Anthropology of the Cold: Methodology, Concepts, Images (on the materials of cultural traditions of indigenous peoples of the North and the Arctic)

The article is based on materials of cultural traditions of the peoples of the Arctic (Northern Sakha, Taimyr indigenous people - Nganasans, Nenets, Enets, Dolgan). It discusses some new ideas for humanitarian issues related to the anthropology of the cold. New methodological approaches to the analysis of images of the Cold, Permafrost, Winter were formed in the course of the Laboratory of complex geocultural studies of the Arctic (head D.N. Zamyatin) in 2014-2017. The first results of research were presented at the International interdisciplinary scientific conference “The Cold as an Advantage. Cities and Permafrost: Traditions, Innovations, Creativity” (Russia, Yakutsk, 2018). The Cold is regarded as a multidimensional existential category, concept, metaphor and image-archetype, through which the life worlds of Northern human communities and individuals were formed. On the basis of ethnographic and folklore materials (mythology, epic, ritual and fairytale texts), the article analyzes three conceptual metaphors of the Cold associated with the images of Calendar and Social Time. The first metaphor is “People Who Fall Asleep for the Winter”, it touches upon the views of antique authors about “sleepy people” of the North, describes the tradition of “ceremonial sleeping” among the Sakha, the practice of performance of the Sakha epic tales olonkho as the memory of the “time of creation”, the theme of symbolic death and revival in the “Rites of Passage”. The second metaphor “The Whisper of the Stars and the Cold Breath of the Earth” reveals the images of mythological characters associated with the cold (stars and constellations, the Bull of the North and the Bull of winter, etc.), and related archaic stories. The metaphor “People Who are Melting Permafrost” reveals the theme of shamanism as part of the experience of adapting people to extremely low temperatures and natural conditions in the winter. Cognitive analysis of shamanistic texts of the Northern Sakha and indigenous peoples of Taimyr detects a single model of symbolic communication of the shaman with a cold landscape, which is revealed through the mythological semantics of parts and pendants of the shaman's costume, shamanic texts and beliefs. Interdisciplinary discourse allows us to consider the phenomenon of the Cold as a promising creative resource and symbolic capital of permafrost, a formative model of the space of Northern cities, the basis for the construction of a positive trajectory of Northern identity. The space of the North and the Arctic has always been perceived in the conventional view as a white world, cold, distant, untenantable and uninhabited. The sacral texts reveal the original vital culture of Northern indigenous, perfectly demonstrate the “fullness” and “liveliness” of the Northern space, and the sounding landscapes of the Arctic with the voices of people, gods and spirits. These bright and powerful images of the Cold North now ruin the strong stereotypes of the emptiness and silence of the cold world which were dominating in the science and modern art for a long time.

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