The Arctic Research Center of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area has published a second book in the Yamal Nenets Folklore series, the tales of the Syo-Yakha Nenets people.

“The book comprises seven fairytales, a parable and an epic song of lamentation written down by Larisa Okotetto, a Yamal journalist born in the Syo-Yakha tundra.  This new Arctic Research Center publication includes texts that have been recorded in accordance with the norms of the written Nenets language but also depict the specific features of the Syo-Yakha narrators of folk tales. All of them have been translated into Russian. The book is designed for the general reader but will be especially interesting for those who are studying the Nenets language, folklore and culture,” according to the press service of the regional government.

The book has been compiled by Neiko Yangasova, a leading expert of the Nenets language who has been collecting oral lore since 2007. In 2018 she prepared the first book in this series, which comprised the texts she had collected in the Priuralsky and Yamalsky districts, archival materials from the Nenets-language Nyaryana Ngerm newspaper and a few folklore items from private collections.

The Arctic Research Center is compiling an online collection of oral lore of the small indigenous people of the North for the purposes of preservation, study, use and promotion.