographies

This article explores the narrative and metalinguistic devices used by two Nenets writers, Nikolaj Vylka and Anton Pyrerka, in the auto/biographical novels they wrote in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Focusing on narrator roles and voices, the article argues that despite the overarching programme of socialist realism, the writers creatively used available linguistic resources to build socialist plots and frames in their novels. However, their choices differ considerably, reflecting their divergent ideas about the relationship between pre- and post-Soviet Nenets culture.Peer reviewe

Animating the Unseen: Landscape discourses as mnemonics among Kolguyev Nenets

Changes, such as the social, cultural and economic transformations of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, evoke a need to remember and remind. Recollecting can be expressed in multiple ways, among which discourses connected with physical artefacts are a universal form, though contents and meanings vary  considerably. This article examines Kolguyev Nenets memories of, and discourses about, a hill named Seĭkorkha: a sacred place whose idols were destroyed  in the Soviet years. Providing a backdrop to this Nenets discourse is an artistic project which aimed to protect the Kolguyev Nenets and their island. The  recollections are seen both as valued speech and as a part of everyday resistance to imposed transformations. This case study, based on field work and  archival materials,shows how a community that has lived through vast changes has built continuity and stability through constantly changing discourse about a place that has been undergoing modifications for centuries. Keywords: Nenets, post-Soviet, memorial, sacred places, resistance, discours

Domesticated mammoths : Mythic and material in Nenets verbal tradition on ya’ xora

This article discusses language materialities and the Otherworld through the findings of mammoth remains and text-artifacts representing Nenets verbal art. The remains and verbal art are read together as a network of mythic knowledge that forms a semiotic whole, where different signs interact and create potentials for new significations. The article aims to open up a web of relations in which materialities of differing ages and durabilities meet and affect each other through their semiotic potentialities. The materialities operate on several levels of signification, ranging from basic metaphors for mammoths to larger regimes that organize the signification. Consequently, mythic knowledge concerns worlds that are, on the one hand, imperceptible but, on the other, sensible through narration and imagination in terms of materialities. The key material elements of the mythic knowledge are tainted by the narration, such that they cannot be considered without the mythic qualities. In addition, the knowledge concerning the world affects Nenets rituals and ways of dwelling.Peer reviewe