Mythologies of the Samoyedic People

The Samoyedic people (also Samodeic people) are a group of closely related peoples who speak Samoyedic languages, which are part of the Uralic family. They are a linguistic, ethnic, and cultural grouping. The name derives from the obsolete term Samoyed (meaning "self-eater" in Russian) used in Russia for some Indigenous people of Siberia. The largest of the Samoyedic peoples are the Nenets, who mainly live in two autonomous districts of Russia: Yamalo-Nenetsia and Nenetsia. Some of the Nenets and most of the Enets and Nganasans used to live in the Taymyria autonomous district (formerly known as Dolgano-Nenetsia), but today this area is a territory with special status within Krasnoyarsk Krai. Most of the Selkups live in Yamalo-Nenetsia, but there is also a significant population in Tomsk Oblast.

Samoyeds of Siberia are one
of Earth’s last primitive peoples

The Samoyeds are few in number and are scattered thinly across their inhospitable land. Many still cling to their ancient, simple way of life. They are divided into three tribes and each tribe lives in the manner best suited to its own strictly defined territory. Our Samoyed is of the Nenet tribe, by far the largest of the three. They herd reindeer like their more sophisticated western neighbours, the Lapps of Finland and Norway. All Samoyeds have Asiatic features and seldom grow much above five feet tall. Their reindeer are as vital to them as camels are to the desert Bedouin. Men, women and children all dress in thick reindeer-skin clothes.

Samoyedic languages, group of languages spoken in Siberia and the Russian Arctic that, together with the Finno-Ugric languages, constitute the family of Uralic languages (q.v.). There are five Samoyedic languages, which are divided into two subgroups—North Samoyedic and South Samoyedic. The North Samoyedic subgroup consists of Nenets (Yurak), Enets (Yenisey), and Nganasan (Tavgi). The South Samoyedic subgroup comprises Selkup and the practically extinct Kamas language. None of these languages was written before 1930, and they are currently used only occasionally for educational purposes in some elementary schools.

Formerly the Nenets were also called Samoyed. The direct translation of the word from Russian language is "self-eater", and understandably it is rather derogatory. The name Nenets comes from their own language and means a human being. The word Yamal, the home for most of the Nenets, means literally "the end of the earth". During the Soviet time the state started collecting the children of the nomadic families to boarding schools. Those times, as with many other indigenous people groups around the world, they were forbidden to speak their own language. After nine years of schooling many were alienated from their traditional way of life, but were not fully adapted into the Russian life either. The state tried to have people settle in villages, the reindeer herds were collectivized and often only the men were traveling in turns to take care of the reindeer. Sadly, however, the collapse of the Soviet State left people with little of no means of supporting themselves, leading to loss of identity and big social problems in villages. After the collapse of the Soviet State some were able to attain enough reindeer and returned to the tundra with their families. That's where they seem to be the happiest.

The ancient Samoyedic people separated from the Finno-Ugrians about 3,000 B.C. Hajdú mentions that they headed east but remained in the woodlands near the Ural Mountains. They have remained in contact with other Uralic groups for a time but even that contact was severed. The Proto-Samoyed people settled in western Siberia. In this region, they had little contact with other people. This helped maintain a common language and lifestyle among them. The Turkic people were the first to come in contact with Samoyed in the first centuries B.C. According to Chinese almanacs; ‘some Turkic tribes had gotten...to the borders of Europe. . . as a result of the pressures of the restless peoples behind them. The westernmost and northwestern most of these were the people known. . .as the Ting-ling. . . there lived among the Ting-ling a fur trading people who spoke a strange language and slid faster on their hoofs than a horse.’ The people described in that passage were the Nganasan, one the Northern Samoyed groups who have distinctive boots that resembles a hoof. The contact between the Turks and Nganasan seemed to be one of trade and commerce. The length of their contact in unknown but certain Samoyed words such as "money" and "sable" have Turkish origin. Hajdú goes on to explain an eastern movement of the Samoyed groups scattering all over the northern regions of Siberia. The northern groups of the Samoyed separated from the southern groups and advanced into northern Siberia. The southern group stayed in their location but soon a group of them headed northeastward toward the middle course of Ob’ River and later another group started to move to the Sayan Mountains.

The Samoyeds are the indigenous peoples of the tundra, taiga and mountainous territories in northern Eurasia who speak a systematically related set of languages. Most live in western Siberia, in the region extending from the Yamal and Taimyr peninsulas at the Arctic Ocean in the north along the waterways of the Yenisei River to the Sayan Mountains in the south; a few live in northeasternmost Europe on the Kola Peninsula and near the Pechora River. As a linguistic group, Samoyed is related to Finno-Ugric; together they form the Uralic language family. Currently numbering about thirty-five thousand, the Samoyed peoples are broadly divided into the northern Samoyeds and the southern Samoyeds. Northern Samoyed groups include the Nentsy (also called the Yurak Samoyeds or the Yuraks), who, with approximately thirty thousand members, are by far the largest Samoyed group, extending their territory from the Kola Peninsula crossing the Urals and over the Yamal Peninsnula to the Yenisei; the Nganasani (or Tavgi), with about 800–1000 members at the Taimyr Peninsula; and the Entsy (or Yenisei Samoyeds), with about 200–400 members. Of the southern Samoyeds, only one group survives, the Selkup (formerly called the Ostiak Samoyeds), with some 3,500 members.

The Samoyed peoples live in the northern parts of Arkhangel’sk, Tiumen’, and Tomsk oblasts and
in Krasnoiarsk Krai, mainly in the Nenets, Yamal-Nenets, and Taimyr (Dolgan-Nenets) national okrugs. In the 17th and 18th centuries some Samoyeds, known as the Southern
Samoyeds (Kamasin, Mator, Karagas), lived in Southern Siberia, in the Saian Upland. The
Samoyeds of this group completely lost their native languages and became for the most part
members of Turkicspeaking peoples, such as the Tuvinians and Khakas; some merged with the
Russian population. Most researchers believe that Southern Siberia was the ancient homeland of
the Samoyed peoples. In the first and early second millennia A.D., the Samoyeds migrated in several waves from Southern Siberia to the north, where they mixed with the local aboriginal population,
which was probably related linguistically to the Lapps and, partly, the Yukaghir. The Samoyeds led mainly a nomadic way of life until the October Revolution of 1917. Under Soviet power, sovkhozes
and kolkhozes engaged in deer raising, the fur trade, fishing, and cage fur farming have been
established in the regions inhabited by the Samoyeds. A national intelligentsia has emerged.