The Concept of Truth in the Komi Hunting Stories

Abstract

We analyse the Komi hunters' story-telling as the integrated way of knowledge transmission and communicating vernacular beliefs. We intend to demonstrate that although vernacular beliefs regulating hunting story-telling are widespread in the North, local practices enable us to reveal peculiarities of the tradition in a nuanced way. Our study is based on annual collaborative fieldwork trips to the Komi hunters, which began in 1996. During these years, we have recorded tens of hours of hunting stories and background data for the topic. Analysis of this material is based on the concept of vernacular mimetic mode of representation. We revealed that the Komi narrators communicate hunting skills and magical beliefs in the process of story-telling. The notion of “truth” is an important conceptual device that frames the story-telling practice. We discuss the Komi hunting narratives using an interpretation of vernacular ideology that we label the “aesthetics of confusion”. We will argue that in the vernacular understanding of hunting narratives, the Komi have a seemingly ambivalent and fluid, but at the same time strict, approach to the poetics of story-telling.

Key Words:

• Komi hunters
• Story-telling
• Narrative
• Truth
• Vernacular beliefs
• Confusion
• Mimesis

Introduction

The Komi people live near the Ural Mountains in the northeastern corner of European Russia. Our main fieldwork region has been Kulömdin district on the upper course of the Ezhva (Vychegda in Russian) River in the southeastern part of the Komi Republic. In that region, the Komi have preserved traditional hunting practices to a considerable extent. The Komi hunting narratives are related to their understanding of the world, and story-telling depends upon human relationships, communication strategies, and actualization of vernacular beliefs.

Our understanding of northern communities’ vernacular religion and culture-specific story-telling practices depends significantly on the way data is recorded and analysed (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 61). It is important to realize how information is communicated, how a scholar and one’s fieldwork partners understand data-collecting situations and the vernacular rules that frame information exchange inside the studied community.

General notions about the extraordinary importance of hunting in the subsistence pattern and traditional beliefs of the Komi became common in ethnographic literature from the nineteenth century (see, for example, Mikhaylov [1852] 2011; Popov 1874; Zhakov [1901] 1990). A number of Komi hunting stories have been published in different folklore anthologies (Rochev [1984] 2006; Limerov 2005, 2012). Several Komi scholars have conducted analyses of hunting stories as sources for describing hunters’ beliefs. For example, Alexei Sidorov ([1928] 1997) studied hunting witchcraft in depth. Nikolai Konakov explored a variety of hunting beliefs, among them magical taboos regarding direct talk about wild game (Konakov 1983, 2001, 2003a, 2004). Oleg Ulyashev (see Ilina and Ulyashev 2009, 100–130; Siikala and Ulyashev 2011) characterizes narrative restrictions and witchcraft, as well as the hunting magic epic and hunting teams as arenas for oral performance.

In general, analysis of vernacular narrative mechanisms is almost absent in these studies. Konakov (1983, 192–193) briefly focuses on the “secret” hunting language of the Komi. This language was meant to guarantee magical luck during the hunt (cf. Sidorov [1928] 1997). However, this study remains descriptive, providing just a number of metaphorical expressions that were used to designate wild game, hunting equipment and techniques, as well as several objects that were not directly linked to hunting.

In this study, we aim to explore the Komi hunting story-telling as an ambivalent way of communicating vernacular knowledge and beliefs. We intend to demonstrate that hunting narratives enable mediation of information through the mood of uncertainty they produce. We will argue that in vernacular understanding, the ambivalence of story-telling is framed by traditional poetic rules.

