The Pomors

The Pomors

Frank Björm

English translation of German original articte: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomoren

Pomoren beim Rehfest in Umba

The Pomors (Russian: помо́ры, transliterated pomóry) are an East Slavic-speaking ethnic group in Northern Russia. According to traditional Russian historiography, Pomors are settlers from Novgorod who established themselves on the White Sea coast in the 12th century, along with their modern descendants. However, genetically, they are more closely related to indigenous ethnic groups of the region, such as those speaking Uralic languages, and show no genetic connection to the current population of Novgorod [1] [2] [3].

Etymology

The name "Pomors" derives from Pomorje, a historical region by the White Sea. It combines the Russian words po (by) and more (sea), meaning "by the sea." This shares the same etymological root as the Slavic term Pomerania. The term first appeared in 1526 in Russian chronicles: "Pomorzy from the Okijan Sea in Kondolakskaya Bay requested, along with Lopljanes, the construction of a church" [4]. With the establishment of the Pomorje administrative unit, the term "Pomors" was often mistakenly used as a synonym for all peoples of the Olonets, Arkhangelsk, and Vologda governorates.

History

In the 12th century, Slavic explorers from the Novgorod and Rostov-Suzdal principalities ventured into Bjarmeland, inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples. By the 14th century, permanent settlements were established along the sea coast and the Northern Dvina River. The settlers, called Pomors, explored the Barents Sea coast, the Kola Peninsula, Spitsbergen, and Novaya Zemlya. Their ships reached Northern Siberia beyond the Urals, where they founded the trading city of Mangazeya east of the Yamal Peninsula in 1601. The Pomors maintained a northern trade route between Arkhangelsk and Siberia. Before Arkhangelsk's rise in the late 16th century, their main city was Kholmogory.

The traditional Pomor lifestyle relied on fishing, whaling, and hunting. In tundra regions, they engaged in fur trapping and reindeer herding. Maritime trade with Norway, involving grain and fish, was significant. This trade was so intense that around 1750, a Russian-Norwegian pidgin language, Russenorsk, emerged. Notable Pomors include Mikhail Lomonosov, Fedot Shubin, Semyon Dezhnev, and Yerofei Khabarov [5].

Religion and Society

Before the 1917 Revolution, many Pomors were practicing Old Believers. The Pomor Church still has around 400,000 members [6]. Pomor Christianity traditionally coexisted with animism rooted in sacred geography, fostering a strong environmental ethic. In the 20th century, this led to certain animals, like the beluga whale, being considered sacred, resulting in resistance to modern hunting methods [7].

Pomor Worldview

As part of the broader "cold societies" based on the concept of eternal return, similar to neighboring Sami, Nenets, or Komi, the Pomor worldview reflects a complex interplay of ancient piety, shamanism, and rituals aimed at maintaining community homeostasis. This homeostasis is a dynamic constancy, not absolute stasis. The Pomors believed preserving their society's structure was essential for survival in Pomorje, with the Starinshchik (poet-storyteller) playing a key role in maintaining balance through mythopoetic expression [8].

The transition from winter to summer was culturally linked to rebirth. Rituals like offering vows to the "sea god" Nikola Morsky and bidding farewell to the sea like a funeral were central. During the main holiday bridging the old and new year, the demiurge defeats chaos and death annually, emphasizing cyclical time and eternal return. Total sacrifice and descent into chaos, leading to the creation of a new world, encompass humans, gods, and beasts [8].

These spiritual beliefs were integral to daily life, as participating in this struggle was part of the "Pomor destiny," shaped by the shaman or Starinshchik's ritual phrases. Winter was seen as a dreamtime, ending with local celebrations of symbolic rebirth, welcoming the sun, represented in Pomor mythology by the bird of happiness [9].

