The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II

by A. E. Nordenskiöld

They consisted of hundreds of small wooden sticks, the upper portions of which were carved very clumsily in the form of the human countenance, most of them from fifteen to twenty, but some of them 370 centimetres in length. They were all stuck in the ground on the south-east part of the eminence. Near the place of sacrifice there were to be seen pieces of driftwood and remains of the fireplace at which the sacrificial meal was prepared. Our guide told us that at these meals the mouths of the idols were besmeared with blood and wetted with brandy, and the former statement was confirmed by the large spots of blood which were found on most of the large idols below the holes intended to represent the mouth.

After a drawing had been made of the mound, we robbed it discreetly, and put some of the idols and the bones of the animals offered in sacrifice into a bag which I ordered to be carried down to the boat. My guide now became evidently uncomfortable, and said that I ought to propitiate the wrath of the "bolvans" by myself offering something. I immediately said that I was ready to do that, if he would only show me how to go to work. A little at a loss, and doubting whether he ought to be more afraid of the wrath of the "bolvans" or of the punishment which in another world would befal those who had sacrificed to false gods, he replied that it was only necessary to place some small coins among the stones. With a solemn countenance I now laid my gift upon the cairn. It was certainly the most precious thing that had ever been offered there, consisting as it did of two silver pieces. The Russian was now satisfied, but declared that I was too lavish, "a couple of copper coins had been quite enough."

The following day the Samoyeds came to know that I had been shown their sacrificial mound. For their own part they appeared to attach little importance to this, but they declared that the guide would be punished by the offended "bolvans." He would perhaps come to repent of his deed by the following autumn, when his reindeer should return from Vaygats Island, where they for the present were tended by Samoyeds; indeed if punishment did not befall him now, it would reach him in the future and visit his children and grandchildren—certain it was that the gods would not leave him unpunished. In respect to God's wrath their religious ideas were thus in full accordance with the teaching of the Old Testament.

This place of sacrifice was besides not particularly old, for there had been an older place situated 600 metres nearer the shore, beside a grotto which was regarded by the Samoyeds with superstitious veneration. A larger number of wooden idols had been set up there, but about thirty years ago a zealous, newly-appointed, and therefore clean-sweeping archimandrite visited the place, set fire to the sacrificial mound, and in its place erected a cross, which is still standing. The Samoyeds had not sought to retaliate by destroying in their

turn the symbol of Christian worship. They left revenge to the gods themselves, certain that in a short time they would destroy all the archimandrite's reindeer, and merely removed their own place of sacrifice a little farther into the land. There no injudicious religious zeal has since attacked their worship of the "bolvans."

The old place of sacrifice was still recognisable by the number of fragments of bones and rusted pieces of iron which lay strewed about on the ground, over a very extensive area, by the side of the Russian cross. Remains of the fireplace, on which the Schaman gods had been burned, were also visible. These had been much larger and finer than the gods on the present eminence, which is also confirmed by a comparison of the drawings here given of the latter with those from the time of the Dutch explorers. The race of the Schaman gods has evidently deteriorated in the course of the last three hundred years.

After I had completed my examination and collected some contributions from the old sacrificial mound I ordered a little boat, which the steam-launch had taken in tow, to be carried over the sandy neck of land which separates the lake shown on the map from the sea, and rowed with Captain Nilsson and my Russian guide to a Samoyed burying-place farther inland by the shore of the lake.

Only one person was found buried at the place. The grave was beautifully situated on the sloping beach of the lake, now gay with numberless Polar flowers. It consisted of a box carefully constructed of broad stout planks, fixed to the ground with earthfast stakes and cross-bars, so that neither beasts of prey nor lemmings could get through. The planks appeared not to have been hewn out of drift-wood, but were probably brought from the south, like the birch bark with which the bottom of the coffin was covered. As a "pesk," now fallen in pieces, lying round the skeleton, and various rotten rags showed, the dead body had been wrapped in the common Samoyed dress. In the grave were found besides the remains of an iron pot, an axe, knife, boring tool, bow, wooden arrow, some copper ornaments, &c. Rolled-up pieces of bark also lay in the coffin, which were doubtless intended to be used in lighting fires in another world. Beside the grave lay a sleigh turned upside down, evidently placed there in order that the dead man should not, away there, want a means of transport, and it is probable that reindeer for drawing it were slaughtered at the funeral banquet.