The Komi hunters whose stories we have included in this study were born in the mid-1960s. They have different hunting experience. However, although all of these hunters started hunting before they turned 10 years old, only one hunter (labelled S in this article ¹ ) has conducted hunting continuously to the present day as his primary source for living. Nowadays, the other men go hunting more randomly, although a few times a year they enter the forest for at least a few weeks. However, during earlier decades, they hunted rather intensively. On a local scale, only S is considered the real hunter, the ultimate title one can be afforded in the Komi hunters’ community. The other fieldwork partners also evaluate hunting highly as a proper subsistence practice for a Komi man. They descend from old hunting clans and possess an extensive knowledge about hunting techniques and rules of behaviour. Hunting is rather widespread among the male population of Kulömdin region, but it is practiced predominantly individually or in small seasonal teams. The hunters who have been cooperating with this study are members of this kind of seasonal hunting team. Thus they constitute a tiny but experienced narrative community.

Our aim during the fieldwork has been to record hunting stories in situations that are close to natural. We have tried to catch moments when hunters tell stories on their own initiative. We suppose this enables revelation of a more or less ordinary story-telling process. During evenings in the hunting cabin, it is quite sure that one can hear stories about hunting. Also, it is not rare that in a village or a town, away from a forest, hunters start to recall events that happened to them or their fellow hunters during their forest trips.

Analytically reconstructing the “natural context” of story-telling is complicated because researchers cannot actually observe or experience that natural condition, if it is assumed to be a situation without a scholar participating in it. We assume that in fieldwork situations that are kept as close to local cultural practices as possible, the way of narrating and topics revealed during these story-telling episodes can be considered significant for the people under study. In addition, self-reflective statements and discussions appearing during narrating sessions can be considered trustworthy in these circumstances.

These arguments about the way in which one must tell a story and how to estimate its respectability are not part of the normal story-telling process. These statements are made exclusively for the reason that a researcher is present and a hunter considers that some extra explanation is needed. These instructive insights to story-telling methodology enable us to execute a more careful examination of narrating tradition and make scholars aware of certain cognitive threats that one is unable to overcome without these tricky but friendly hints.

Examination of folk poetics by Richard Baumann and Charles L. Briggs (1990) and theoretical inquiry of mimetic practices (Taussig 1993) constitute the methodological foundation for our analysis. Our earlier research has revealed that vernacular perception of “truth” is an important conceptual device that makes it possible to outline prominent features of story-telling practice (Leete and Lipin 2012, 293–298). In this study, we aim to elaborate the idea further and to discuss the Komi hunters’ story-telling as a mechanism for establishing culture-specific truth.

The Functional Framework of Hunters' Story-telling

Exploration of the functions of Komi hunting story-telling enables contextualization of folk narratives and more adequate analysis of the poetics of these stories. Understanding of speech as heterogeneous and multifunctional (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 60) allows one to consider story-telling a polyphonic practice. During story-telling, the Komi hunters employ tactics of mimetic confusion, amalgamating descriptions of real events with fabulated plots. With regard to hunters’ stories it means that from this element narratives obtain a certain vernacular animistic power. On a more theoretical level, we propose that mimesis splits the perceived truth-quality of stories, as the truth is also a non-truth, and in this encounter cognitive hesitation of an audience is achieved (cf. Taussig 1993, 40–41). In relation to Komi hunting stories, we stress three major functional domains that have direct connection with the broader cultural framework and that enable us to investigate narration more adequately.

First, performances of Komi hunting narratives serve as events of entertainment. In the monotonous psychological conditions of a hunting trip, with little privacy in a hunting cabin, story-telling is one of the few leisure-time pleasures available. This entertainment aspect also serves as a component of poetics in a broader sense by building up the potential of a narrative in order to be considered a good hunting story. Without remarkable emotional value, a hunting story does not function properly.

Another cultural function, supported by story-telling, is knowledge exchange. Hunters negotiate hunting techniques, information concerning animal behaviour and the impact of weather conditions on hunting tactics. Relevant knowledge constitutes the utilitarian basics of hunters’ practice. Practical skills need constant adjustment, and not only on the level of utilitarian understanding.

