Mythopoetic Aspects of Traditional Pomor Cryosophy and Anthropology of the Cold: Reconstruction and Interpretation

Abstract

This article deals with the reconstruction of the ritual-mythological origins and interpretation of archaic semantics of a number of concepts, images, metaphors and symbols that constitute the corpus of Pomor cryosophy and anthropology of the cold. The research is based on the semiotic analysis and hermeneutics of traditional texts of Pomor culture and works included in the semantic circle of the Northern text of Russian literature. The concept of cryosophy was developed by the outstanding Russian geocryologist V.P. Melnikov, who viewed it as an “ontology of the cold world”, a system of philosophical and scientific ideas about the fundamental characteristics and principles of the cryosphere in all its forms. The conceptual and methodological framework of anthropology of the cold was articulated in the works of employees of the Laboratory for Comprehensive Geocultural Research on the Arctic (Arctic State Institute of Culture and Arts, Yakutsk). The study of traditional Pomor cryosophy is based on the author’s previous research in the field of geosophy, sacred geography, and semiotics of cultural landscape of the Russian North. It is fully compliant with the subject-problem field of the anthropology of the cold. Metaphysical cold pervades all aspects of the sophic arrangement of the Pomor ethnocentrum, whose sacred geometry is similar to the configuration of “cold” societies. The class of “cold” societies based on the mythological paradigm of eternal return includes the archaic and traditional communities of the Russian Arctic (Sami, Nenets, Komi, Russian Pomors). The ideology of Old Believers was one of the leading mechanisms aimed to “cool” and maintain the homeostasis of the structure of local and ethnic communities in Pomorye. It was reflected in the sacred geometry of monastic and local self-government in the Russian North. The “cold option” of Pomor culture, along with the preserving values of the old faith, included more archaic elements and “cooling” mechanisms going back to the shamanistic ritual-mythological complex. In Pomor society, the function of such a refrigerator, preserving the sacred knowledge of the structure of the universe and maintaining the eternal still of the northern world, was performed by the poet-storyteller. He used word magic to turn the icy silence of the North into the sounding mythopoetic cosmos.

For citation: Terebikhin N.M., Melyutina M.N. Mythopoetic Aspects of Traditional Pomor Cryosophy and Anthropology of the Cold: Reconstruction and Interpretation. Vestnik Severnogo (Arkticheskogo) federal’nogo universiteta. Ser.: Gumanitarnye i sotsial’nye nauki, 2021, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 122–133. DOI: 10.37482/2687-1505-V123