Dwelling of the reindeer-breeder Chukchi
A representative of the reindeer-breeder Chukchi Yury Yuryevich Notatynagirginis the head of the ethno-ecological club "Einekei" that aimed for mastering the Chukchi language and culture at the Palace of Children's and Youth Creativity of the Anadyr City District. Yuri Yurievich is doing a lot of work to preserve, popularize and revive the rich heritage of his ancestors. Under his leadership, a yaranga was built on the shore of Tavayvaam village with the children from Einekei and with adults from Tavayvaam and Anadyr.
V.N. Nuvano,
Researcher at the North-Eastern Research Institute
of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Dwelling of the reindeer-breeder Chukchi yaranga tent, round in the base, 3.5 to 4.7 m high in the center and 5.7 to 7.8 m in diameter. The wooden frame consisted of rickers resting on a tripod made of thick poles, tied with a leather strap through holes in their upper part. At the bottom, meter-long bipeds and tripods were tied to the rickers and poles with straps, forming a wide circle of the yaranga base and supporting crossbars attached to them by their ends. A circle made up of them, smaller in diameter than the base, strengthened the frame of the shack in its middle part.
At the top, closer to the smoke hole, there was another row of pepper bars. The wooden hut was covered (with fur outward) with reindeer skins, usually sewn into two cloths. The edges of the skins were overlapped and fastened with belts sewn to them. The loose ends of the straps at the bottom were tied to sleds or heavy stones, which ensured the cover was immobile. About 40-50 large reindeer skins were needed for 2 halves of the outer covering. One entered the yaranga between the two halves of the cover by folding the edges of the cover aside. New covers were used for winter and used for summer - used in the past year.
In winter, during periods of frequent migrations, the canopy was made of the thickest skins with fur inside. Shepherds who moved the herd to a new pasture lived in lightly covered yarangas with a small sleeping canopy. The fireplace was in the center of the yaranga, under the smoke hole. Opposite the entrance, at the back wall, a sleeping room - a canopy - was set up in the form of a parallelepiped sewn from skins.
The shape of the canopy was supported by poles passed through many loops sewn to the skins along the configuration lines. The ends of the poles rested on the posts with forks, and the back pole was tied to the frame of the yaranga.
The average size of the canopy was 1.5 meters high, 2.5 meters wide and about 4 meters long. The floor was covered with mats and thick skins on top of them. The bed headboard - two oblong sacks stuffed with scraps of skins - was at the exit. They covered themselves with a blanket made of several reindeer skins. It took 12-15 large reindeer skins to make a canopy and about 10 large reindeer skins for beds. The blanket belonged to one family. Sometimes there were two canopies in a yaranga. Every morning women took off the canopy, let it freeze on the snow, and then beat it out of reindeer antler with mallets.