Demand to share hunting knowledge that is treated as a “communal resource” is also recognized among the Yukaghir hunters (Willerslev 2007, 160, 2013, 53), but as Rane Willerslev argues, one cannot learn hunting just by listening to stories. A stranger or a novice hunter is not able to understand descriptions of landscape and limited language skills may become obstacles of understanding. Practical experience is crucial for developing hunting skills, but hunters still can learn a few things from each other’s stories.

Historically, story-telling has been related to supporting hunting beliefs for the Komi men. Narrating forest-related stories is a way to communicate the hunting worldview, the means of treating a catch, the rules of hunting magic (Sidorov [1928] 1997, 44–45, 61; Leete and Lipin 2012, 285–288) or how to negotiate with one’s ancestors (Lipin and Leete 2000, 84). Earlier, hunters believed that the forest spirits were fond of story-telling, so narrating during a night in a hunting cabin was supposed to guarantee hunting luck for the next day, as each catch was believed to be delivered by spirits (Konakov 2003a, 343). Today, the relationship between narrating and the hunters’ worldview can also be clearly detected. Often, proper behaviour in the forest is addressed during storytelling (Lipin and Leete 2000, 79–83; Konakov 2001, 2004; Limerov 2005, 343–355, 372–373; Ilina and Ulyashev 2009, 106–108).

The vernacular framework for the stories is rather rich. A variation in scope of these functions changes the mood and perceptive outline of a narrative. Analysis of the purpose of story-telling reveals that the practice has a changing frame of interpretation as the described functional areas are in dynamic relationships with each other.

One must try to reveal and follow the vernacular approach and how it influences a specific narrating event and narrative practice in general. To overcome problems of inclusiveness and false objectivity of context, discussion must be carried out in interaction with fieldwork partners in order to reveal the “contextualization cues” that indicate features of vernacular interpretative frameworks (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 68; Primiano 2012, 384–388). The three perspectives discussed serve as major frameworks for the contextualization of Komi hunter story-telling.

Truth in Hunting Stories

We try to explore the way in which the Komi hunters treat the problem of truth in their stories. The problem of truth can be approached most adequately through analysis of the style of story-telling. The Komi hunters’ narrative practice is based on a general demand not to tell truth directly. We present a few stories that have been told repeatedly over several years and aim to demonstrate how the details of story-telling and modification of the text enable the story tellers to employ significant nuances of the narrative practice of the Komi hunters (cf. Primiano, 2012, 386).

In the following section we present a few examples of hunting stories that were told in our presence at least twice during different fieldwork trips. This way, it will be possible to analyse the treatment of truth during various narrating events. We suppose that all hunters who told these stories share a general narrative strategy. This means that if a particular storyteller had heard stories from somebody else, he presumes that the initial narrator and actual eyewitness or actor in the events described has the same overall approach to story-telling and hunting practice.

The mind-set of hunters towards stories can also be discussed from a different angle. Willerslev demonstrates that the Yukaghir hunters in northeastern Siberia do not trust narrated knowledge because they consider “verbal accounts to be an inferior way of knowing compared to lived experience” (Willerslev 2007, 159). Among the Komi hunters it is not easy to estimate how much hunters’ overall attitude towards forest life is actually shared, but as it appears to us from fieldwork experience, the Komi hunters expect other hunters to feel about hunting in a similar way as they do.

In the following section we will provide texts of told stories and propose comparative analyses of these narrative events. Later, we will propose a more general interpretation of the Upper Ezhva Komi hunters’ vernacular narrative strategy.

Shooting the Sneaking Bear

Initially this story was told half a year after the hunting event happened. We discussed the situation with hunting in the Upper Ezhva region. After introducing traditional hunting practices and rules still in use, L admitted that the Komi men conduct hunting with rifles that could be rather expensive but were worth their price. To illustrate the point, L told the following story that actually goes beyond the problem of the rifles’ quality.

