Ob-Ugric Peoples

Ob-Ugric peoples, that is, the Khanty and Mansi, are the closest language relatives of Hungarians. In fact, this close language relation is pretty remote, as our ancestors separated thousands of years ago, and have ended up thousands of kilometers from each other. Only within the context of the Finno-Ugric language family does this qualify as a close relation, because it has been even longer since the ancestors of Hungarians separated from the ancestors of the speakers of the rest of the related languages. The Khanty and the Mansi were given the collective Ob-Ugric denomination because they live in North-Western Siberia, by the side of the river Ob and its tributaries.

The Khanty ethnonym is related etymologically to the Hungarian word had, the original meaning of which was ‘big family, lineage, clan’. The Mansi ethnonym, which has the same origin as magy-, the root of the Hungarian people’s name magyar, also originates from the name of a common, ancient clan.

The so-called external name of the Khanty is Ostyak, that of the Mansi is Vogul. These names were used in tsarist Russia. From there they spread to the world’s languages, and were also used in international scientific literature. In the Soviet Union, they switched to the internal names (Khanti, Mansi) from the 1930s. The switch gradually affected foreign literature, including Hungarian. The use of external names remained until the early 2000s, so we find the Ostyak and Vogul peoples’ names in Éva Schmidt’s Hungarian language publications as well.

The majority of the Ob-Ugric peoples live in the administrative area of T’umen’ county, within this, in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District (with Khanty-Mansijsk as its centre) and in the Jamalo-Nenets Autonomous District (with Salekhard as its centre). The home of the easternmost Khanty of Vasjugan belongs to Tomsk county, the residence of the Mansi of the Upper Lozva belongs to Sverdlovsk county. According to the last census of 2020, the number of Khanty people was 31 467, and the Mansi numbered 12 228. 44% of the Khanty and 18% of the Mansi speak their mother tongue. The percentage of Ob-Ugric peoples barely exceeds 1% in the two autonomous districts.

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The Khanty and Mansi are scattered on a vast area, live in small groups, and speak significantly distinct dialects, which are grouped by the cardinal directions. The three major Khanty dialect groups, the North, the East and the South meet where the Irtyš enters the Ob. The southern dialects were spoken south of this, on the banks of the Irtyš and its tributaries (Konda, Demjanka). Probably by the middle of the 20th century, the Southern Khanty have changed their language: they have assimilated into the neighboring Russian and Tartar groups.

The northern dialects are spoken north of the meeting of the flows of the Ob and the Irtyš, up until the mouth of the Ob. Among these, the southernmost (Šerkaly or Mid-Ob, Nizjam) have vanished by now, only 20th century collections preserve their traces. To the north of this, there are three viable dialect groups: the Kazym dialect spoken along the Kazym river, the Berjozov, or sometimes called Šuryškary dialect (spoken by the people of Muži, Šuryškary, Tegi settlements, and the Synja and Kunovat rivers), and the Obdorsk dialect. Variations of this dialect are spoken around the Ob mouth, and in the valleys of the tributaries, the Sob and the Poluj. Éva Schmidt’s research area was the region of the northern dialects. She had the opportunity to meet the last speakers of the Šerkaly and the Nizjam dialects, and further north she could experience first hand that in neighboring villages slightly different variants were spoken.

We distinguish three groups of the eastern dialects spoken by the Middle Ob and its tributaries: the Salym, the Surgut and the Vakh-Vasjugan. Among these, the Salim group has only a small number of speakers. Speakers of the Surgut dialect live along the following tributaries: the L’amin, the Pim, the Tromagan, the Agan, and the Little and Great Jugans. The easternmost dialects are spoken along the Vakh and the Vasjugan, and along the Ob in the area of Aleksandrovo.

The northern and southern dialect groups show a number of similarities, so these two are also referred to collectively as the western dialect group. The most obvious acoustic feature that differentiates the two larger sets is that while the ancient *k consonant has preserved its occlusive character before a back vowel in the east, it became a fricative in the west. A good example for this is the Khanty people’s endonym: in the east it is qăntəγ, while in Salym, representing a transition between the southern and the eastern dialects, it is qăntə, in the south and in the southern-northern transitional Šerkaly it is χăntə, and in the north it is χănti.

The Mansi live in the area between the Ob and the Ural Mountains. Today, along the Ob, in the regions of the rivers Sosva, Sygva, and Upper Lozva only the northern dialect is spoken. To the south of this, the western dialect used to be spoken along the Lozva and Pelymka rivers, and the eastern one along the Konda. The southern dialect spoken along the Tavda was the earliest to become extinct.

