House spirits of private ownership among modern northern selkups: visualization of ethnicity

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to study (images) of household spirits, which are still kept in many families of the northern Selkups. The objectives of the study were to consider how private family spirits visualize the Selkup ethnicity, i.e. what information they contain about the national Selkup culture, and how the visualization of ethnicity by spirits that are today in private possession differs from the representation of culture by similar museum exhibits. No one has yet studied the home spirits of the northern Selkups from such positions, which is the novelty of the study. An addition to the original perspective of the work was the classical approach, which combines the traditional methods of ethnographic research - the collection of field material, description, analysis, comparison, typology, etc. The result of the study was a comprehensive analysis of three complexes of privately kept home spirits, including their relationship with the owners, carried out by the author on the basis of his own expeditionary materials. The study came to the following conclusions. Modern Selkups keep faith in the magical power of ancestral household spirits, turn to them with requests for health and help in difficult life situations. They show respect for the spirits in various ways in exchange for their protection of the family well-being. With regard to family spirits, the tradition of concealment continues to be observed: it is forbidden to show spirits to strangers; violators of the rules, as well as their families, as the Selkups believe, will be punished from above. Sacred images, which are in the possession of modern Selkups, visualize their ethnicity, demonstrating the preservation of Selkup animistic beliefs against the background of the general extinction and transformation of tradition. This function is not available for images of spirits that have migrated to museums for storage. At the same time, active household spirits do not have the wide audience that museum spirits have to represent culture; they can only influence a wide audience indirectly, through the works of scientists who have written about them. The last conclusion indicates the practical significance of this study.