Samoyedic peoples

The term Samoyedic Peoples ( Samodi peoples, Samoyed, Samojadj ) summarizes those nations, populations or groups of people together who used Samoyedic in history and in the present languages ​​and use. Summarizing them with the linguistically related Finno -Ugric peoples together, so there is talk also of Uralic peoples or the Uralic family of nations.

Individual ethnic groups

Among the Samoyed peoples

• Nenets ( Samoyed Jurak, Juraken )
• Ences,
• Nganasans ( Tawgi Samoyeds )
• Selkups.

The latter form the rest of the South Samoyed lived up to the 19th century in parts of Central and South Siberia. Parts of the ancestors of the Kamassiner and other Siberian Turkic peoples were related to the Samoyed. An extinct in the 19th century Samoyed ethnicity were the transformers ( motors).

The Nenets live on the Yamal Peninsula and in northeast European Russia. The Nganasans or ( Tawgg and Awam Samoyed ) are only about a thousand people. They live between the lower Yenisei and the Chatangagolf on the Taimyr peninsula.

The concept Samoyed

The name Samoyed ( Samojad ', Samoyed ) went into the Russian language as a popular etymological modification of the self - referential Saamod, Saamid. After this Russian folk etymology Samoyed can be roughly translated as " the one who consumes itself ." This is probably why the Samoyeds are described in a travel report from 1670 as cannibals. In fact, the first element of Ethnicums etymologically related to the self- designations of the Finns ( suomi ) and the cloth ( sami ) is identical. The term is also ethnological controversial. Frequently one finds, therefore, the synonyms, but value-neutral term Siberian Hasawa.

Way of life

There are ethnic groups, who originally lived as nomads and lived on their reindeer herds, from fishing and hunting. Today, they are largely sedentary. Although they were Christianized by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers partly since the 16th century, shamanic practices and concepts have received until the 20th century.

Reception

The earliest known Central European reports on Samoyeds come from Adam OLEARIUS from 1647, by Adam Brand in 1696 and 1779 by Tooke, who had visited the people.

The people of the Samoyed is briefly mentioned in Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch (Königsberg, 1795).

Another brief mention can be found in Friedrich Engels The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in the chapter The gene in Celts and Germans.

In the fantasy novel or film The Golden Compass Samoyeds are discredited as a child predator hunters.