Nenets
In our third Cult-ED series of lessons we will introduce you to the reindeer herders of the Yamal Peninsula, known as the Nenets. The Yamal Peninsula is located northwest of Siberia, Russia. The peninsula lies above the Arctic circle close to the north pole.
Yearly the Nenets migrate with their reindeer around the 800-1000 km up and down the Yamal Peninsula. In the winter months, the Nenets graze their reindeer on moss and lichen pastures in the southern forests or taiga. In the spring, they migrate to the north and leave the forest behind.
Do you want to know everything about the reindeer herders of Siberia? Then join us on a migration with the Nenets.
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The End of the World
For more than a millennium, the Nenets have thrived in one of the most inhospitable places on earth, the Yamal Peninsula.
Yamal means ‘the end of the world’ in Nenets and this peninsula, above the Arctic Circle, consists largely of barren tundra, permafrost and coastlines that remain frozen for most of the year. The land along the banks of the Ob river is covered with dense Siberian forest, known as taiga, with vast, marshy areas full of mosquito swarms. Here, in the windswept regions temperatures dip to -50 degrees Celsius in winter and soar to 35 degrees Celsius in summer.
Earth’s permafrost region, which remains frozen throughout the year, includes parts of Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Siberia.
In recent years, however, global warming and other environmental changes are causing the permafrost and sections of the Arctic Ocean to thaw, making it increasingly difficult for the Nenets to maintain their traditional nomadic lifestyle.
The life of Nenets people in this area is based on following the reindeer as they move along ancient routes around the tundra. To survive the winter the reindeer eat a type of lichen known as reindeer moss, which may be covered in metres of snow.
The Khudi Nenets people have animist beliefs in nature gods, and they describe the Northern Lights as being caused by the god Num passing through the sky.
Deities and ancestors are symbolized as wooden figures dressed in clothing made specially by the women of the community. They establish a connection to Mother Earth and are carried around by the members of the brigade as they migrate from place to place. The larger idols represent powerful ancestors, and the smaller ones represent gods and spirits such as the chum protectors.
Numbering around 45,000, their community is divided into three different subgroups. The Tundra Nenets – simply known as Nenets – are the most populous, with 30,000 to 40,000 people.
Approximately 1,500 Forest Nenets, or Khandeyar, live in the southern taigas of Nenets territory. A third group, known as Yaran, is the result of marriages with the neighbouring Izhma Komi people.
On their annual migration of over 1,000 kilometres, the Nenets move herds of reindeer that can number in the thousands from summer pastures in the north to winter pastures just south of the Arctic Circle.
Their trek includes a 48-kilometre crossing of the frozen waters of the Gulf of Ob, and today, more than 10,000 nomads herd 300,000 domestic reindeer on the pastures of the Arctic tundra. For these journeys, reindeer are used to pull sledges that carry the people and their camp. Men generally lead the way, driving a sledge drawn by five reindeer and directing the animals with a large wooden stick known as a khorei. The women and children follow in long trains of six or seven sledges, each drawn by several reindeer, called an arg ysh. Trained dogs of the Nenets herding laika breed, known for their perfect adaptation to the environment, are used to help manage the herds. The giant single-file reindeer trains can stretch out to eight kilometres in length.
In the winter, the migration process has a cycle of roughly three days, depending on the weather. The whole complicated procedure starts early in the morning – in the depths of winter, that means temperatures of around -50 degrees Celsius.
The community wraps up all their possessions in cloth and place them on the right sledge before dismantling the chum, and divide the piles of animal furs and long poles among the sledges. After that, out in the cold without a home, they chase their reindeer to find the right one to lead the caravan of sledges. The brigade forms a caravan of sledges ploughing through the snow, followed by their herd, to a new place many kilometres away, where they will repeat the whole process of rebuilding their camp.
The Khudi Nenets brigade we visited have a herd of some 4,000 reindeer, with roughly 1,500 of them belonging to the Khudi Nenets themselves. The remaining 2,500 are owned by the ‘state farms’.
