Shamanism in Siberia

• 1. The Heartland

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  Siberian shamanism gave the world the very word "shaman." The Evenk language supplied it to Russian, and from Russian it traveled into every European tongue. Some researchers regard Siberia as the heartland of shamanism. A large minority of people across North Asia continue to observe religio-cultural practices that many classical ethnographers have spent generations recording. The peoples of Siberia are many and distinct. Nenets, Nganasan, Evenk, Nivkh, Koryak, Ket, and dozens of other ethnic groups each carry their own version of these traditions. Geography and language have shaped each one differently. How does a single linguistic root for "female shaman" appear across so many otherwise unrelated tongues? What did the music of a healing séance actually sound like? And what became of these practices when Soviet-era researchers finally arrived with film equipment? Yupik groups carry shamanistic beliefs across a vast territory, from Eastern Siberia through Alaska and Northern Canada to Greenland. The tradition spans continental borders that it has never recognized.

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• 2. Words for the Unspeakable

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  Maria Czaplicka made a striking observation about Siberian languages. The words for male shaman vary widely from one linguistic group to another. But the words for female shaman are nearly all derived from the same root. In Mongol, the term is iduɣan; in Yakut, udaɣan; in Buryat, udagan; in Evenki, udugan; in Negidal, odogan. Related forms appear across many other Siberian languages: utagan, ubakan, utygan, utügun, iduan, and duana. All of these trace back to the Mongolian name Etügen, the hearth goddess, and to Etügen Eke, meaning "Mother Earth." Czaplicka connected this linguistic convergence to a theory about origins. Women's practice of shamanism, she argued, was established earlier than men's. Shamans were, in her words, "originally female." The male vocabulary tells a different story. The Yukagir call their practitioner alman, olman, or wolmen. The Khanty and Mansi use ńajt, derived from the Proto-Uralic root nojta, the same root that produced the Sámi noaidi. The Buryat word böö descends from early Mongolian böge, which came from the Proto-Turkic bögü, meaning "sage" or "wizard." Across Turkic-speaking Siberia, from the Tatars and Shor to the Oyrats, Tuvans, and Tofalar, each group has its own related term for the practitioner. In some Turkic territories, shamanism became amalgamated with Islam; in others, with Buddhism. Surviving shamanistic traditions are documented among the Siberian Tatars, Tuvans, and Tofalar.

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• 3. The Sound of the Séance

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  In a Soyot shamanic song, the shaman imitates the sounds of a bird and a wolf to summon helping spirits. This intention to mirror the natural world appears across multiple Siberian cultures. Some shamanistic music is designed to mimic natural sounds, sometimes through onomatopoeia. This holds true for the Sámi noaidi, whose ritual songs, called joiks, were performed during shamanistic rites. Joiks are now sung in two different styles. One style belongs to young people alone. The other, a mumbling style that resembles magic spells, may be the more traditional of the two. Some joiks deliberately mimic natural sounds. This stands in contrast to bel canto singing, which aims to push the human voice toward an almost superhuman level of achievement. Overtone singing is another example of the mimetic impulse found in Siberian cultures. In the séances of the Nganasan people, women imitated the sounds of reindeer calves. This was believed to bring fertility to those women. In 1931, the ethnographer A. Popov witnessed the Nganasan shaman Dyukhade Kosterkin imitating the sound of a polar bear. The shaman was believed to have transformed into that animal during the performance. In most Siberian cultures, becoming a shaman was not inevitable even for someone who felt the calling. The candidate could refuse, and taking up the practice generally followed conscious deliberation rather than compulsion.

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• 4. The Clean Tent Rite

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  The isolated location of the Nganasan people in the Arctic ensured that shamanism remained a living practice well into the 20th century. Among no other Samoyedic group was the tradition so intact for so long. One of the occasions in which the Nganasan shaman partook was the clean tent rite, held after the polar night and including sacrifices. The Nganasan shaman kept three different crowns, each reserved for a specific situation. One served for journeys to the upper world, one for the world underneath, and one for occasions of childbirth. The last notable Nganasan shaman's séances were recorded on film in the 1970s. Among the Nenets, Enets, and Selkup peoples, there were several distinguished types of shamans as well. The Nenets recognized practitioners who contacted the upper world, those who contacted the world below, and those who communicated with the dead. Diószegi Vilmos, an ethnographer, traveled to the Sayan Mountains in the late 1950s to speak personally with formerly practicing shamans. He recorded their memories, songs, and some of their paraphernalia. Whether the shamanism Diószegi documented in the Sayan Mountains was borrowed entirely from neighboring Turkic peoples is unresolved. The possibility that it preserved some ethnic features of Samoyedic origin has never been settled.

