the sakha horses (PONIES!!!)

Staying in a nearby village for the past couple of weeks has allowed me to get acquainted with some of these lovely creatures -- the local Sakha horses. They populate all of the villages, and when they are not pulling sleds of people, goods and ice-blocks of drinking water, they are roaming about the fields (and streets), munching on hay and hanging out, still heavy with winter fat, & in some cases, baby ponies (!!!) that will emerge with the melting of the river, in May.

These horses are descended from the same ones that came north from the Lake Baikal area with the ancestors of the Sakha about a thousand years ago and so are related to the Mongolian and Central Asian indigenous horse breeds; there is also speculation they are distant progeny of a neolithic Tundra Horse that lived in the far north-eastern reaches of Siberia. They resemble Shetland or Icelandic ponies, but are a wee bit larger, fatter, and woollier.

They have definitely been carefully bred to adapt to the northerly climates. Their manes and tails are long & shaggy, and over the winter they grow a thick coat of wool to protect them against temperatures that descend to -60C; for the hot, dry summers, they shed this extra wool, along with all the extra fat they pack on throughout the autumn that keeps them energized and insulated. They are resourceful creatures that don't rely on haystacks or feed-bags; they use their large, tough hooves to dig under the heavy snowpack to unearth dry grasses, plants and roots for extra nutrition.

Though some Sakha living far to the north also raise reindeer, the horse is central to Sakha culture -- the horses carried them to their new homeland on the central Lena, a gift from the Upper World, the horse protector Kun Djesegey. Horses, on earth, have always been their livelihood; they have provided help with work and sustenance, but also a spiritual connection to the upperworld; at Yhyakh, the summer festival, kumys, fermented mare's milk, is sprinkled over the earth and sipped by those in attendance, as a blessing from the deities. It is a snow-white horse that carries the sun across the sky; the night sky is a dark, velvety horse, its vast coat awash with a milky sprinkling of stars. A serge, or hitching post, connects the worlds; they are taller than an earthly horse, so as to be symbolically useful for the Upper World horses too. To eat horsemeat is also sacred, for to sacrifice a horse is to allow its spirit into the Upper World to rest, and thus to permit a waiting spirit from the Upper World to be reborn into the Middle World, a simultaneous death and resurrection of new life.

Horses are embodiments of bravery, strength and wisdom, and they are respected for the way they know the land, and for their ability to take care of themselves. Waclaw Sieroszewski (a Polish scholar banished to Siberia who took up ethnography) wrote extensively of the relationship between horses and people in the region. The lives of people and horses are deeply entwined, and people are careful to show thankfulness and reverence for the horses upon which the survival has depended for so long. Yakut horse-riders have apparently never used anything other than reins to guide their horses -- no whips or crops are used to get a horse to behave, or to spur it onward. Even if that means 'training' takes longer, they accept it, and gratefulness is always shown to the horse for allowing himself to help humans. "The horse must takes its time". The will of the horse is respected, and the relationship between horse and person is seen as a partnership that must be developed.