Samoyed Mythology

Dyekiss Virág
Budapest

Sihirtes, sigies, olasnes - mythical creatures of North-Samoyed peoples

The mythical peoples of Nenets folklore, especially the sihirtes, have been in the focus of scientific interest. The classical article of Chernetsov[1] and of Vasiljev[2] presents us the theory that sihirtes were the ancient inhabitants of North-Siberia. This theory inspired several continuing researches, especially in the field of archaeology of Yamal peninsula, but after the summary of sihirte-legends there aren't any comparative studies about the parallel phenomena of the other North-Samoyed peoples. Besides, the other mythical peoples of Nenetses, Enetses and Nganasans have to be taken into account, also. It's important to collect the semantic signs of these creatures, so we can see the connection among them.   Unfortunately from the Enets we haven't got as many data as from the two other languages, but still some conclusions can be made.

1. Nenets mythical peoples - sjudba, parne, sihirte

First of all, I would like to present these mythical peoples as the myths of sihirte-people are typical in Nenets folklore. The fact that Nenets folklore is rich in giants is a common knowledge. In the first folklore collections, collected by M.A. Castrén and T. Lehtisalo, we find several narratives about these creatures.

The most common mythical being of Nenets folklore is called sjudba. These creatures mainly described as giants. We can compose two bigger groups of the texts containing data of sjudba-s. In the first group we find the Nenets mythical narratives[3]. In the second one there are the narratives that are versions of world-wide known tale-types or similar to them. The contemporary collections contain more texts from the second type. The first collections focused in the archaic myths and mythical texts.

From the narratives it is clear that the sjudba-s are in enmity with humans, they eat them, if they can. In spite of this, sometimes they use the help of... [continues]

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