Inhabitants of Kanin Peninsula (western Nenetsia)

[Ymyyakhtakh]

Here are the population figures given by Wikipedia for different Russian arctic islands and archipelagos (listed from west to east):

- Kolguyev Island: 436 (Nenets, Russian, Ukrainian, and Komi; excluding oil field workers who are regularly rotated)
- Novaya Zemlya: 2,429 (however the indigenous Nenets population was resettled to the mainland in the 1950s because of nuclear testing)
- Franz Josef Land: 0 (military personnel excluded)
- Severnaya Zemlya: 0 (excluding inhabitants of a polar station)
- Ayon Island: 440 (mostly Chukchi)
- Lyakhovsky Islands: 0
- Wrangel Island: not mentioned (civil population might be zero, even though there is a weather station, and a new military town was constructed on the island in 2014)
- Big Diomede Island: 0 (the native Inupiat population was resettled to Little Diomede island, which is part of Alaska)

Ayon Island is connected to the mainland by a very narrow strait. So Kolguyev Island is basically the only real Russian arctic island which still has an indigenous population. Little Diomede Island has about 100 inhabitants, who are almost exclusively Inupiaq, but Russia sold it to America.

Wrangel Island used to be inhabited by Chukchi and Russians, but its population left in the 90s after the sovkhoz collapsed. The last inhabited civil settlement on Wrangel Island was Ushakovskoye, but in 2003 its last inhabitant was killed by a polar bear (https://rg.ru/2003/10/18/vrangel.html):

It was like a trip to far away. I like this kind of pictures about far places, peoples. It was interesting, thank you for the pictures.

The Kanin Peninsula is pretty close to us, because it's only about 600 km away from Finland. Few Finns probably know that genetically Siberian people live so near us.

[Ymyyakhtakh]

I missed Vaygach Island, which was listed as having a population of 101 in the 2010 census (Nenets and Russian). It is counted as part of Novaya Zemlya, but unlike the two larger islands of Novaya Zemlya (Yuzhny Island and Severny Island), it is part of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.



Depending on what definition for the border between Europe and Asia is used, Vaygach Island is either close or very close to the extreme northeast corner of mainland Europe. However the commonly used definition for the border between Europe and Asia does not follow the border between the Nenets AO and the Yamalo-Nenets AO, so that a small part of the Yamalo-Nenets AO is considered to be within Europe.

The only settlement on Vaygach Island is Варнек (Varnek). This is another semi-OT post, but the spoilers below contain VKontakte photos posted by the few users whose location was set as Varnek (https://vk.com/search?c%5Bcity%5D=11...tion%5D=people). Again, I'm not sure if all of the photos were actually taken on Vaygach Island.

Part 1:

Spoiler!

[Ymyyakhtakh]

Part 2:

Spoiler!

[Jana]

Great thread & photos,

[Laag]

Part 4:

Spoiler!

Nice thread. This woman wears Komi clothes, she's Kolvin Nenets. The Kolvin Nenets are Nenets speaking the Komi language.

[Ymyyakhtakh]

Nice thread. This woman wears Komi clothes, she's Kolvin Nenets. The Kolvin Nenets are Nenets speaking the Komi language.

Aren't Kolvin Nenetses supposed to live along the Kolva River? It's really far from the Kanin Peninsula, because it's not even in Komi Republic but in Perm Krai.

I was going to ask you (our resident Komi expert) if she's Komi. I wasn't sure if she's Nenets or Komi, because I don't know if there are some groups of Nenetses who wear Komi-style clothes.

She's with her twin sister in the photo below. The photo is taken during День Оленя (reindeer day), which is a holiday celebrated by reindeer herders in the Nenets AO and Komi Republic. Some of the other people in the pic look too white to be unmixed Nenetses, so I thought those twins might also be Komis or Komi-Nenets mixes.


https://vk.com/photo152668723_457244503

Here's another photo from День Оленя taken by someone whose hometown was set as Несь, where the caption is "Коми девушки!!!": https://vk.com/photo362319760_456239566.

Komis even live on Kolguyev Island according to Russian Wikipedia (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Колгуев): "Население посёлка Бугрино — около 400 человек (ненцы, русские, коми и украинцы)."

However in this map the Komi area does not extend to either Kolguyev Island or Kanin Peninsula. (The Kolva River is so small that it is not even drawn on the map.)

[Laag]

Aren't Kolvin Nenetses supposed to live along the Kolva River? It's really far from the Kanin Peninsula, because it's not even in Komi Republic but in Perm Krai.

Kolva River also exists in the Komi Republic and Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolva_River_(Usa)

Кто такие колвинские ненцы? Это ненцы, говорящие на языке коми. Живут они не только в районе реки Колвы. Их можно встретить и на полуострове Канин, на побережье Баренцева моря (как говорят здесь, моря Баренца), около Амдермы и Усть-Кары. Живут колвинцы в большом поселке на юге округа — Харуте.

Who are the Kolvin Nenets? It was the Nenets who speak the Komi language. They live not only in the area of the Kolva river. They can be found on the Kanin Peninsula, on the coast of the Barents sea (as they say here, the Barents sea), near Amderma and Ust-Kara.

http://indbooks.in/mirror7.ru/?p=343191

[Salty Ears]

Aren't Kolvin Nenetses supposed to live along the Kolva River? It's really far from the Kanin Peninsula, because it's not even in Komi Republic but in Perm Krai.

Perm krai have nothing with nenets people. River named Kolva could be also in Komi republic or Nenets okrug.

[Laag]

I was going to ask you (our resident Komi expert) if she's Komi. I wasn't sure if she's Nenets or Komi, because I don't know if there are some groups of Nenetses who wear Komi-style clothes.

In fact, she could be either Komi or Nenets. We don't know how she identifies. The Kolvin Nenets are assimilated Nenets but continue to adhere to the Nenets ethnic identity. For sure they can be mixed with Komi.

This is an excerpt from the book Anthropology of the Komi people.


It says that in those places in the 1930s and 1940s people who identified themselves as Nenets now all identify themselves as Komi.

[Ymyyakhtakh]

Yeah I just realized myself that I got the wrong Kolva River.

A Google translation of the article Laag linked to also says this: "The Nenets of the Kanin Peninsula had such a custom. Guys want to get married. They gather in a group of five to ten people and go on a long journey for the brides in Komi, the village of Izhmu. Not everyone could afford such a trip, which sometimes lasted six months. But it was considered special chic to bring your wife-izhemka to yourself."

Now I really want to see the admixture results of Kanin Nenetses.

The paper titled A Genome-Wide Analysis of Populations from European Russia Reveals a New Pole of Genetic Diversity in Northern Europe included samples of Izhma Komis and of Russians from Mezen (which is very close to the Kanin Peninsula). At K=2 and K=3, the proportion of the Chinese component was higher in Russians from Mezen than in Finns or Vepsians, and higher in Priluzski Komi than in Izhma Komi. At K=3 and K=4, the proportion of the component that was maximal in Italians was lower in Izhma Komi than in Priluzski Komi, but it was also much lower in Russians from Mezen than in other Russians.