Siberia Archives -

16 Jul

New acquisitions: Children’s books about the Russian Far East

A pile of RFE children’s books

Alaska has a different relationship with Russia than any other American state. It’s a geographic, historical, and even emotional connection. After all, as Sara Palin put it, we can see Russia from our backyards. As you might imagine, the political border between northwestern Alaska and northeastern Russia, is one that was largely disregarded by the indigenous peoples on both sides of the Bering Strait until the Cold War got far enough along to enforce the border and separate families. The Iron Curtain was something that dropped down in Eastern Europe. Alaska and the Russian Far East were divided by the Ice Curtain, and when it began to melt sister-city ties were established that were truer siblings than many such international relationships. Exchanges happened as well, including with my hometown.

The exchange visits were more than a swap of people: they were exchanges of material goods, mostly in the form of gifts. I remember collecting bubble gum for some sort of international care package when I was in second grade, because we understood that Soviet children were deprived of this ubiquitous American luxury. In high school, when I took my first international trip to Magadan, each American student carried one piece of luggage, and one box of printer paper for the school we would visit. I returned with VHS tapes that would not play, but visitors who stayed with us brought jewelry (lots of mineral wealth in the RFE), brightly colored scarves, watches, and children’s books if they knew their hosts had children. Read More →

12 Nov

From an Alaskan point of view

Roughly equivalent, right? Maybe??

I sent another story through critters.org and got back a lot of helpful commentary. Isobel and the Mammoths is going to be a teaser for the series I am currently working on – Isobel the Bear Eater. This particular project is going to be an interesting one. I am from Alaska, and have a degree in Russian, which gives me an insider view to the pan-Arctic culture that I am both borrowing from and creating, but leaves me really open to making references that are obvious to me but obscure to most everyone else. The critters pointed that out several cases where I had done this.

I’ll be working to make things clear to a general audience, of course, but there’s a part of me that delights in these small confusions. It’s payback, you see, for when I was reading stories as an Alaskan child, and there were plenty of references that were alien to me. (Except for maybe the Moomin Trolls. But obviously the Finns understand.)

What was a firefly? A toll bridge? A badger? A thirty-story apartment building? How could you tell a garter snake from a rattlesnake?

Robin Hood was always hunting deer, an animal I knew only from brief glimpses when visiting relatives in Pennsylvania, part of that vast territory that Alaskans refer to as the “Lower 48” or simply, “Outside.” I enjoyed Beatrix Potter, but it was moose that ate things in our garden, not rabbits, and I understood that hedgehogs were like porcupines, but smaller.

Botanical references were off, too. I never saw a weeping willow until I went to college in Connecticut. Tulips grew the floral department of the grocery store, not in fields. There were no cultivated fields – we never went on road trips and drove past fields or corn or cows or anything. Dogwood is a flower, maybe 8 inches high, not a tree. And while we’re at it, flowers on trees? What is this madness?

Dogwood versus Dwarf Dogwood. Wha?

One of the pieces of advice I see over and over is “write what you want to read.” So that’s what I’m doing. I want to read something in a world familiar to me. A world where summers are blinding light and endless adventure and winters are a time for telling stories next to a wood stove. A world with bears and berries in the woods, with salmon and sea stars in the ocean. Grumbling porcupines. Roiling ash clouds. Long crimson sunsets over the ocean; clouds streaked fluorescent orange over the mountains in the morning. Sea otters rolling in the water, scrubbing their hair just like you do in the shower. The way that cold snow squeaks underfoot or the spaceship noises that ice makes.

I could go on, but I think I need to get back to Isobel. There’s this spirit-fox that has been following her and she’s trying to figure out why…

11 Nov

Kamchatka Fall Festival «Alkhalalalai»

Art imitates life.

I am a good chunk into this year’s NaNoWriMo project, the first in a series of stories about Isobel the Bear Eater. Briefly, the series is epic fantasy in an alternate history Siberia. Although I have been doing a fair amount of research on the mythology of the indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Far East, as well as drawing on my own experiences growing up in Alaska, there are quite a few things I am muddling. Like adding obvious magic, and fiddling a bit with geography, and, well, you don’t care because you don’t know the story.

But here’s something I thought I was making up – an end of summer festival to say “yay! we have enough food and we’ll probably make it through the winter, so let’s have a dance party!” – and here’s a Russian news story on, well, an end of summer festival to say “yay! we have enough food and we’ll probably make it through the winter, so let’s have a dance party!”

If you don’t speak Russian, here’s the gist of it:
The Itelmen, Koryaks and other native groups on the Kamchatka Peninsula thank the spirits for a plentiful harvest during a festival called “Alkhalalalai.” It’s pretty much a sin to do any work during the holiday, instead everyone shares all the food they’ve gathered. There’s also a dance marathon, with strict rules – if you stop for more than 3 minutes, then you’re out. There’s singing and dancing with drums, and also throat-singing. (That’s the seagull imitation.) Close up quote from woman: “Now I understand how important it is for people to dance, because it’s not just physical movement. There’s a spiritual connection between people.” The dance marathon lasted for 16 hours and 10 minutes. The spirits should be satisfied.

30 Oct

What the Chukchis eat in the Russian Far East

Dishes of the Peoples of Yakutia

I am prepping for NaNoWriMo, as I may have mentioned, and I am super excited about it, because I’m planning an epic fantasy set in something like Siberia/the Russian Far East, except there is magic around, and the indigenous peoples have the political cooperation and shamanistic powers to drive back the Cossacks instead of becoming a fur-producing colony for the Russian Empire.

