The Komi are a Finno-Ugric people of the Vychegda, Pechora and Kama river basins in northeastern European Russia. Komi is their own name for themselves; outsiders have long divided them into northern Zyryans and southern Permyaks, and the two groups tell some stories differently Wikipedia, Komi peoples. The written record of older Komi belief is thin. Russian ethnologists began to study it only in the later nineteenth century, and Komi scholars themselves note how few connected myth cycles survive Wikipedia, Komi peoples; Chesnokova, The Myth of the Northern Sub-Urals (Folk Belief Today, Tartu 1995). This page therefore describes a small set of well-documented figures rather than a full pantheon, and it does not fill the gaps with gods from neighbouring peoples. Most Komi today are Orthodox Christians, so the material below is traditional lore that survives in folklore archives, ethnography and modern culture Wikipedia, Komi peoples.
Deities and Spirits
Two creator figures dominate the recorded material. En is the good creator; the word en is related to Komi jen, "god", and to a root meaning "sky". Omöl' is his opposite, and the Komi word omöl' means "bad" or "poor". Some summaries give the second creator's name as Kul', a god of water and the dead. Researchers note that the pair came to resemble God and the Devil after Christianity arrived, and Pavel Limerov, a folklorist at the Komi Science Centre, suggests that the dark brother's name may be a euphemism for a figure people avoided naming Limerov, Some Motifs in Komi Legends about the Creation of the World (Electronic Journal of Folklore 76); Wikipedia, Komi mythology.
The mother of the two is the primordial duck Chözh. Natalya Chesnokova points out that in Komi chözh means "uncle, relative, ancestor", so the "duck" is a conventional label for an ancestral first being Chesnokova, The Myth of the Northern Sub-Urals.
Beyond the creators, the lord of each domain is a figure with its own character. Wikipedia's inventory, drawn from the Komi encyclopedia of mythology edited by Nikolai Konakov, also lists Aika ("father"), a protector of a particular place who was said to become an enemy of Stephen of Perm, the fourteenth-century Orthodox missionary, and Voipel', a god of the cold north wind and of night Wikipedia, Komi mythology. One account of Komi-Permyak belief holds that every element has an owner: Veris for the forest and Vais for the water Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi.
Myths and Stories
The two ducklings and the making of the world
The best-known account was copied in 1923 by the writer and ethnographer Pavel Doronin from a Komi manuscript in the village of Prokopievka, now in the Syktyvdinsky district. In it, the duck Chözh swims in a boundless primordial ocean carrying the eggs of life. The sea swallows four, and two hatch under her wing as En and Omöl', brothers who stand for life and death, truth and lie, day and night. When they are grown, she sends them to dive for the lost eggs. While En is below, Omöl' whistles and shouts until the ocean freezes, and En breaks out through the ice with lightning. The brothers break the saved eggs on their mother's body. From En's eggs come the Sun, and her body becomes the forested Mother Earth. From Omöl's come the Moon, lakes, bogs, quicksand and demons. The brothers then step onto land and become human, En making useful birds and animals, Omöl' predators and snakes, and together the first man and woman. Limerov notes that other Komi tellings differ. In one Komi-Permyak version a loon dives and breaks the egg, whose halves become sky and earth, and in a text collected in 1913 the devil, turned into a loon, dives for earth and the sea freezes over Limerov, Some Motifs in Komi Legends about the Creation of the World.
The earth deer
In Komi legend the earth deer lived at the time of creation. It was so large and heavy that it sank to its chest in the ground, and rivers and streams formed where it walked, flooding the land. Later tellings added a Christian layer: the deer tried to board Noah's ark, did not fit, and drowned while birds sat on its "horns". The portal's account links the figure to mammoth remains found in permafrost, and says the deer went underground rather than vanishing Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi.
Pera the hero
Chesnokova mentions Pera, a hero (bogatyr) of Komi tales who rides an elk to Moscow to see the Tsar and arrives three days before a troika of horses. She also notes that proposed links between such tale figures and the figures on Perm Animal Style bronzes remain unproven Chesnokova, The Myth of the Northern Sub-Urals.
Creatures and Spirit Beings
Vörsa is the forest spirit and watches over hunting. He is said to be as tall as a pine, unclothed, with turned-out heels, furry ears, no eyebrows or eyelashes and transparent bones. He can become a small animal such as a cat, or a whirlwind (shuvgay). His animals are his livestock, and his dogs hunt best. Hunters sought his help, but he could also send disease to livestock, lead a hunter astray or keep thieves and murderers in the forest. His wife and daughter are never seen clearly, and he was said to take children cursed by their mothers. The portal adds that he lives with his family in a triangular hut in a swamp and quarrels with the water spirit Vakul Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi.
Vasa is a water spirit who could be malicious and was appeased with bread, a stick, cakes or tobacco thrown into the water. He was a friend of millers. Olys (also Olysya) is the hearth spirit, comparable to the Russian domovoi. As Rynyshsa he is a hunchbacked old man with a white beard associated with the bathhouse, and Pyvsyan'sa is the bathhouse master, a small man in a red hat with fiery eyes Wikipedia, Komi mythology.
Joma (Ёма, also Ioma) is a witch of Komi tales, often compared with Baba Yaga Wikipedia, Komi peoples. In the north and in Perm Krai, local people speak of a forest being they call Chochkom mort ("white man") or Yag mort ("forest man"), described by the ethnographer Vasily Nalimov in 1907 Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi.
Souls and the Dead
According to Komi belief, a person has two souls. The lov is born with the person and leaves the body with the last breath. The ort is a shadow soul that appears in the first minutes of life and accompanies the person. It can be seen only before death and stays in the world of the living for forty days afterwards Artefact, Strange Moon by Yury Lisovsky. Wikipedia's summary of Komi mythology adds that the land of the dead lay far to the north beyond mountains and rivers, with a river of pitch, Syr Yu, to cross. Souls crossed on an iron bridge, a shaky beam, a thin pole or a cobweb according to their deeds, and fingernail clippings were kept to be buried with the person for climbing the slope beyond Wikipedia, Komi mythology.
Limerov records a related Komi opposition. Whistling is associated with evil forces, the wicked dead and the north wind, while thunder is associated with God and the prophet Elijah Limerov, Some Motifs in Komi Legends about the Creation of the World. Galina Misharina cites a 1979 report by Komi folklorists, who found that lamenters refused to perform burial laments outside a funeral, believing it could cause a death Misharina, Funeral and Magical Rituals among the Komi (Folklore 47).
The Hunting Calendar and Early Art
A bronze ring with nine animal figures, found in 1975 in the Kortkeros district, is read by the archaeologist Klim Korolyov as a hunting calendar. In this reading the year begins at the spring equinox with the bear, then passes through deer, ermine, wolverine, moose, otter, fox, squirrel and marten, and each period names an animal not to be hunted. Its meaning remains a hypothesis Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi. Chesnokova argues that the early medieval Perm Animal Style bronzes show the same mythology as the creation story, with the primordial bird as their central image. She calls this a reconstruction Chesnokova, The Myth of the Northern Sub-Urals.
Today
The ancient hunting calendar is now a symbol of the Komi Republic, printed on posters, magnets and postcards Tourist portal of the Komi Republic, Mysteries of Komi. The Komi artist Yury Lisovsky paints in an ethnofuturist style inspired by Finno-Ugric mythology, and his painting Ort takes up the Komi idea of the shadow soul Artefact, Strange Moon by Yury Lisovsky. Since the end of the Soviet Union, the Komi have reasserted a separate identity, although the 2010 census recorded fewer Komi than in 1989 Wikipedia, Komi peoples.