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• 5. The Skeleton Dress

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  Among the Karagas and Eastern Soyot people, the shaman's dress carried effigies representing human organs, primarily bones. The headdress bore a representation of a human face. The Karagas shaman Kokuyev sang a dress-initiating song that contained the phrase "my shamanic dress with seven vertebrae." Mihály Hoppál interpreted the skeleton-like overlay of the Karagas shaman dress as a symbol of shamanic rebirth. A similar interpretation applies to the skeleton-like iron ornamentation of the Ket shamanic dress. Hoppál noted this might also symbolize the bones of the loon, the shaman's helper animal. The loon was significant: it joins both the air and the underwater world. The shaman similarly traveled to both the sky and the underworld. Karagas and Eastern Soyot cultures shared many features that set them apart from neighboring Turkic peoples. Their shamanic drum had a distinctive structural feature: two transoms, rather than one. This may reflect features of Samoyedic origin. The central Soyot groups, who kept cattle and horses, showed Khalkha Mongol features in their shamanism. The Western Soyots, living on the steppe, practiced forms closer to those of the Altai Turkic peoples. A Soyot shaman story narrated contacts between Soyots and Abakan Turkic peoples in mythical form. Among some Altai Turks, phallic-erotic fertility rites can be compared to similar Ugrian practices. This may be a trace of earlier contact between these peoples, though the connection remains tentative.

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• 6. Beyond Siberia's Core

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  Among Tungusic peoples, the Tale of the Nisan Shaman tells of a female shaman who resurrects a rich landowner's son. The Manchus, the Evenks, and the Nanai all know this story. The Koryak and Chukchi peoples, who are linguistically close to the Yupik, also maintained shamanistic traditions. Among some Yupik groups, a young child received a guardian name inherited from a recently deceased relative. In some communities, this practice amounted to a form of reincarnation. Shamanism among some Yupik groups also encompassed beliefs in soul dualism. The shaman's free-soul could fly to celestial or underground realms, contacting mythological beings. It negotiated with them to end calamities or bring success in the hunt. When a spirit's anger was believed to stem from broken taboos, the shaman called on community members to confess those violations. Among the Nivkh people, indigenous to the Amur river basin and the adjacent Sakhalin island, shamans were called ch'am. Nivkh shamans traditionally diagnosed and cured disease. They wore elaborate coats with metal belts, used plant and animal remedies, and employed talismans to ward off future sickness. A shaman's services were compensated with goods, quarters, and food. Chiyo Nakamura, a Sakhalin Nivkh shaman, recorded, preserved, and donated artifacts related to Nivkh shamanism. The Selkup people, the only remaining speakers of a Southern Samoyedic language, live farther south than most of these groups. Folklore memories of their shamanism could still be recorded in the 1960s, even though active practice had already declined by the early 20th century.

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• 7. The 2002 Count

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  The 2002 census of the Russian Federation counted 123,423 people from ethnic groups that predominantly adhere to traditional beliefs. That figure represents 0.23 percent of the total population. The Evenks were the largest of these groups, with 35,527 people recorded. The Evens numbered 19,071; the Chukchi, 15,767; the Nanai, 12,160; and the Mansi, 11,432. The Koryaks were counted at 8,743, the Nivkhs at 5,162, the Ket at 1,494, and the Nganasan at 834. The Ket tradition had already passed its peak by the 1960s, when almost no authentic shaman could still be found. That tradition had attracted a succession of researchers: Matthias Castrén, Vasiliy Ivanovich Anuchin, Kai Donner, Hans Findeisen, and Yevgeniya Alekseyevna Alekseyenko. Each documented Ket culture before it retreated from active practice. The ancestors of the Hungarian people migrated from a Siberian homeland to the Pannonian Basin beginning in the late 9th century. Shamanism is no longer widely practiced in Hungary today. The ethnographer Diószegi Vilmos showed that shamanistic motifs persisted in Hungarian folktales, folk songs, and rhymes. Mihály Hoppál continued this comparative work, examining shamanic beliefs among speakers of Uralic languages alongside traditions from several non-Uralic Siberian peoples. Among modern Ugrians, the Khanty remain the group that most actively practices shamanism. The practice had already become a dying tradition among the Khanty and Mansi by the 1930s. Combined linguistic and botanical evidence suggests the original Proto-Uralic homeland lay between the Kama and Vyatka rivers. These lie on the western side of the Ural Mountains. The Sámi people of Europe, who represent one branch of that family, maintained shamanistic practice until the 18th century.

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