This is a cheerful scene to the eyes of any Chukchi: a sleigh ride. This sled is not heavily loaded, as when a family or brigade is moving to a new location; thus, this scene depicts driving reindeer for fun. This is a favorite winter pastime, and villages often hold reindeer races. Snowdrifts surround the boulders in the foreground, and snowy peaks can be seen in the rear.

This scene, and the one below, are opposite sides of one engraving made on the very tip of a walrus tusk; it is about 3 inches long. It is a winter scene, as you can tell from the snowdrifts surrounding the familiar iaranga. The man is calling his reindeer, probably in order to hitch it up for a sleigh ride. How do you call a reindeer? In this case, the man is using a little pouch that is probably filled urine, which the reindeer's craving for salt makes irresistable to them. You can tell this is a man in the scene because of his clothing -- he is wearing a kukhlianka, which is a winter overcoat made of reindeer fur, with a decorative trim at the bottom. If a woman were going to dress in fur clothing, she would be wearing a kind of one-piece jumpsuit called a kerker.

On the flip side of this piece, Valery has chosen to depict a scene he can view from his own apartment in Anadyr'. It shows the Gulf of Anadyr' with ice floes floating in the water -- which means this is either fall or spring, when the ice is either just forming, or already breaking up. On the opposite shore, you can see the "charming" sight of oil storage towers in the town of Shakhterskii -- one can't forget the industrial presence brought by the Soviet Union.

Click here for the next page of Valery's work

Click here to return to the previous page