Siberian Village
Land and Life in the Sakha Republic
A fascinating portrait of the history and landscape of this remote settlement.
- A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
160 Pages, 7 x 10 in
- Paperback
- 9780816635702
- Published: March 8, 2001
Details
Siberian Village
Land and Life in the Sakha Republic
ISBN: 9780816635702
Publication date: March 8th, 2001
160 Pages
10 x 7
A fascinating portrait of the history and landscape of this remote settlement.
The village of Djarkhan is in the heart of Russia’s Sakha Republic, on the Central Yakut Plain. The world around Djarkhan, with its extreme subarctic climate and intractable permafrost, seems an unlikely place to look for a rich, historic, and exotic efflorescence of human life, and yet this is precisely what the authors found. Their book is a remarkable account of how the people of Djarkhan have created their own distinctive place through their unique relationship with a severe and demanding land.
This book traces the way of life of the village’s Turkic inhabitants, the Yakuts, from their arrival in the 1600s through czarist times and the Soviet era to the present day. As a native of the village, geographer Bella Bychkova Jordan enjoyed unparalleled access to its people and their stories, myths, humor, problems, and folklore. Viewed through the prism of cultural geography, this material forms the basis of a remarkable portrait of a people wresting a living from the land in one of the coldest and most isolated spots on Earth.
Published in collaboration with the Center for American Places.
Bella Bychkova Jordan is a doctoral candidate and Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov is Walter Prescott Webb Professor of History and Ideas, both in the Department of Geography at the University of Texas.
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