A key aspect of Pomor spirituality was the sacred status of the bathhouse, an archaic sanctuary-temple central to initiation and medical rituals symbolizing "second birth." The bathhouse and forge were liminal spaces tied to transformation, fire, and water. Pomor sacred geography placed the bathhouse at settlement edges, reinforcing its chthonic associations with life and death [10].

The sea, central to Pomor life, held mythopoetic significance as a threshold between the living and the dead, giving seafaring deep religious meaning. The northeast wind, "Polunoshnik," was a sacred force linking the mundane world to mystical northern realms. The sea, both destructive and creative, was seen as a source of chaos and salvation, reflecting the dual nature of northern lands as both heaven and hell [11].

This interplay of destruction and creation, life and death, or sacred and mundane, without clear separation of dual forces like good and evil, is central to Pomor philosophy, resembling Yin-Yang concepts. Sacred spaces have a dark side, represented by "threshold guardians," while the "world axis" or "northern mountain" beyond the sea was seen as paradise. The "wind rose," aiding Pomor navigation, was also sacred knowledge [11].

Islands held sacred significance in Pomor burial and memorial rituals, connecting the living with ancestors and ensuring the stability of ethnic traditions. These island spaces served as symbolic universe models, merging past, present, and future into a single continuum, preserving Pomor cultural identity [12].

Modern Pomor Society

Traditionelle Pomorische Holzgebäude im Freilichtmuseum Malyje Korely

These traditions persist in modern Pomor society, where syncretic beliefs are widespread, alongside new religious movements rooted in traditional Pomor worldviews, emerging post-Soviet atheism. Modern Pomors have a fluid, diverse religious outlook, celebrating holidays like the Pomor New Year in September or the Reindeer Festival, participating in Orthodox pilgrimages, or meditating at power sites, leaving ribbons and coins. These practices form a syncretic worldview with local cults and hierotopic practices, blurring sacred and profane boundaries. Affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church is low [13].

Gender Identity

In Pomorje, the traditional role of Raspetushya refers to individuals of indeterminate gender, either intersex or biologically male, with appearance, behavior, and occupations resembling women. They were seen as having no fixed gender and wandered between villages but were valued for magical knowledge and healing abilities. While not fully integrated, they could maintain social ties, such as singing with women [14]. Today, the region's LGBT community embraces this identity, rejecting "third gender" as a Western construct [15].

Current Status

Traditional Pomor wooden buildings are preserved at the Malye Korely open-air museum. Today, Pomors are a minority in Arkhangelsk Oblast, where most residents are descendants of non-indigenous Russians, yet their cultural scene thrives internationally. However, Pomor villages lack state protection. Fishing and hunting rights have been revoked, traditional seal trade banned, and lands expropriated for foreign investors, with homes turned into firewood and access to ancestral lands denied. Russian laws target indigenous populations, offering no compensation. This has led to the depopulation of vast areas now used for military purposes. By 2012, 50% of Pomor villages were destroyed, termed genocide by P. Esipov, leader of the Pomor national-cultural autonomy [16] [17].

Many Pomor villages are accessible only by helicopter and lack infrastructure. Large parts of Pomorje are now landfills, sparking the 2018–2020 Shies protests under the slogan "Pomorje is not a dump," with over 30,000 participants, preventing a landfill at Shiyes station and leading to the resignations of Arkhangelsk and Komi governors [18] [19] [20]. In 2002, Pomors were first recognized as a Russian ethnic subgroup in the All-Russian Census, with 6,571 identifying as Pomors, including 6,295 in Arkhangelsk and 127 in Murmansk [21] [22] [23] [24].

