meeting of the sun

About a month ago, I attended a little ceremony in Yakutsk for the early-February Eveny holiday for the Meeting of the Sun. It was around -50C that day, and still quite foggy. (I took a number of pictures outside, & my camera seemed okay mechanically, but the plastic frame got so cold that when I banged it against a rail & the corner cracked & chipped off...)

So despite the cold, & the hesitance of the sun to fully show itself, there was a little ceremonial fire outside one of the university buildings. The event was also the celebration for the opening of a club in Yakutsk dedicated to the preservation of the dances of northern reindeer herders (mostly Eveny, Yukaghir, and Evenki people) so many ladies showed up dressed in their hand-sewn finery...

Some of the women quickly built a fire of fire boughs, to make an offering to the sun (before we hurried back inside the building to dance the heehdjeh, the traditional Eveny circle dance).

One of the women (not a shaman, I don't think, but in Sakha, she'd be called an algyschyt, a blessing-maker) then made an offering to the fire, feeding it alaadjy (a Sakha bread-pancake, much like bannock) and singing to it an entreaty to purify people, to strengthen them, and to call out the sun. She had a small silver bell, & a soft clacking rattle made from reindeer bones.

And then everyone gathered around for warmth, & also to stand in the purifying smoke to share in the blessing, before hurrying back inside. The sun remained a distant white disc, but later on in the afternoon it seemed that more of the sky had cleared, and buildings emerged from the fog.

Seeing the winter sun here , one understands the reasons for the valuing of certain colours in Sakha culture: silver is more prized and sacred than gold, because for most of the year, that's the colour of the sun -- a glinting, white disc. Women's necklaces (ilin-kebiher) and headdresses (bastinga) also use round silver ornaments as protective talismans, to protect the body from harm during ceremonial occasions. White is thus the most sacred colour, the colour of life, because it is the sun-colour, and a white sun also figures on the Sakha flag.

By sunset, the light had gone grey-bluish once more, the edges of the sun blurred into fog again. It's really only been the last week that the sky's cleared up, with the beginning of March, and another horn's fallen off the Bull of Cold.

* * *

Yukaghir poem (anonymous) collected in the 1920s by Waldemar Jochelson... More here.

When our camps separated
I looked after him:

He is tall like a mountain ash
His hair covered his shoulders
Like black squirrels' tails.
When he disappeared
I lay down in the tent:
Oh, how long is a spring day?
But the evening came
And through a hole in the tent cover
I saw my love coming.
When he came in
And looked at me
My heart melted
Like snow in the sun.