My classmate said this. He shot a bear last year. The weather was not good. It was cloudy, snow was falling. Visibility was bad. And his dog was young, a year and a half or two years of age. The dog did not figure out the situation. He smells a bear but can’t see it. The dog runs but the hunter can’t understand anything. It seems that the dog barks at a human. [He said:] “I started to look around but a bear’s face appeared.” He made two or three shots. Then the bear disappeared somewhere. [My classmate explained:] “I started to hide myself, also.” The bear searched for him and he looked for the bear. The bear moved fast. If something rustled, he took a shot. He had a carbine. Suddenly that bear sneaked out at a distance of four or five metres. If he hadn’t had a carbine, that bear would have eaten him alive. This is because the bear appeared suddenly. Although the hunter understood that the bear was approaching, he couldn’t see the game. And then that animal fell down at a distance of a metre and a half. He couldn’t reach the hunter. The hunter had taken eight shots; he had only two cartridges left. He checked that when he took the first shot at that bear, he didn’t hit the head but a paw. And, in principle, this saved his life. The bear couldn’t move fast enough with an injured paw. If he could have moved normally, he would have caught the hunter faster. It scared my classmate a little bit. But that’s the reason why hunters buy these rifles. (L, FM 1999)

Five years later, L turned back to the story. On this occasion he analysed the same described event from the perspective of accuracy. L examined the problem that he had heard the story initially from his classmate whom L could not trust as an example of communicational reliability:

For example, if I sit with M, the conversation goes always in this way. I know M, because I sat together with him at the same school desk. I know what kind of person he is. But if he tells me that the bear bit his leg while he was running away from that bear and escaped to the tree… What the hell! How did that bear bite him! It is just that kind of a metaphor. He claimed that the bear almost caught him, grabbed his legs, and bit half of his t…… off or something else.

But if he tells that when he had eventually killed that bear and he had only two cartridges left in the magazine, then I can tell exactly that this is realistic. It could well be so that two cartridges were left. He simply described how quickly the bear attacked him. And I can tell that if he managed to use 9 cartridges out of a breech with 11 cartridges, that movement was apparently really fast. That’s the thing. But if he talks how the bear bit his legs, then it is already… [a lie]. (L, FM 2004)

This interpretation relies strongly on hunting knowledge. If one knows the peculiarities of hunting practice well enough, the technical characteristics of a rifle and the behaviour of wild game, this knowledge provides useful tools for analysing elements of truth in hunting stories. One must calculate the degree of likelihood of described episodes and the whole combination of events provided in a narrative. Although this method can provide the possibility for only a rough estimation of truth, it seems to be a vernacular way to analyse narratives. Besides, one must take into account the narrator’s personal characteristics and his established record of lies.

Although L was blaming his friend for exaggerating the details of the events described, in the second narrative he was actually adding a few things (and the most colourful ones) to his own earlier story. So how much M lied in his initial narrative, and what in these stories L himself rhetorically constructs, remains inconclusive. Even after detailed calculation, L’s estimation stays rather approximate. This case alone demonstrates clearly enough how complicated any effort at interpreting a hunting narrative can be.

In a very general sense, the story also has an animistic background. The Komi earlier treated the bear as a forest spirit, although data about this are rather scarce. The bear was believed to possess the ability to understand human speech as it was considered to have been human in the past (Konakov 1983, 186–193). Successful bear hunters were supposed to have magical skills as well as the favour of forest spirits (Konakov 2003d, 138). Contemporary hunters treat bears as acting more intelligibly than other wild animals, but no particular supernatural qualities have been connected to the animal. So it is impossible to detect conclusively any spiritual relationship between man and bear in these stories.

Shooting a Huge Pike

In the next case, the first narration is presented by L, who had heard the story from his friend, and the second example here is provided by a hunter who claims to be an eyewitness to the described event. The story is about hunting for fish. This narrative is meant to emphasize the hunter’s creativity and skill in finding a solution in an unexpected situation, and the story can also be connected to the mythological beliefs of the Komi as well as vernacular practices of humour. However, differences in versions of the story, told on different occasions by different people, enable it to reveal some specific features of Komi hunters’ story-telling practice.

