d'yl oghuha, the bull of frost

Here are some people wandering about one late afternoon on my street, before the snow fell...

(Yakutsk, Oct. 2010)

Since it is particularly cold in the Sakha Republic, as you know, a great deal of stories deal with why it is cold, & what happens as a result of the overwhelming coldness. One such story explains why the region is so rich in rocks & minerals: silver, gold, copper, diamonds, tin, & a lovely purple-black stone called charoite... When the spirits of the upper world were flying over the earth distributing precious metals & stones to the lands of the middle world, their hands became so cold while flying over the Sakha Republic that they lost all feeling in their fingers and ended up dropping most of the world's allotment of treasures all in one place! In another story, the gold deposits extending across long swathes of land came from the fallen feathers of a bird who got so cold while flying over that his tail-feathers froze off & fell to earth.

The most important story that tells of why winter comes has to do with the Bull of Frost. I've heard a few versions of the story, so this is an amalgam of tellings, as I understood them:

The Bull of Frost (here depicted by contemporary Sakha artist Liliya Popova), or tymnyy oghuha, is sometimes known as d'yl oghuha. Literally, this translates as 'the year-bull', because his life cycle is entwined with the changing of the seasons. Most of the time, this icy creature dwells within the frozen realms of the Arctic Ocean far to the north, but every autumn, he grows stronger, and begins to stray further south down the Lena River to the central regions, bringing the frosts with him as he goes. He grows bigger and more fierce as October passes, and his horns of ice grow longer and longer, reaching their peak by the beginning of January. That's the coldest time here, when it is at least -50 and the frosty breath of the bull has made a foggy tent over the whole Tuimaada valley. The cold spreads quickly over the land as he snorts and paws at the frozen ground, his exhales of frost blocking out the faint white sun. It simply cannot remain like this forever, so something needs to ensure that he doesn't continue rampaging unchecked.

In Sakha, the northern lights are called D'ükeebil uota, which means 'the fires of the Yukaghirs'. The Yukaghirs (who call themselves Odul, or Detkil, as well as other clan-based names) are a northern people who the Sakha met when they first wandered north a thousand years ago. At that time, there were apparently so many Yukaghirs that the smoke from their campfires sometimes blocked out the sun, and the flames could be seen flickering on the horizon just as the aurora does. It is D'ükeebil uota that fights with the stubborn d'yl oghuha to allow the coming of spring.

They begin to struggle hard in January, when if the fog ever lifts, you can see the aurora hovering and shifting over the valley cliffs. By the end of January, D'ükeebil uota has managed to break off one of the bull's horns, and thus the weather begins to warm a little. They continue to fight through the beginning of February, and d'yl oghuha is still strong, breathing frost as he stamps and snorts about. However, by about the middle of the month, D'ükeebil uota has managed to knock off another one of bull's horns. People say that by this point, even beneath the fog and frost, the weather feels a little warmer, the sun a bit clearer through the haze. Finally, by the end of the February, the Bull of Frost has lost his head, as it has been melted all the way down by the strengthening aurora of the early spring. The fog lifts, and now that the sky is blue and the air damp and clear, people say that they can smell spring approaching.

Poor hornless & headless d'yl oghuha melts down and heads under the icy Lena, where he then begins his long swim back downriver to the Arctic Ocean, to wait to regrow his head & horns of cold the next autumn. Some people say that he brings with him the souls of the dead who passed away over the winter, and leads them through to the lower world via the river.

Because of these connections with cold, the underworld, and souls, some say that the Bull of Frost is not a bull, but a mammoth! Mammoths have been found in the Sakha Republic perfectly preserved in the ice, and are an important mythological figure. In the stories, they are described as subterranean creatures, living in the lower world beneath the permafrost, and use their great tusks (or horns) to break up the ice on the rivers. However, it is said that they must stay under the ground, or under the water; breathing the air of the middle world kills them. Mammoths are associated with shamans, who also guide souls and interact with the deceased, travelling between the worlds.

Mammoth or bull, d'yl oghuha is a well-known story. There's a statue of him in Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited place on earth, & elements of the costume of Chyskhaan (the Sakha counterpart to Ded' Moroz, or Grandfather Frost) often take on the appearance of bull-hooves and horns. However, in recent years, the anthropologist Susan Crate has been noticing that this story is told not to explain how winter IS, but how winter was in the past. It seems that nowadays d'yl oghuha often loses all of his horns before the end of February, or they don't grow as long and thick with the cold at all. Horn-loss can no longer be predicted so regularly (often in the past, people said the horns melted away precisely on Jan. 31, Feb. 12, and Feb. 24, which also coincided with Orthodox holidays) because of global warming.

The warming might superficially seem like a good thing for people living in such an extreme climate, but it is affecting the subsistence of many Sakha herders and farmers. A cold winter keeps the permafrost from melting in its top layers, and keeps the grounds & fields firm. One can't plant properly in a sunken meadow or bog, and many worry that large tracts of land will become too swampy for the grazing of animals. Many comment that one thing they appreciate most about the cold dry climate of the region is that it kills bacteria and prevents disease; warm, humid swampy areas during a summer could allow illnesses to spread among both animals and people. (Interestingly, swamps tend to be rather nasty places from what I've heard and read elsewhere, and are occupied by many abaasy, or evil spirits from the lower world). As some have mentioned in studies conducted by Susan Crate on local climate change, being able to predict when the Bull of Cold will arrive and leave also affects when things are planted and harvested. Winters have been warmer, but summers have been cooler, with too much rain and not enough sunshine for encouraging growth, and the already short planting cycles have become confused due to the unpredictable melting-times and thus people can't always take advantage of these brief periods in order to produce enough sustenance. And so now as people notice all the changes brought on by global warming, they are using an old narrative now not to explain the present, but to describe a past state, the way things once were, but may never be again.