Фольклор юкагиров. - 2005. (Т. 25.)

SUMMARY The Yukaghir are a demographically small nation living in the far northeastern corner of Asia. In times past they occupied a vast territory of what is now Yakutia (Sakha Republic) and the northwestern part of the Russian Federation's Magadan Province. They led a semi-sedentary lifestyle, subsisting mainly as fishermen, dogbreeders, and hunters of elk and rein­ deer. In the 17 th century, just before the arrival of Russian fur traders, there were probably about 5,000 Yukaghir. However, due to changes in the migration patterns of the reindeer they subsisted upon, frequent armed conflicts with neighboring peoples, intertribal strife, ethnic assimilation, and a series of catastrophic epidemics of smallpox, by the beginning of the 20 th century fewer than 700 Yukaghir remained. According to the 1989 census, the Yukaghir numbered 712, although native speakers of the tradi­ tional language comprised fewer than 30 % of that total. At the present time, there are actually two isolated groups of Yukaghir located in sepa­ rate areas of the Sakha Republic One lives in the Nizhnekolymsk (Lower Kolyma) District, on the territory of the Olerinsk tundra in the villages of Kolymskoye and Andryushkino. The other lives in the Verkhnykolymsk (Upper Kolyma) District, in the villages of Zyryanka and Nelemnoye. The Yukaghir language is conventionally placed within the Paleoasia- tic group of languages and is considered a genetic isolate. There are, ho­ wever, serious arguments in favor of a genetic linkage between Yukaghir and the Uralic family. At the present time there are two dialects, which might even be regarded as separate Yukaghir languages, since they are rather divergent: Verkhnekolymsk, or Forest Yukaghir, and Nizhnekolymsk, or Tundra Yukaghir. The present volume is the first academic, bilingual edition of Yuka­ ghir folklore. It contains 70 texts, a major part of which appears here for