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May 2008
publication date: Apr 30, 2008
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author/source: Polly Evans
I've only written one book review this month (there's only so much you can read and write from the seat of a snowmobile bouncing across the tundra) but it's in keeping with this month's theme of Russia and reindeer. The Reindeer People: Living With Animals and Spirits in Siberia Piers Vitebsky is an anthropologist at Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute; for nearly 20 years he visited the nomadic reindeer herders of Sebyan in Siberia and researched their culture and way of life. But Reindeer People is no dry academic tome. Even when he’s describing complex issues – the Soviet and post-Soviet farm structure, for example, or the Eveny’s (the indigenous people of this part of Siberia) shamanistic beliefs – the book is gratifyingly readable.
Maybe this is because there’s so much human interaction. Over the years that Vitebsky visits the Eveny, many of the reindeer herders become his close family friends. Their triumphs and tragedies affect him emotionally, and so they affect the reader. When the farm director dictates the slaughter of the Old Man and Granny’s herd, the indignation is real. When Boris steps out of his tent to collect firewood without his reindeer skin coat, and the tent catches fire burning his outdoor clothing, he freezes to death just a few miles short of reaching shelter in the village. His wife has just given birth to his first child; Vitesbky’s language is plain but the reader senses the upset. The economic nightmares of the early 1990s; the traumas of a society bribed with vodka; the senseless deaths of young men stabbed in drunken brawls – all this is portrayed alongside an intense admiration for the wisdom and competence of elders such as the hunter Vladimir Nikolayevich with whom Vitebsky makes one particularly memorable winter journey.
Eight years after his initial visit, Vitebsky takes his own family to visit the reindeer herders of Sebyan, and this meeting of two very different worlds is both touching and fascinating. It’s a wonderful book, even for those who have no intention of ever sleeping on a reindeer skin, and offers an insight into a traditional way of life that still exists in this remote and difficult land.
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