Inhabitants of Mezensky District (northern Archangelsk Oblast)

[Ymyyakhtakh]

In Khrunin et al. (2013) (A genome-wide analysis of populations from European Russia reveals a new pole of genetic diversity in Northern Europe), based on the admixture results at K=2, Russians from the Mezensky District of the Archangelsk Oblast had even higher Mongoloid admixture than Eastern Finns or Vepsians. At K=4 and K=5, Russians from Mezen had a fairly high proportion of the red component which was maximal in Izhma Komi. In the PCA diagram, Russians from Mezen plotted between Vepsians and Komi-Zyrians from Priluzski.



T. N. Alekseyeva wrote that the Mezen basin is characterized by an "Onega" type similar to the East Baltic type (https://www.booksite.ru/ancient/reader/human_1_04.htm, Google translation):

In the Pinega and Mezen basins, on the Onega, Sukhona and Dvina watersheds, the so-called Onega anthropological type is widespread, for which, according to M.V. Vitova, such symptoms as brachycephaly, relative broad-facedness, somewhat stronger (on the scale of the examined territory) development of the cheekbones, relatively light pigmentation of the eyes and hair are characteristic. In the anthropological literature, this combination of characters is fixed under the name of the East Baltic type (Cheboksarov, 1941; 1946).

The Mezensky District is located in the northernmost part of the Archangelsk Oblast (when the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and arctic islands are excluded):



Here are excerpts from the Wikipedia article about the Mezensky District (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezensky_District):

Mezensky District (Russian: Мезе́нский райо́н) is an administrative district (raion), one of the twenty-one in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia.[1] As a municipal division, it is incorporated as Mezensky Municipal District.[8] It is located in the northeast of the oblast and borders with Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the northeast, Ust-Tsilemsky District of the Komi Republic in the east, Leshukonsky and Pinezhsky Districts in the south, and with Primorsky District in the southwest.

[...]

The area was originally populated by the Finno-Ugric peoples and then colonized by the Novgorod Republic. After the fall of Novgorod, the area became a part of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Komi started moving to the Mezen in the 14th and 15th centuries. First Russian settlements on the Mezen were mentioned in the 16th century. The lower course of the Mezen, the current area of the district, was where Russian culture existed in its original state, not mixing with the Komi culture.[12] The town of Mezen was founded in the 16th century as Okladnikova Sloboda. The area was at the time located on one of the main ways from central Russia to the Pechora River basin and to the Ural Mountains.[13]

[...]

Almost the whole of the district is covered by coniferous forests (taiga). The northern part of the district is transitional area between taiga and tundra (lesotundra).

[...]

The part of the district located east of the Mezen is essentially unpopulated, with the exceptions of the right bank of the river and of several villages in the valley of the Pyoza.

[...]

Historically, fishery was the main source of income in the White Sea coast. The selo of Dolgoshchelye in the estuary of the Kuloy River was the main harbor of fishermen. In Soviet times, the fishery in the Arctic Ocean was state-sponsored; after 1990 the funds were cut, and the fishery went into decline.[16]

A special breed of horses, Mezen horse, was bred in the Mezen River valley. The Mezen horses are rather small but suitable for difficult work and easily survive cold winters.[17]

[...]

Both the Mezen and the Kuloy Rivers are navigable within the district limits; however, there is no passenger navigation except for the ferry boats across the rivers. Until 2008, there were no all-seasonal roads in the district. During winter, temporary roads (zimniks) are built in snow; in summer, air transport is the only means for passenger connections to Arkhangelsk and the rest of the world. Currently, there is one all-seasonal road which connects the village of Kimzha with Arkhangelsk via Pinega, and two branches from this road along the right bank of the Mezen. One branch runs north to the town of Mezen, whereas the second one runs south to the selo of Leshukonskoye.

There is an airport in Mezen, with several weekly flights to Arkhangelsk. There is also an airport in Kamenka.[18]

The majority of the villages of the district are not connected by all-season roads to the main road network, and the only means of getting to Mezen and Arkhangelsk is by air.

[...]

The district contains two objects classified as cultural and historical heritage by Russian Federal law, and additionally a number of objects classified as cultural and historical heritage of local importance.[19] The objects under federal protection are the wooden bell tower in the selo of Dolgoshchelye (burned down in 1994 and no longer exists)[16] and the wooden Hodegetria Church in the village of Kimzha (1709, currently disassembled).

