"НЕ БЫЛО У НИХ НИКАКОГО ПОСТОЯНСТВА": МЕЗЕНСКИЕ НЕНЦЫ ГЛАЗАМИ ПОМОРОВ (ПО МАТЕРИАЛАМ ЭКСПЕДИЦИЙ 2006–2018 ГГ.

Abstract

This article is based on the field-work of the authors and their colleagues in the Mezen region of the Arkhangelsk Oblast and on the Kanin peninsula of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, 2006–2018. Interviewing and discussion on Pomor-Nenets neighbourhood was not an original goal of the research, but the topic still arised frequently in the interviews with the informants, and, therefore, became an unobvious result of the Pomors’ telling about themselves. The article mainly describes the view of the Pomors on the Nenets. In spite of the rapid changes in the way of life of reindeer herders and Pomors in recent decades, the opposition between the tundra/village and the sedentary/nomadic lifestyles remains one of the most prominent in this region. The opposition contributes to the forming of stereotypical ideas about the “other”, which are still relevant. From the point of view of the Pomors, the affinity of the Nenets to nature endows them with special knowledge, used both for good and for harm. Folklore plots remain the same, they are repeated and become actual in the new conditions of closer ties between Russians and Nenets. The principle, unifying the Pomors and the Nenets, is the code of the tundra and the North – an unwritten set of norms of behaviour which binds people within the same ethnic group and neighbours of different ethnicities, living in the same landscape, as well