References

  1. I. Evseeva et al., HLA profile of three ethnic groups living in the North-Western region of Russia, Tissue Antigens, 59(1), 2002, pp. 38–43, doi:10.1034/j.1399-0039.2002.590107.x.
  2. Peculiarity of Pomors of Onega Peninsula and Winter Coast in the genetic context of Northern Europe: https://vestnik.rsmu.press/archive/2022/5/2/content
  3. Peculiarity of pomors of onega peninsula and winter coast in the genetic context of northern europe: cyberleninka.ru/article/n/peculiarity-of-pomors-of-onega-peninsula-and-winter-coast-in-the-genetic-context-of-northern-europe
  4. Ivan Matveevich Ulyanov, On the origin of the name "Pomors", Strana Pomoria, 1984: web.archive.org/web/20081210113515/http://biarmia.narod.ru/toponim/pomor
  5.  The Pomors – Barentsinfo. Archiviert vom Original (nicht mehr online verfügbar) am 15. Februar 2020; abgerufen am 3. Juli 2019 (englisch).
  6. E.A. Ageeva, Old Orthodox Pomor Church, Orthodox Encyclopedia, 2007, pp. 135–144: pravenc.ru/text/180417.html
  7. Stephen Brain, The Christian Environmental Ethics of the Russian Pomors, October 2011: ebuah.uah.es/dspace/handle/10017/20494
  8. Mythopoetic Aspects of Traditional Pomor Cryosophy and Cold Anthropology, Vestnik of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, 4, 2021, pp. 122–133: cyberleninka.ru/article/n/mifopoeticheskie-aspekty-traditsionnoy-pomorskoy-kriosofii-i-antropologii-holoda-rekonstruktsiya-i-interpretatsiya
  9. Bird of Happiness, March 5, 2016: web.archive.org/web/20160305102039/http://ushankarussia.com/wood-chip-bird-bird-of-happiness
  10. The Topos of the Bathhouse in the Religious Anthropology of Northern Russia, Vestnik of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, 4, 2019, pp. 138–146: cyberleninka.ru/article/n/topos-bani-v-religioznoi-antropologii-narodov-severnoi-rossii
  11. Symbolic Imagery of Sacred Oceanography of Sea Peoples (Part 1), Vestnik of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, 1, 2020, pp. 106–113: cyberleninka.ru/article/n/obrazno-simvolicheskiy-fond-sakralnoy-okeanografii-narodov-morya-chast-1
  12. A.M. Tamitskiy, N.M. Terebikhin, Island as a memorial site in the sacral landscape of the Arctic regions of the Russian North: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/302/1/012034/meta
  13. Religious Narratives in Contemporary Ethnopolitical Projects: The Pomor Idea, cyberleninka.ru.
  14. T.B. Shchepanskaya, Men and Women, Iskusstvo-SPB, 2005, pp. 515–516: booksite.ru/fulltext/muzgiki/text.pdf
  15. Raspetukh: to be a scream at 5:00 a.m.: syg.ma/@c007/raspietukh-byt-krikom-v-5-00-utra-po-miestnomu-vriemieni
  16. Return of the Pomors, ru.thebarentsobserver.com, September 28, 2011: ru.thebarentsobserver.com/vozvrasenie-pomorov/389430
  17. We are not masters of our land, Kommersant, June 11, 2012: kommersant.ru/doc/1947315
  18. Pomorje is not a dump, Region.Expert: themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/06/protests-shiyes-how-garbage-dump-galvanized-russias-civil-society-a66289
  19. The "dangerous" Pomor flag, Region.Expert: region.expert/no_flag/
  20. Yelena Solovyova, Protests in Shiyes: How a Garbage Dump Galvanized Russia's Civil Society, July 6, 2019: region.expert/pomor-flag/
  21. Among governors, a true Pomor appeared, businesspress.ru, October 16, 2002: web.archive.org/web/20070613212612/http://businesspress.ru/newspaper/article_mId_43_aId_129968.html
  22. Population composition of Russia by nationality, 2002 Census: web.archive.org/web/20200109173322/http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_01.xls
  23. Population composition of Russian regions by nationality, 2002 Census: web.archive.org/web/20061104083455/http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/doc/TOM_04_03.xls
  24. Pomors appealed to the Supreme Court (Arkhangelsk Oblast), regnum.ru, October 18, 2006: regnum.ru/news/723515.html

Literature


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