Who are the Nenets (of Samoyeds)

The Nenets arrived in the Arctic in the first millennium BC from the Altai-Sayan region near Mongolia. Until the eighteenth century BC they were only hunters and gatherers with a small number of reindeer as a means of transportation. They had had contact with Russian fur traders since at least the 11th century BC, but when the first Russian settlements were found on Nenet territory in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, many of them started herding reindeer and fled with their herds north towards the Yamal. It is still debated whether this was as a direct result of contact with the Russians or if it was simply due to a change in climate and a reduction in the number of wild reindeer that made hunting unfeasible.

 

Nenets woman on the Yamal Peninsula

The Nenets are spread over a very large area and not all of them live solely on the Yamal Peninsula. Its territory stretches from the Kanin peninsula in the west to the Taimir peninsula in the east. Each nomadic group is officially registered in the nearest town and most of the nomads have relatives in the town. In the Yamal peninsula alone the ratio of nomadic Nenets to village Nenets is 50/50.

Nomadic Nenets live in the chum, a cone-shaped tent covered in reindeer fur. They wear two reindeer fur coats with reindeer fur gloves, reindeer fur hoods, and reindeer fur boots at thigh height. Every summer women sew new clothing sets (using reindeer tendon as thread) for all the people who live in their Chum. The ties and ropes are made of pure reindeer fur. The sleds are handmade from wood and no metal or nails are used. There are several traditional Nenet tools that to this day are used by every reindeer herder to make their sleds. Sleds are pushed by reindeer. Reindeer harnesses are made of reindeer skin and various parts of reindeer bone.

The Nenets' favorite food is reindeer meat and raw reindeer blood, they eat and drink directly from the body of a fresh, recently killed reindeer. They tie ropes around the neck of the live reindeer, turn their heads to face the west, and strangle two or three people, each pulling one end of the rope. Then they tear off the skin and dry it. Clothes will be made from this skin. After the women cut and open the reindeer, everyone sits around it on the ground and they start ripping out the liver, kidney, lungs, meat, esophagus, heart and they eat it all right there. They pass a bowl or cup to each other, shove it into the reindeer's body, and drink its warm blood. Most groups have their summer grasslands further north and their winter grasslands further south. They move the camps on reindeer sleds. The men normally carry a sleigh drawn by five reindeer and lead them with a long wooden stick called Khorei. Women and children carry long tails of six or seven sleds called argysh with several reindeer in front of each sled in the argysh.

The southern Yamal Nenets, which visitors to this page normally stay with, have the largest herds (up to 10,000) and the longest migration routes (up to 1,200km) of all Nenets.

During summer they are at the northern end of the Yamal peninsula while in winter they are not on the peninsula itself but southwest across the Gulf of Obi in the Nadym region.

When they have to move the camp, all the chum are dismounted and put on the sleds, then the herders tie up the transport reindeer they need for the sleds. Men set out with the herd on the sleds and women and children begin the migration on the argysh, the entire caravan gliding toward the horizon in a row up to 2km long.

When they find a suitable place to set up camp, it is usually a high ground with a wide flat area nearby that the herd can easily be cornered, the group leader nailing his khorei to the ground where He wants this to be the center of his chum.

At that moment everyone begins to unload the sleds, unhook the reindeer and assemble the chums, with the group leader always located on the far right (seen from behind) and the entrance of all the chum facing the same place. There are dozens of different types of reindeer that are immediately recognized by the Nenets in the midst of a herd of thousands and for each of them there is a different word in the Nenet language.

An example is the sacred reindeer: each person and each god has his own sacred reindeer that can never be killed until he is old enough to walk on his own.

When the moment arrives and a sacred reindeer is killed they find another that looks like him, they rub him with the blood of the dead reindeer and he happens to take his place.

Another example of a different type of reindeer is the orphan reindeer. The Nenets host these reindeer in their chum and raise them until they are old enough to defend themselves.

These reindeer will never be killed, instead of killing them they give them to other families when they are very old. That family kills him and returns the gesture by giving them one of his orphaned reindeer in return.

Throughout their lives, orphaned reindeer can live with the herd or people of the chum in which they were raised, and move freely between the two options.

They are the only reindeer that eat human food like bread.

For an outsider it is very amazing to see how the Nenets so easily recognize the face of their reindeer in the midst of a herd of 10,000.

When a herd of 10,000 is cornered, all the people in the camp including 6 year olds know which reindeer are orphans or sacred and therefore must let them go. The Nenets recognize even the orphaned and sacred reindeer of other families. I myself have seen 6-year-old girls standing in front of their chum while a herd of 10,000 was galloping around 30 meters away and when they saw one of their family's orphaned reindeer they started jumping up and yelling and waving at them.

Another example of a type of reindeer is the ancestral reindeer, reindeer that belong to the idols (statuettes of about 60cm) of their most important and powerful ancestors and that the Nenets have in their chum.

These idols are dressed in Nenets clothing and the family makes a new set of clothing for them each year.

There are also some idols of gods. The idols of the ancestors are kept in the chum and the idols of the gods are kept in a sacred sled along with materials to make new clothes for them.

When the camp is to be moved, they must all be kept on the holy sled and no one can ever sit on that sled. When a holy sled gets old and breaks it should be left at the nearest holy place.

There are hundreds of sacred places throughout the Yamal, ranging from a simple natural element such as a mountain or river or a hill of horns and sacrificial reindeer skulls to a wooden idol placed in the tundra or huge areas covered with idols, skulls of bears, sacred sledges and others.

In the Nenets worldview there is a force called sya mei. It is connected to the other world, that of birth and death, and can be harmful when it comes into contact with this world. Women just past puberty are permanently affected by this power, as are newborn babies and people who have been present at a funeral or death recently. There are a remarkable number of taboos and restrictions for people affected by sya mei. . They cannot touch the sacred sleigh, they cannot step on anything a reindeer has touched, instead they must pass harnesses, etc. .. over their heads and go under them. They cannot cross an imaginary line, which goes from the central pole of the chum to the sacred pole at the back of the chum and towards the tundra, while still looking at the chum. They cannot visit the sacred sites or participate in the sacrifices. They cannot cut certain fish, cross the paths of bears that are considered sacred, walk over a pregnant bitch, wear a man's reindeer fur boots, cannot step on a man, and cannot hang their clothes anywhere. part since this could lead to men going under.

Nenets women have to constantly keep these considerations in mind and are affected by them hundreds of times a day, so if you saw them working without knowing all this, many of their actions would seem incomprehensible.

Sometimes rituals have to be practiced to clean up something that has been affected by sya mei, the most common of which includes jumping over a fire multiple times. After a baby is born in a chum a reindeer has to be slaughtered outside the gate.

Daily life consists of cornering the reindeer, making sure they are not going too far, chopping wood, collecting ice for water, looking for places with good grass to move the chum and herd, strangling reindeer for meat, cleaning the accumulation of snow near the chum, fixing things, cooking, babysitting, sewing reindeer clothes or blankets, making pallets or sticks for the chum, making new sleds, collecting moss to use as "toilet paper", and in summer fish.
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