This year there was plenty of fish. S caught a pike with his fishing rod. He couldn’t pull it out of water, as it was a big and strong pike. After he had had a time-consuming fight with that fish, he managed to drive the pike to shallow water where he could see the fish. Then he took his rifle and shot the fish. He brought the head of that fish home. His own head fitted between the jaws of that pike. (L, FM 2001)

Another time, the story, apart from being short, reflects the action from quite a different angle. If the first report sounds pretty unrealistic, the second one is much more advanced on the scale of the unusual: “S and I threw dried bread into shallow water. A huge pike swam closer. His dorsal fin reached out of water just as a shark’s. S took a rifle and shot that pike dead” (K, FM 2002).

More than decade later, we decided to test the hunters’ story-telling and asked S to tell the story by himself. S recalled the story immediately and provided a description of this pike hunt in the way he remembered it:

The pike was big. In an old river turn, the pike took the bait, grabbed drail so abruptly that he pulled the fishing rod out of my hands and it flew into a river from that strike. I could not hold the fishing rod but managed to grab the fishing line. I kept the fishing line and the pike started to drag me along. This old river bend is silent as there is no current. He dragged the boat for 200 metres. There were a lot of tree trunks but the fishing line did not stick anywhere. Everything went successfully. But then the pike started to get tired. I pulled him to the boat and tried to haul him into the boat. I grabbed him by the eyes and tail and tried to pull him out but he almost dragged me into water. I was forced to release him back to water. This way, I attempted to lift him three times. It was quite useless. But then I thought that why do I torture myself? And I shot him with my rifle. I made a shot to his head and that’s it. In order to save my drail, I released the fishing line more and more. It was a big pike, but I did not weigh it. It was the biggest pike I have ever caught. If you opened his jaws, it was easily possible to fit a human head into his mouth. It was a big pike. (S, FM 2013)

In order to analyse truth in these pieces of the story one must evaluate the elements within. The only constant moment in these accounts is shooting the pike. All the other elements are not repeated. In the first story, shooting appears as a half-fantastic element, and fitting one’s head between the pike’s jaws as the most unbelievable part, although finally it gets proof from the last narration. In the second story, shooting is the most realistic element. In the first narrative, shooting seems to be unrealistic; in the other it maintains the only connection with possible objective reality. In general, these narrations indicate that the same story can be told from rather diverse angles and that establishing truth can be really complicated for the audience.

Description of a huge pike with extraordinary body parts resembles a water spirit in Komi hunters’ beliefs as well as among the Komi-Permyaks, Udmurts, Ob-Ugrians and Nenets who live around the Ural Mountains and in Western Siberia. The Komi made offerings to a water spirit by throwing pieces of bread into the water. Stabbing these extraordinary pikes with a fish spear is prohibited (Konakov 1983, 2003b, 2003c; FM 1991). The Komi keep pike jaws and heads and hide them over the doors and windows for protection against evil spirits and witchcraft (Konakov 2003b, 295; Sharapov 2003, 357; FM 1996–2013). In the stories given, certain vernacular religious background can be detected. One cannot tell these stories by just hitting randomly animist mythological parallels.

Catching a Reindeer by Hand

The third story also demonstrates how a hunting narrative’s truth value can be more adequately estimated if we compare the mediated version to the first-hand story-telling narrative. Two men who did not participate in the described hunting episode told the first story. The story-telling gathering took place in Kulömdin village. First, K started to tell the story and then L confirmed that he too has heard it from S. In addition, this collaborative narration indicates that both informants consider the story quite realistic.

K:

S wandered a whole day in the forest. But if you aim to shoot some specific game, it never happens. He didn’t see any wild reindeer. Before leaving the area, S decided to check his [fur animal] traps by snowmobile. He didn’t take a rifle with him. Suddenly he noticed that in the swamp there was a small reindeer herd, perhaps four or five animals. He started to drive around the herd to prevent them getting into the forest. The reindeer circled around. Finally, one reindeer couldn’t stand it and attacked the snowmobile. S lowered his head and when the reindeer flew over, he grabbed the reindeer by a leg. They fell into the snow. The snowmobile moved further a little bit and turned over. S’s axe stayed on the snowmobile. S pulled the reindeer towards the snowmobile but the reindeer dragged S towards a forest. In the end, S and the reindeer reached the axe and he killed the animal.