The total population of the Mezensky District was listed as 9,049 in 2017. About 60% of the population of the Mezensky District is concentrated in settlements of Mezen and Kamenka, which are located near the mouth of the Mezen River on opposite sides of the river.

Here's a list of settlements in the Mezensky District from the Russian-language Wikipedia (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Мезенский_район):

(population;settlement)
3,287;Мезень
2,067;Каменка
617;Долгощелье
507;Бычье
490;Дорогорское
401;Сояна
367;Койда
225;Ручьи
195;Чижгора
185;Жердь
149;Сафоново
134;Кимжа
130;Козьмогородское
122;Карьеполье
116;Лампожня
112;Азаполье
106;Заозерье
92;Березник
90;Майда
79;Мосеево
76;Кильца
74;Целегора
73;Заакакурье
54;Езевец
53;Мелогора
45;Калино
42;Погорелец
39;Совполье
39;Мегра
33;Баковская
26;Елкино
10;Соколово
7;Петрова
7;Печище
6;Лобан
6;Усть-Пёза
6;Инцы
5;Сёмжа
1;Усть-Няфта
0;Окуловский
0;Тимощелье
0;Морозилка
0;Коршаково
0;Петровка
0;Моржовец
0;Черсова
0;Кепино
0;Жукова
0;Затон
0;Маяк Вороновский
0;Маяк Абрамовский
0;Чеца
0;Нижа
0;Бор

In the 2002 census, the population of most settlements of the Mezensky District was listed as 97-100% Russian, but a few settlements in the tundra region along the northern coast also have a Nenets population, including Dolgoshchelye (which was listed as 89% Russian in the 2002 census), Koyda (which was listed as 85% Russian), and Ruch'i (which was listed as 90% Russian). I don't know if the ethnolinguistic group listed in the census was based on simply native language however.

This thread contains VKontakte photos which were posted by users whose location was set as one of the following localities:

- Долгощелье (population 617, 143 VKontakte users);
- Дорогорское (population 490, 145 VKontakte users);
- Койда (population 367, 75 VKontakte users);
- Ручьи (population 225, 48 VKontakte users).



I used a shell script like this to make a list of the URLs all photos posted by the users returned by the VKontakte search pages linked above:

va(){ curl -sGd v=5.37 -d access_token="$vktoken" https://api.vk.com/method/"$1";}

while read u;do
  va "photos.getAlbums?owner_id=$u&count=1000&need_system=1"|jq '.response.items[]?.id'|while read l;do
    o=0
    while :;do
      c=$(va "photos.get?owner_id=$u&album_id=$l&count=1000&offset=$o")
      printf %s\\n "$c"|jq -r '.response.items[]?|(.owner_id|tostring)+" "+(.id|tostring)+" "+(.photo_2560//.photo_1280//.photo_807//.photo_604)'
      printf %s\\n "$c"|jq -er '.response.items|length<1000'>/dev/null&&break
      let o+=1000
    done
  done
done

Some of the photos in this thread might be taken outside the Mezensky District. I don't know which of the people in these photos are Russians who are native to the region, which are migrants from other parts of Russia, and which are Komis or Nenetses. (Even though some of the people obviously look Nenets.)

The photos in this thread are semi-cherrypicked so that East Baltid–like types are probably overrepresented. Nenetses are also overrepresented relative to the total Nenets population of the Mezensky District. I also picked a lot of photos that were taken in a traditional setting, like during a hunting or fishing trip, in the tundra, or where old buildings are visible in the background, so the lifestyle of the people of the Mezensky District is not actually as traditional as these photos suggest.

You can run a shell command like this to view all images in this thread at a large size:

curl https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php\?309996|grep -o 'src="[^"]*'|cut -d\" -f2|grep imgur|sed 's,.*,<img src=&>,'|echo "<style>img{height:calc(50% - 40px)}</style>$(tr -d \\n)">/tmp/a.html;open /tmp/a.html

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[Laag]

Also from Cheboksarov

Вашские коми также воспроизводят особенности северной расы несравненно ярче, чем мезенские русские, среди которых преобладает лапоноидный элемент.

Vashskie Komi also reproduce the features of the Northern race incomparably more vividly than the Mezen Russians, among whom the laponoid element predominates.