WARMEST TENT ON EARTH -
PITCHING IN THE SIBERIAN
ARCTIC WINTER
11,560,432 views
Feb 10, 2021
Nomad Architecture
401K subscribers
The Nenet reindeer herders
need to move their tent every few days throughout most of the year. Every time
they migrate they must pack the whole tent away, drag it across the tundra on
sledges, and erect it again in a fresh place, sometimes in temperatures of
minus thirty degrees. Survival depends on working together as a team.
After staying in the wooded
taiga for two months they start to migrate north following the ancient paths of
migrating reindeer (caribou). In four months they will travel up to 1200km and
must pack and move every three to five days to keep up with their herd. They
must reach their summer quarters before the snows melt and flood great rivers
with icy waters too cold and deep for the calves, born along the way, to cross.
Behind the tent an invisible
line extends out into the tundra. It is called the sawei line, and a woman
cannot cross it. It will bring bad luck to the tent. It was hard for them to
explain exactly why, it is much stronger than a superstition and is connected
to the spirit pole that stands at the back of the tent. This pole is sacred and
a woman cannot cross underneath it either, and only a shaman may sit in this
holy place. The origins of this are a little lost, there may be practical
reasons, for example the back of the tent is traditionally where the men work,
often together, so they have to be able to move about freely, but there are
often two families in a single tent, so maybe one day the women just agreed
territories to stop tripping over each other. Maybe it has such a mundane
origin, or maybe there are real spirits that come up to the tent from behind
and would bring harm to any women caught in the wrong place. If several tents
pitch together, their lines must not cross either, so they tend to camp in a
straight line to avoid this.
In answer to the many
questions - on personal hygiene,
everyone washes using a bowl of soap and hot water, just like most of our
grandparents did before everyone had pipes and taps. There is no toilet in the
tent as some have suggested, they find a spot a few hundred metres away. They
are not pitching on a lake but a small mound where the snow blows a little
thinner, Gas companies have been in the area and gave away snowmobiles as part
of land access negotiations. Also sometimes there are competitions with them as
prizes, sometimes they sell a load of reindeer and buy one. Most families now
have at least one but the reindeer are still used a lot. Yes, they use a sled
to go to town, or trading posts to buy groceries.
I wanted to catch the entire
process, but have edited it down a little from the 40-45 minutes it takes to
get from the open snows to a warm cosy home.
Buy our book here: https://www.nomads.org/Books.html
Support us here:
https://paypal.me/NomadicArchitecture
Visit our website:
https://www.nomads.org
Music is here
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkdY...
Grateful
thanks to
Nomad Architecture
and
YouTube and all the others who made this video possible
No comments:
Post a Comment