According to the categorization of the Ethnologue database (https://www.ethnologue.com/), which measures the viability of the world’s languages, the two Ob-Ugric languages are in the endangered category. This means that the language is used in verbal communication but the number of its users is decreasing. To add some precision to the inevitably sketchy database, the situation and chances of survival of a given language are defined by where its speakers live. While in villages and towns with a mixed population a language switch can be complete within a generation, in the traditional forest homes of the Ob-Ugric peoples parents transmit their language to their children. In spite of this, the Russian language penetrates everywhere. The mother tongue could be taught in the schools of nationality villages as an elective subject, but this rarely happens – sometimes due to the lack of a teacher with adequate qualification, sometimes due to lack of interest from the pupils and their parents.

While Khanty and Mansi are primarily used as spoken languages, everyone agrees that publications in the mother tongue are needed. However, opinions vary on the principles of orthography. Constant spelling reforms intimidate those whose task would be to spread literacy, namely, teachers of the mother tongue and journalists.

The home of the Ob-Ugric peoples, the vast West Siberian Plain spans from the tundra up north by the Arctic Ocean through the forested tundra, which turns into a continuous swamp in the summer, to the taiga region. The settlements were built along the rivers rich in fish, and the forests are suitable for hunting. Two forms of reindeer keeping have evolved. In the north, tundra reindeer keeping in large herds has become general, requiring nearly constant migration with herds of several thousand reindeer. Families living in the forested tundra area have smaller numbers of reindeer, and move about with them seasonally on a smaller area. Horses are also kept on the banks of the Ob river. The Ob-Ugric families with whom Éva Schmidt first made contact happened to be horse keepers.

The traditional world view of the Ob-Ugric peoples is tripartite: in the middle world live the people, animals and plants, the upper world is the dwelling of the gods, and the lower is the place of the malevolent spirits and the deceased. Spirits and deities of different kinds and ranks are also present in the middle world: they take care of the rivers, secure fishing and hunting luck, the health and prosperity of the families. People make efforts to maintain good relations with them, offering different sacrificial gifts from time to time. Connection between the living and the dead, and between people and the spirit world can be created by the shamans.

Amidst the harsh northern weather conditions, the Ob-Ugric peoples managed to create a lifestyle in which people and nature live in harmony. Their existence is seriously threatened by oil and natural gas extraction, which began in the 1960s, and the environmental destruction that it entailed. Today, only a smaller portion of Ob-Ugric peoples pursue traditional farming, the majority have moved into the villages and cities. However, culture and religion, in a somewhat altered form, are still alive in the bigger settlements.

... or, rather, in the skin of the arolla pine cone’s seed, which is a popular snack in those parts. Three thousand years ago, the ancestors of the Ob-Ugrians and the Hungarians are supposed to have lived in the Ugric ancient homeland, that is, on the eastern side of the Southern Ural. As a result of certain changes in the climate, the Ob-Ugrians moved further north around the middle of the first millennium BC. It may have taken them a thousand years to populate the entire Ob region, and they were affected by different circumstances during this time. According to Russian sources, they lived in principalities of varying sizes in the first half of the 2nd millennium. These principalities were often at war with each other as well as the Russian conquerors. The memory of the battles was preserved in hero songs, and the existence of earth forts is confirmed by archaeological research.

The Russians forced the Ob-Ugric peoples to pay taxes from the 12th century. First they were attacked by the armies of the Novgorod Principality, then, three hundred years later, by the Moscow Principality. Russian administration began to be introduced in Western Siberia from the end of the 16th century, after Jermak’s victorious offensive. The principalities were eliminated by the beginning of the 18th century. In the new situation, the indigenous peoples were at the mercy of local clerks and merchants.

The soviet era also brought some positive changes at the beginning. The Khanty-Mansi Nationality District was created in 1931. There was a cultural upswing, educational institutions were established, and there was a budding community of ethnic intellectuals. In the meantime, however, collectivization changed the settlement structures, and people were moved from residences consisting of a few houses to villages with mixed populations. This vulnerable situation was exacerbated by the spread of industrialization.

The early 1980s brought about new hope. In 1989, the Association for Saving Jugria was established, taking on cultural and environmental protection roles as well as the protection of indigenous interests. Academic and educational institutions, museums and crafts houses created in Khanty-Mansijsk from the 1990s are meant to promote the preservation of culture. An item in this line is the Northern Khanty Folklore Archive founded by Éva Schmidt in Belojarskij in 1991, in the wake of which a number of similar institutions were created all around the language area.