If Khudi Nenets people slaughter a state-farm animal, its value is docked from their salary, but they are allowed to slaughter their own reindeer. When they do, they utilize every part of the animal. They drink the warm blood, eat the brain and the fat behind the eyes and big chunks of liver with salt. Khudi Nenets people eat raw reindeer meat and frozen fish for each of their three daily meals, because uncooked meat provides energy for a longer period and is a good source of iron and vitamins.
During the coldest part of the year, it is especially important for the Khudi Nenets people to have the right clothes.
To protect them from the icy winds, they have a variety of garments, all made of reindeer hide: their coats and their hats as well as the tobaki and the piva – the inner and outer layers of their boots. The hats, worn only by women, are decorated with colourful ribbons, beads and weights of different shapes hanging on threads. The men wear plain, fur hoods attached to their fur coats, and colourful belts with knives attached.
Reindeer play a vital role in the lives and rich oral traditions of the Nenets. Aside from their market value, reindeer provide a source of food, shelter, clothing, transport, spiritual fulfilment and means of socialising.
When an animal is slaughtered, nothing goes to waste. Nenets eat every part and even drink fresh reindeer blood, which is nutritious and is said to warm the body. The fur is used for clothing and bedding and the skins are used as insulation for their homes. Nenets make thread from the sinews, lassoes from the tendons and use the bones for tools and to build sledges. Surplus meat and furs are sold or traded in villages and the antlers are exported – mainly to China, where they are used in traditional medicine.
The tipi-shaped chum tents are made out of tall, strong poles and reindeer skins. Inside, the floor is covered with wooden planks, and a stove stands at the centre.
It is more likely to be lit when a man is present. The hole in the roof functions as a chimney. Beside the stove stands a heated pan in which they melt ice to use for making tea during winter. The rear of the tent, where the most important possessions are kept on a sledge, is considered sacred, and women are not allowed there.
When they are not busy migrating, daily life for the Nenets consists of caring for their reindeer, chopping firewood, clearing snow, collecting ice for water and, in the summertime, fishing.
The women cook, sew and look after the youngest children, while the men make and repair sledges, slaughter reindeer for meat and construct materials to build their homes.
The Khudi Nenets people have animist beliefs in nature gods, and they describe the Northern Lights as being caused by the god Num passing through the sky.
Deities and ancestors are symbolized as wooden figures dressed in clothing made specially by the women of the community. They establish a connection to Mother Earth and are carried around by the members of the brigade as they migrate from place to place. The larger idols represent powerful ancestors, and the smaller ones represent gods and spirits such as the chum protectors.
Nenets speak their own Uralic language, known locally as N’enytsia Vada, which is distantly related to Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. Tundra Nenets and Forest Nenets speak different versions that are largely mutually unintelligible.
The word ‘parka’ comes from the Nenets language and means ‘animal skin’. There are many different words for nature and weather conditions – especially the characteristics and types of snow – as well as an abundance of terms used to describe reindeer, hunting and fishing. The Nenets themselves are named after n’enay nenyts, which in N’enytsia Vada means ‘real man’.
In the 1970s, oil and gas were discovered on the Yamal Peninsula causing the infrastructure in the region to expand rapidly. It is estimated that the Nenets territory harbours almost a quarter of the world’s known reserves.
The Nenets have had increasing contact with the outside world since 2011, when a Russian gas company opened the Obskaya-Bovanenkovo line: the northernmost railway in the world, used to transport supplies directly to the gas fields. Now, the tundra is home to a growing number of gas-worker villages and covered by thousands of exploration drill sites.
The ongoing Yamal Megaproject – the largest energy project in Russian history – aims to further develop the region.
The Nenets are directly under threat by this industrialisation process, with railways and roads hindering their migration routes and pollution impacting their natural habitat. So far, Nenets have managed to adapt remarkably well to their changing environment. However, despite some benefits, such as improved trading opportunities and medical facilities, the future of their traditional lifestyle hangs in the balance.
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