Starodubova O.V.
The traditional safety approaches of the Khanty of the Trom-Agan river
ABSTRACT: The article deals with traditional safety approaches in everyday life and emergency situations of the Khanty of the Trom-Agan river. The research is based on the author's field data. The sphere of ensuring safety and survival includes both worldview aspects and purely practical techniques that directly depend on the knowledge of the environment. Conventionally, these techniques can be divided into several categories: security measures at natural sites (forest, water bodies); related with natural phenomena (thunderstorm); while handling animals (wild, domestic). Each category contains both a preventive component and indications of specific actions in this situation. Some of the traditional security measures are marked by worldviews. Such rules include a ban on the games of children in places where snakes live; a ban on crossing a body of water through the central part, and not along the coastline; rules of conduct during a thunderstorm in the forest. Despite the fact that such prohibitions are accompanied by explanations of a supernatural nature, their practical significance remains undeniable. The paper also provides some traditional approaches for children to develop skills for safe living in wilderness. An important point is the elders' teaching to move in the forest and waterways even at night without help, the removal of fear of the forest. Some families practiced independent walking of children along familiar routes, with a gradual complication of the task. The presented material is only a small part of the vast field of folk knowledge of the Trom-Agan Khanty. This field requires additional research, collection of data, systematization and analysis of the role of traditional security measures in the modern life of the Khanty, fixing new forms and rules that have arisen with changes in the traditional way of life.
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