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Yakutian fishermen in photos by Natalya Fyodorova

  • Almost every family has a so-called summer place: a house on the riverbank where they move for the season to catch fish professionally: with nets, all day, every day
  • Few things have changed in everyday life for almost 400 years: the same polar days in the summer and polar nights in the winter; they still hunt and fish and use their own language: a mix of Old Slavonic, Russian, Yakutian, and Yukaghir
  • The small village of Russkoye Ustye where descendants of the first Russian pomors who settled in the lower reaches of the Indigirka River in the 16th–17th centuries still live
  • Almost 150 people who consider themselves residents of Russkoye Ustye live at the end of world, just 30 kilometers from the East Siberian Sea, surrounded by rivers, lakes, and tundra
  • Almost 150 people who consider themselves residents of Russkoye Ustye live at the end of world, just 30 kilometers from the East Siberian Sea, surrounded by rivers, lakes, and tundra
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
  • They catch fish and keep it on ice. This is another specific trait of the Arctic: the permafrost begins at 1–2 meters below the surface, and frozen fish and meat can be storage just 5 or 6 meters deep
  • For almost 400 years, men have caught fish and women have cooked it
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
  • Women clean and cut the fish on the bank and prepare jukola: dried and cut fish jerky (mostly Arctic cisco) made in the summer. The sun does not set in the Arctic in the summer, and the bank has a good breeze, so insects do not cover the hung fish. It only needs a day to dry
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
  • Almost every family has a so-called summer place: a house on the riverbank where they move for the season to catch fish professionally: with nets, all day, every day
  • Few things have changed in everyday life for almost 400 years: the same polar days in the summer and polar nights in the winter; they still hunt and fish and use their own language: a mix of Old Slavonic, Russian, Yakutian, and Yukaghir
  • The small village of Russkoye Ustye where descendants of the first Russian pomors who settled in the lower reaches of the Indigirka River in the 16th–17th centuries still live
  • Almost 150 people who consider themselves residents of Russkoye Ustye live at the end of world, just 30 kilometers from the East Siberian Sea, surrounded by rivers, lakes, and tundra
  • Almost 150 people who consider themselves residents of Russkoye Ustye live at the end of world, just 30 kilometers from the East Siberian Sea, surrounded by rivers, lakes, and tundra
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
  • They catch fish and keep it on ice. This is another specific trait of the Arctic: the permafrost begins at 1–2 meters below the surface, and frozen fish and meat can be storage just 5 or 6 meters deep
  • For almost 400 years, men have caught fish and women have cooked it
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
  • Women clean and cut the fish on the bank and prepare jukola: dried and cut fish jerky (mostly Arctic cisco) made in the summer. The sun does not set in the Arctic in the summer, and the bank has a good breeze, so insects do not cover the hung fish. It only needs a day to dry
  • Few things have in their everyday life for almost 400 years
© From Natalya Fyodorova’s personal archive
Almost every family has a so-called summer place: a house on the riverbank where they move for the season to catch fish professionally: with nets, all day, every day

Arctic.ru presents photographs taken by Natalya Fyodorova in the summer of 2017 with her own captions. The photos were taken in the village of Russkoye Ustye, Yakutia.