belmyh

so generally it's an assemblage of different sorts of tattoos at different distances down the arm/hand

that repeating abstract banded thing across or behind the knuckles, then further down near the wrist you might put a drawing (in this case it's a tamga, a type of tribe/clan identifier that was popular with nearby turkic peoples but not so popular with uralic peoples), and some horizontal lines in between; that is the structure here. most of the banded patterns were named some variation of ‘arrowhead.’ they vaguely resemble the repeating ornamental patterns used on clothing, but the medium makes the style significantly different. (clothing patterns are outside the scope of this post.) note that in this figure, all subfigures are from mansis except for #3, which is from a khanty.

here are some examples of banded patterns:

out of these drawings, all are of khanty hands except for #5, an unspecified samoyed (probably selkup), and #9, a mansi. i'd speculate that the crosses are medical. no 3 is apparently a ‘mythical beast’ of unknown denomination; i am not up to date on khanty folklore, and the only mythical beasts i know of are mammoths. er, they knew mammoths existed, but they considered them water spirits, since their remains were usually found in bogs; that kind of mammoth.

the people with these tattoos are mostly listed as aged in their 60s and 70s; the youngest is 40.

then there's the bird drawings:

these are all mansi forearms with the pattern just described as ‘bird,’ except for #3, which is a hand with a pattern described as a wood grouse. the people with these tattoos are mostly listed as aged in their 30s; the youngest is 27, and there is an outlier at 63.

ob-ugrians distinguished and distinguish a great many birds in art, but it is possible these are indeed meant not to represent any specific bird. nevertheless i find this highly unlikely because of how much #4 in particular resembles common depictions of a cuckoo bird, with the longer pine branch tail. cuckoo birds are among the most culturally important birds, for mansis.

folklore dictates that, alongside ducks, they are the souls of the dead. (ducks arrive after winter, hence they are the souls of those who died in the winter; cuckoo birds arrive after summer, hence they are the souls of those who died in the summer. there is a good deal more to it than that but that is the basic idea.) being alive, you must have one within you somewhere, and if you lose it, you are doomed to insomnia or other mental health issues; hence, it is good to have a depiction of it nearby, to remind it where it's supposed to stay. often people put carvings of cuckoos or ducks on graves, to suggest the soul stick around; and also sometimes on the cradles of newborns, so that their souls do not abandon them early.

so i guess it'd make sense to put it on one's hand i dunno. in my case i'd be a lost cause. i grew up sleeping on rocks and in really shoddy tents and on planes and benches and so on, so i don't even sleep when i sleep anymore, i stay alert and watch out with the one eye i keep open. and, well, i consider myself dead and soulless, anyway… no, i do not believe a tattoo of a cuckoo would be effective, for me.

but ah it is a dead tradition anyhow. i am somewhat of a materialist when it comes to indigenous identity. the tradition would only be meaningful to me if it represented a personal connection between whoever recommended, taught, or did it to me. i have great appreciation for gospodin rudenko, but i do not consider reading his ethnographic paper a sufficiently meaningful connection to my indigenous heritage, i'm afraid to say. maybe if they let me back into russia one day, and i'd make friends at торум маа, and i'd discuss this with them, and we thought it'd be a good idea to resurrect the tradition… but that is a different timeline, a different me, a different future and a different present. oh well

nevertheless i can do my own thing. a medical tattoo across my ailing hands would be nice. i'll workshop some designs and do a stick and poke eventually, hopefully. i like the idea of abstract banding on the hands and a glyph near the wrist. and all the parallel lines. i expect those are medical, too

by the way i'd recommend reading that paper just to gaze at all the drawings. what do you get, when you ask the average ob-ugrian reindeer herder in 1910 to draw you something? i find the results very relatable. my favourite is this drawing of a tree and a woodpecker by a 31 year old mansi named timofey (the russian equivalent of timothy):