Siberian branch
Dolgans
A young Siberian Turk people of the Taymyr Peninsula, traditionally reindeer herders and hunters of the tundra and forest-tundra.
Dulgan / Dolganlar
The Dolgans are a young people who took shape on the Taymyr Peninsula over the 18th and 19th centuries. Evenk (Tungus) clans, Yakut-speaking groups from the Lena basin, Russian settlers of the tundra and smaller numbers of Enets came together and adopted a common language close to Sakha. The Dolgans nonetheless regard themselves as a distinct people.
Traditional Dolgan life followed the edge of the forest: winters were spent near the tree line and summers on the open tundra, with reindeer herding, hunting of wild reindeer and fishing at the heart of the economy. In winter many herders lived in the balok, a dwelling mounted on sledge runners and drawn by reindeer.
Dolgan written literature is associated above all with the poet Ogdo Aksyonova (1936–1995), born into a reindeer-herding family in Taymyr, who published poems in Dolgan and Russian from the 1970s.
- Language
- Dolgan, a Siberian Turk language very close to Sakha (Yakut)
- Branch
- Siberian
- Homeland
- The Taymyr Peninsula in the far north of Krasnoyarsk Krai (Russia), around Dudinka and Khatanga
- Also living in
- The lower Anabar river in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)
Key dates
Late 17th – 19th century
Evenk and Yakut-speaking clans move from the Lena basin to Taymyr; the Dolgans form as a people.
1930
The Taymyr (Dolgan-Nenets) National Okrug is established.
1973
Ogdo Aksyonova publishes Baraksan, a collection of poems in Dolgan and Russian.
2007
The Taymyr Autonomous Okrug is merged into Krasnoyarsk Krai as a district with special status.
Heritage
- Reindeer herding and the collective hunt for wild reindeer on the tundra
- The balok, a sledge-mounted winter dwelling
- Dolgan poetry, founded as a written tradition by Ogdo Aksyonova
Sources
- M. Kolga, I. Tõnurist, L. Vaba and J. Viikberg, The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire (NGO Red Book, Tallinn, 2001), “The Dolgans”
- B. O. Dolgikh, Proiskhozhdenie dolgan [The Origin of the Dolgans], Trudy Instituta etnografii 84 (Moscow, 1963)