As such, I’ve been reading about Siberian history, and the mythology of various peoples of the RFE, making good use of my Russian degree. I’ve always been interested in RFE history, since it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump from Alaskan history, so I have some seemingly random references that are suddenly helpful, like this cookbook. Why do I have “Dishes of the Peoples of Yakutia”? No idea. But now it is providing me with helpful information on the diet of the Sakha [Yakuts], Evens, Evenks, Yukaghirs, and Chukchis. I started with Chukchis, because I’ve been reading some of Waldemar Bogoras’s texts on the Chukchi. Here’s my own rough translation of this cookbook’s Chukchi section, with occasional personal commentary in italics. The Russian text happens to be online already. I should note that the authors say there are few Chukchi around in Yakutia (I believe they mostly live in the next region over, Chukotka), and therefore their recipes are all sourced from other publications.

Chukchis hunted for wild reindeer, marine mammals, wild fowl and other game. They also fished, gathered wild berries, edibles plants and their roots. They boiled or roasted meat and fish, but also dried many products.

Pal’gyn [Пальгын] – Fat skimmed off of crushed and boiled reindeer bones, mixed with minced greens or boiled willow leaves and sorrel. Also mixed with meat for a smoked reindeer sausage.
Vil’mulimul’ [Вильмулимуль] – Reindeer blood, kidney, liver, ears, roasted hooves, and lips mixed with berries and sorrel and stuffed into a stomach, which is dried and then saved in cold storage and fermented over winter to provide a rich spring food, full of calories and vitamins. This food is made by many northern peoples.
Kykvatol’ [Кыкватоль] – Reindeer meat dried during windy weather in summer, or in the smoke indoors in wet weather. Outer layer is dry, but the interior remains fresh. It is sliced before eating, and fried if there are raw sections.
Nuvkurak [Нувкурак] – Whale meat dried until it has a hard crust while the inside of the meat remains raw. This is boiled in large cauldrons and stored in jars of seal oil. This is only used during winter. I was recently reading The Shaman’s Coat by Anna Reid, who mentions that boiled whale meat was quite succulent.
Mantak (or Intilgyn) for future use [Мантак (или интилгын) впрок] – Chukchis, as well as eskimos, widely used whale meat and whale skin [blubber?]. Blubber with tallow was eat raw and boiled. It was boiled for future use, and stored in jars with water and leaves of fireweed. This was a winter food. The leaves provided a pleasant smell and helped it keep longer. At the first frost in the fall, fresh blubber with tallow was put in a pit for meat. [This is a reasonable storage option in regions with permafrost.] Here it stayed until spring. In the winter it was eaten frozen, before bed. It was eaten boiled with a porridge made of the kyiugak plant.
Dish of roots of grasses or herbs [Блюда из корней трав] – Peeled and washed roots and stems of edible plants are minced and then pounded into an evenly mixed mass then mixed with finely chopped reindeer meat and seal oil. This is a stand alone dish, but can be eaten with other dishes.
K’uvykhsi [К’увыхси] – The upper stem and leaves of [three-wing-fruit] are gathered before it flowers and saved for later. The grass is boiled, cream scalded… too many exotic words in this one, but it is added to all traditional dishes.
Fermented reindeer [Квашеные оленина] – Layers of reindeer meat and bones are tightly packed into a bag of either seal or reindeer skin, called a tenegyn. In this summer, the tenegyn is buried near any remaining patches of snow, and snow piled on top. In the winter the preserved meat is dug up.
Fermented heads [Квашеные головы] – In mid-summer, when salmon first return, they begin to ferment the heads of these fish. First they make a small hole, taking up sod/turf from the earth. The hole is prepared for the heads. The bottom is covered with willow switches or sod, and on top of this a layer of fish spines. The heads are placed on the spines. Then the heads are covered with another layer of spines and on that, sod. They put earth over this and lightly tamp it down. Later, when the earth settles to be level with the sod, they take the heads out of the pit. Fermented heads are calculated to be ready in September, for the arrival of those who went far away for work. Apparently fermentation in plastic bags or buckets leads to botulism, while the traditional methods are safer.
Boiled meat [Мясо отварное] – Reindeer meat is cut into small chunks. As many chunks as needed for a portion are put into a pot. Boil until ready: leave it a little under-cooked otherwise the reindeer loses its juiciness and the taste peculiar to this animal. Salt to taste. Remove the cooked meat from the broth and cut into small pieces. Pour broth over meat and serve.

I think I have literally had this
Russian dictionary for fifteen years.

Perhaps next time I’ll share the dishes of the Yukhagirs, one of which is a cold drink made of whitefish caviar.

Apparently reading Russian language sources for my current project is the reason why I acquired US Dept. Of the Interior Fish & Wildlife Service Circular 43, “Glossary of Marine Conservation Terms in English and Russian,” compiled in 1956, and “My Nose Is Frostbitten: Useful Phrases for Russian-American Exchanges” by Melissa Chapin, even though neither or them can tell me what трехкрылоплодный горец is. Etymologically, I think it breaks down to three-wing-fruited mountaineer, which doesn’t help me place it in English. Apparently I need a botanical glossary as well!