THE SAMOYEDS OF KOLGUEV 383 



When a younger son desires to marry, his father gives him a certain 

 number of reindeer. This number is not constant. It is the result of 

 bargaining between the parents ; and is determined by such considera- 

 tions as the advantages of the match, by the amount of property which 

 has previously been asked to the family by this son's hunting, and by 

 other such points. The girl also brings with her a dowry. In the case 

 of Uano's daughter, Ustynia, it was, as I have said, five young bulls. 



All Samoyeds are compulsorily affiliated to the Greek Catholic Church. 

 The priest quoted before (v. supra) has told us how he went to Kolguev 

 to baptize. But it is many years now since any priest was there. None 

 the less the yearly visits of the Russian traders (who, though they demora- 

 lise these poor people with vodki, yet put them to religious exercises), 

 added to the vague sense of a compelling, though distant, control in the 

 Archangel Government, serve to keep alive in them a thin thread of 

 the Christian idea. 



Possibly because of the isolation of their home the Kolguev 

 Samoyeds may lean to their own old faith more than those of the 

 mainland, though this I do not know. On Kolguev, at any rate, there 

 is but one family, that of On Tipa, who consistently keep the ikona 

 on view in the choom. The remainder carry the bolvans — or, as they 

 call them shya-dey — which represent the God Num or Philibyam- 

 bierchi. 



I remember to have read somewhere of a ceremony followed when 

 carrying the dead man out of the choom, but the Samoyeds' traditional 

 treatment of their dying, according to Uano, was that of laying the 

 dying man on the moss of the tundra. He was not abandoned till 

 dead. Only towards his last gasp he was brought out and laid there. 

 As soon as he was dead he was stretched straight out on his back with 

 his hands at his side, the attitude in which these people sleep. But 

 now the dead are buried, and although the broken sleigh and certain 

 domestic utensils of the dead man are still taken to the Holy Hill of 

 Num, yet a cross is set up over his grave. So is there a kind of dual 

 regard. Nordenskiold suggests that this practice has reference to the 

 future needs of the dead man. But, closely as I questioned the 

 Samoyeds, I could not extract from them any explanation but this, 

 namely, that the sleigh was broken to show the man was dead ; though 



