Pomors
With their ships (koches), the Pomors penetrated to the trans-Ural areas of Northern Siberia, where they founded the settlement of Mangazeya east of the Yamal Peninsula in the early 16th century.
Tatyana Bratkova has reported that some historians speculate that in the early 17th century, Pomors settled the isolated village of Russkoye Ustye in the delta of the Indigirka, in north-eastern Yakutia.
At the same time, people began using the term Pomor'e to refer to a territory of practically the whole European Russian North, including the Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Vologda regions; and Karelia and Komi republics.
[8] The traditional livelihoods of the Pomor based on the sea included animal hunting, whaling and fishing; in tundra regions they practiced reindeer herding.
[11] Pomor Christianity has traditionally coexisted and been infused with an animism, which is based on sacral geography, in a syncretic manner, resulting in a strong environmental ethic.
[12] As part of the broader category of "cold societies" that are based around the concept of eternal return like the neighboring Sami, Nenets or Komi the Pomor worldview reflects a complex interaction between ancient piety, shamanism, and ritualistic practices aimed at maintaining homeostasis within their communities.
The Pomors believed that preserving the static structure of their society was essential for survival in the environment of Pomorye, where the poet-storyteller (starinshchik) as a keeper of "deified memory" played a key role in maintaining this balance through mythopoetic expression.
[13] These spiritual beliefs also played a large role in daily life, as it is a part of the "Pomor fate" to actively engage in this battle, which is not only shaped by actions but also the words of the shaman or starinshchik, the person who has knowledge of the ritual turns of speech and sacred formulas.
The Pomors regarded the northeast wind, or "polunoshnik," as a sacred force, connecting the mundane world to the mystical realms of the North, where contact with the otherworldly was inevitable.
The sea, with its destructive and creative powers, was perceived as both a source of chaos and a pathway to salvation, reflecting the dual nature of the northern lands adjacent to the Polar Mountain, which were simultaneously regions of heaven and hell.
[16] As the last two elements show, the combination of destruction and creation, life and death, or even the sacred and the mundane at the same time instead of a clear cut separation of dual forces like good and evil, is pivotal to Pomor philosophy, reminiscent of concepts like Yin and Yang.
Even the sacred always has a dark side which is in this case represented by the "guardians of the threshold" while the "axis of the world" or "northern mountain" which was believed to exist behind the sea was recognized as a paradise.
In Pomor belief, these island-topos served as symbolic models of the universe, where the three co-temporal and co-spatial domains of the dead, the living, and the descendants intersected, creating a space where the past, present, and future were fused into a single continuum.
These traditions are however often combined into a single syncretic worldview with a topographical basis that includes local locus cults and hierotopic practices without clear boundaries between the sacred and the profane.
[18] In Pomorye traditionally exists the social role of "raspetushya", persons of indeterminate sex, who can be either born intersex or a biological male with appearance, behavior, lifestyle and occupations that are closer to a woman.
In line with the current Russian trend towards amalgamating the least populated federal subjects into larger entities, a merger of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts, the Komi Republic, and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug has been proposed, one of the possible names of this new territory being the Pomor Krai.