L:

I asked S – didn’t he have a knife on his belt? S answered that he forgot that completely. (FM 2002)

The hunter who experienced the situation himself introduced the story in another situation. In 2003, Art Leete was with S on a hunting trip and on the first evening S suddenly started to tell stories about dangerous situations he had encountered during his hunting career. One of these stories was about his way of handling the wild reindeer attack.

I drove with one hand and the axe was in the other hand. The reindeer attacked me with his horns. He jumped over the snowmobile and didn’t even scratch it. He jumped so three times. On the fourth time he didn’t calculate the jump correctly, crashed against the front window and smashed it. But I grabbed him by his leg. The axe was thrown away, of course. And the snowmobile moved away for some 30 metres and stopped. We fell into the snow and I continued to keep the reindeer by his leg. I thought – how to kill the reindeer? The reindeer was big, and he started to struggle. And I thought – how to kill him? The reindeer raised himself on its back legs and I pretended to be weak. I sat on my back and held his leg only slightly, to give the impression that I am too weak. The reindeer felt it immediately, stood up and started to push me. At the same time, I manoeuvred myself slowly. The distance to the axe was, perhaps, 20 or 30 metres. There was a good snow crust. And he pushed me to the axe. After that I killed him with the axe. It was so hazardous! He pushed me with his horns. But you wear warm clothing during a winter. I had my cotton and wool-filled jacket. I did not feel a thing. I didn’t even get any bruises. (S, FM 2003)

The first story seems more unbelievable as it is sketchier. However, as the main character later told the same story with significant details (for example, how he managed to reach the axe), the episode becomes more believable. A comparison of these narratives helps to reveal how, in the mediated story, details are added that are not included in the first-hand narrative. At the same time, the mediated story includes elements that somehow create an illusory feeling of reality (the statement about the magical rule that one is not supposed to search for a specific animal when hunting, or not supposed to give the exact number of reindeer in a herd).

At first glance, events in this story seem to be unlikely, as it does not feel realistic to catch a reindeer by hand. However, S is a brave and inventive hunter and thus it may be possible that the actual event is reflected in these stories. It is also worth mentioning that during a later fieldwork trip, S has stressed that he always tells true stories about his hunting episodes (FM 2006). Actually, there is almost nothing supernatural in the story. The described events are extraordinary but not impossible.

The disappearance of wild reindeer from the Upper Ezhva region was interpreted as a result of inappropriate hunting action by S, who blamed himself for ignoring hunting rules because of his opportunistic approach in the described episode. S did not provide a fair chance for the wild reindeer to escape as the snowmobile gave the hunter an inappropriate advantage when chasing the herd. It is a common belief among the Komi that violating the forest law makes spirits angry and as a result they do not provide catch for such hunters (Konakov, 1983, 2003d).

The tendency in the interpretation of hunting stories is that if one has enough knowledge about hunting practice and local culture, it makes it likely that the stories can be interpreted. Some aspects, like practical circumstances and the personal characteristics of the narrators, can be taken into account in order to reach an adequate interpretation of stories. However, understanding is still complicated, as sometimes the most unlikely element of a story appears to be true. This rule of practical resemblance does not always enable correct understanding. Some stories are produced because something extraordinary really happened, but this estimation of probability of described events is not the only aspect that determines the character of stories and enables one to calculate the issue of truth.

Poetics and Narrative Strategy of Hunting Stories

Narrating and the narrative can be interpreted both as message and as code (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 69). However, it may be complicated to reveal the code from the narrative itself because of difficulty in establishing the adequate range of codification practice. Cultural insiders’ instructions are helpful, although this advice may be coded in the same way as the narratives we aim to analyse.

