People and Culture
Education material in slideshow format with information text about the people in the arctic and their culture.
The Evens are a Siberian Tungusic ethnic group and one of Russia's indigenous minorities. They primarily live in the North-East and Far East of Russia.
Scandinavia's holiday season would not be complete without the Nisse, a mythical household spirit.
Evenks, formerly known as Tungus, are a Tungus-Manchu people living across Siberia, Russia, Northeast China, and Mongolia. They have settled in small groups over a vast area stretching from the Urals to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to the Mongolian steppes.
The Chukchi people are an indigenous group inhabiting the northeasternmost part of Siberia, in the Chukotka Autonomous District of Russia traditionally divided into two ethnographic groups: the Reindeer Chukchi (RC) and the Maritime Chukchi (MC).
The Veps (Vepsians), a Balto-Finnic people, inhabit the region between Lake Ladoga, Lake Onego, and Lake Beloye, currently divided among the Republic of Karelia, Leningrad region, and Vologda region.
The 6th of February the Sámi peoples in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia celebrate their Sámi National Day.
The "nice" parents of the Yule lads own a big black cate known as the Christmas cat (Jólakötturinn). The giant Christmas cat is vicious and even scarier than Grýla, it likes to hunt people who do not receive anything new to wear for Christmas and eats them.
The parents of the Yule lads are trolls called Grýla (mother) and Leppalúði (father). In the tales Grýla is a scary troll who has the ability to detect when children misbehave, hunts them down, and takes them back to her cave for making stew of them.
Kertasníkir (Candle-Stealer) is the thirteenth and the last Yule Lad who comes to town on the night before the 24th of December and departs for home on the 6th of January.
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