Bøger i Languages and Cultures of the Russian Far East serien

The book consists of oral narratives in the Evenki language, compiled on the basis of the linguistic material collected by Nadezhda Mamontova during several expeditions to the Evenki Municipal District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the period from 2011 to 2014. The Evenki (also Ewenki or Evenks) are one of the Indigenous minorities in Russia, with a total population of 37,843 people. The Evenki language is a member of the Tungusic branch of the Altaic language family. The narratives in this book were recorded from the Ilimpii Evenki elders. In the ethnographic literature, the Ilimpii Evenki are known as the Evenki-speaking communities who lived north of the Lower Tunguska River at the time of the establishment of the Soviet regime, i.e. in the territory of the Ilimpii group of settlements of the modern Evenki Municipal District, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Their language belongs to the Northern set of dialects and is less studied in comparison with other dialects of the Evenki language. This book includes 29 texts in the proper Ilimpii dialect (Chirinda, Ekonda and Tutonchany sub-dialects) and four texts in the Kislokan mixed sub-dialect which contains the elements of both Northern and Southern sets of dialects. In terms of folklore genres, the texts are represented by fairy tales, mythological stories, legends, and epic texts.