E-mail: rassyhaev@mail.ru Tel.: +7 (8212) 20-17-02
26, Kommunisticheskaya str., Syktyvkar, 167982, Russian Federation
PhD in Philology, Senior researcher, Folklore Department, Institute of the Language, Literature and History, Federal Research Center, Komi Science Centre, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences
This article analyzes the traditions of the Vishera’s Komi (from the Vishera River basin, Kortkeros District of the Komi Republic) concerning miracles that are locally tied to the “Chud’ [or Peipus] settlement” (“chudskoe gorodishche”) known as Karmyl’k (lit. “city on a hill”). It is based primarily on field expeditionary materials of the beginning of the twenty-first century. The “Chud’ settlement”, as a local attraction, attracts the attention of local residents, treasure hunters, as well as archaeologists who have conducted reconnaissance on the hill over the years. Karmyl’k may have been a temporary refuge for the Vichera’s Komi during raids by warlike nomads (Mansi). Over time, the settlement, as a sacred topographic object, has become a focal point for folk legends about miracles. In the folk tradition, the Chud’—a collective Old Russian name for several tribes and nationalities — is a population that lived before the Komi in a certain semi-mythological time. Enemies, often nameless missionaries or foreigners who came from distant lands (Stefan of Perm, Scandinavian Christians from the legendary Biarmia), sought to forcibly baptize them, pagans, who only sometimes offered military resistance. The semi-mythological Chud’ that disappeared from this territory left the most significant hydronyms in the Vishera territory — the names of the Vishera (Viser) and Nyshera (Nyvser) Rivers, the Sapӧgayol and Vichchysyanashor streams, and Lake Sіs’pasyaty. In oral narratives the Chud’ is always nameless, but sometimes a gender characteristic (e. g., an odd woman [chudinka]) is indicated. Analysis of oral stories allows us to revise previously held opinions about the national specifics and ethnoareal distribution of Komi legends about the Chud’. We recorded three main plot types or legends about them in the Vichera tradition: about Chud’ who bury themselves; about Chud’ who flee; and about warlike Chud’.
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