Authors

Audun J. Mørch¹;  ¹ University of Oslo, Norway

Discussion

The image of the shaman symbolizes the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Arctic. During the years before modernity struck the shores of the Chukotka Peninsula in the form of Russian Bolshevism, the shaman was respected and sometimes feared by Russian traders and officials. The atheist Bolsheviks singled out the shaman as the main enemy of progress and effectively destroyed the shaman as an institution in indigenous societies. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the shaman became an object of romantic or scholarly interest to different groups of Westerners.

Three novels by the Chukchee writer Yurii Rytkheu, published in Russian between 1986 and 2004 reflect some interesting aspects of this development.  In Magic Numbers (1986) the indigenous writer is still cautious not to openly challenge official ideology. The novel is based on historical events that took place in the period 1918-1921.

The novel Anna Odintsovaia’s Wanderings (2002) quite possibly reflects postmodern renewed interest in the shaman. Into a small settlement comes a young Russian woman who has studied ethnography and indigenous languages in Leningrad. She falls in love with and marries the shaman’s son. Surprisingly, the old shaman chooses her, not his son, when it is time to train a successor.

The Last Shaman (The Chukchee Bible in English) (2006), is a novel where it seems the author tries to depict the shaman as objectively as possible. He is in fact telling the story of his own grandfather Mletkin, who was a famous shaman.

Thus the image of the shaman in Rytkheu’s works reflects not only the authors thoughts and unique knowledge of this primordial profession, but even his careful understanding of his public, which in the case of the first novel includes Soviet censorship and in the case of the other two include not only Soviet or Russian, but even Western audiences.