Samoyed peoples

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The term Samoyed peoples (Samodi peoples, Samoyed, Samojadj) denotes those peoples , populations or groups of people who have used Samoyed languages in the past and present . If you summarize them with the linguistically related Finno-Ugric peoples , then we also speak of Uralic languages or the Uralic family of peoples.

The Samoyed peoples belong to the indigenous peoples of the Russian north protected by the Russian constitution up to the present day .

Samoyed (ca.1906)
Distribution of the Samoyed in the 17th century (dashed red) and in the 20th century (red)
Samoyed as a Völkerschau around 1880 in the Leipzig Zoological Garden

term

The name Samojede (Samojad ', Samojed) entered the Russian language as a folk etymological modification of the self-referential Saamod , Saamid . According to this Russian folk etymology, Samoyed can be translated as “he who consumes himself”. This is probably why the Samoyed are described as cannibals in a travelogue from 1670. In fact, the first element of the ethnonym is etymologically identical with the proper names of the Finns (suomi) and the Sami (sami) - with the presumed meaning "swamp people". The term is also ethnologically controversial.

Ethnic groups and way of life

Belong to the Samoyed peoples

The latter form the rest of the southern Samoyed who lived in parts of central and southern Siberia until the 19th century . Parts of the ancestors of the Kamassins and other Siberian Turkic peoples were also related to the Samoyed. A Samoyed ethnic group that died out in the 19th century were the Mators (or Motors).

The Nenets live on the Yamal peninsula and in the northeast of European Russia. The Nganasans (or Tawgg and Awam Samoyed) only include about a thousand people. They live between the Lower Yenisei and the Chatanga Gulf on the Taimyr Peninsula .

The peoples included under the umbrella term Samoyed are ethnic groups who originally lived as nomads and ate their reindeer herds , fishing and hunting. Nowadays they are largely sedentary. Although they have been Christianized by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers in some cases since the 16th century, shamanic practices and concepts have survived into the 20th century.

reception

The earliest known Central European accounts of Samoyed are from Adam Olearius in 1647, Adam Brand in 1696, and Tooke in 1779, who visited the people.

The Samoyed people are briefly mentioned in Immanuel Kant's On Eternal Peace . A philosophical draft (Königsberg, 1795). Another brief mention can be found in Friedrich Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in the chapter The Gens among Celts and Germans .

In 1883, the gazebo reported on a group of Samoyed who traveled to various German cities for their display.

In the fantasy novel or film The Golden Compass , Samoyeds are discredited as child-robbing hunters.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from June 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Severnaja enciklopedija + CD-ROM Evropeiskie izdanie, 2004 ISBN 5-98797-001-6 (338 € / 409 US $)
  3. ^ Johann Jakob Egli : Nomina geographica. Language and factual explanation of 42,000 geographical names of all regions of the world. Friedrich Brandstetter, 2nd edition, Leipzig 1893, p. 525
  4. ↑ English page with links related to Samoyed peoples and languages: http://peoples.org.ru/eng_samoed.html
  5. ↑ http://www.eki.ee/books/redbook/nenets.shtml
  6. ^ Wikisource