Narrators employ a variety of stylistic and ideological tools in different speech events, reporting different points of view at different moments. This inconsistency enables “renegotiating meanings and social relations” and usage of “poetic patterning in interpreting the structure and significance of their own discourse” beyond single narrating episodes (Baumann and Briggs 1990, 70). Scholars can follow vernacular interpretative practice in their analytical efforts in order to achieve near native understanding of narrative traditions (cf. DuBois 1996).

Story-telling is a demanding emotional and intellectual enterprise for hunters. Narratives must include descriptions of danger and reflections on the limits of hunters’ skills and luck (Leete and Lipin 2006; Leete 2008). Stylistic and ideological tools of narrating make the whole practice efficient. Revealing the poetic mechanism of hunters’ story-telling enables one to understand local narrative strategies on a more nuanced level. In order to provide insight into vernacular understanding and inconsistency in story-telling, we present an extract from a relevant discussion, developed during a field trip. During this discussion, the Komi hunters’ way of narrating was described in the following way.

They didn’t make it up, but it is a kind of joking folklore. They didn’t tell precisely, but in a teasing style. Hunters always tell stories to each other in such a way that these stories sound like almost true stories, because it is impossible to talk about hunting directly. And that’s it. You must somehow romance it. You are supposed to tell it for a laugh, so that those who listen must also start to hesitate somehow. It is because one understands that hunters cheat sometimes a little bit. They certainly cheat.

Besides, if a conversation goes on between hunters, they mislead to the full extent, evidently. It is a way of hoaxing. It means that there is a type of true story that is told so that they mutually understand each other and somewhere there is a grain of truth. It is a specific way in which to tell and not to tell. Hunters’ stories always have a subtext. As they say: listen but be observant.

Hunting conditions are similar everywhere. Some hunters just can tell one way or another. And I think that these people who were skilled in story-telling, they were highly valued. If one was not a really good hunter, but if he could tell nice stories… [he was taken to a hunting team anyway.]

[One can just make situations up] freely. It is not [like a riddle]. It must be presented specifically in such a way that nobody will have any doubts. Only those who know a storyteller [can see a difference]. Actually, a major part of all narratives is not made up. It is so because you know how some things may happen. The forest carries on as a forest. (L, FM 2004)

From this vernacular interpretation of story-telling we can point out three important messages. First, regardless of the relationship between a story and reality, good narratives are presented jokingly. Second, in all stories there is an opportunity for truth however unlikely the events that have been depicted. Third, good stories must be tuned in the way that an audience must reach a condition of uncertainty. Listeners are assumed to remain hesitant after a story-telling episode, and this audience hesitation is the most distinctive condition and marker of the quality of a hunter’s narrative. In light of this statement, it becomes clear that it is quite useless to ask hunters what exactly is true and what is made up in their stories. They simply cannot explain it precisely as this would ruin the whole concept of story-telling.

A similar kind of ambiguity is crucial in the story-telling practice of the Teno Sami, as argued by Pasi Enges. The reception of a story depends on each listener’s individual relationship with the topic and understanding of narrative tradition. In addition, a narrator can manipulate the reaction of an audience if he has “a good sense of how far reality can be ‘stretched’” (Enges 2012, 265). Enges explores belief narratives and thus connects confusion of the truth-value of stories to the overall vagueness of vernacular religious categories (Enges 2012, 263–264). Coppélie Cocq (2008) also explores the ways in which the Sami storytellers handle their relationship with the audience in order to manage expressive nuances of vernacular tradition. Although contemporary Komi hunters rarely touch upon beliefs explicitly in their narratives, manipulation of the truth in their stories has certain parallels with the Sami cases, analysed by Enges and Cocq.

Among the hunting peoples of Siberia and the Russian North, there is a common prohibition concerning straightforward talk about the catch. The general reason for this proscription is magical belief that relates loss of hunting luck to communicating one’s catch precisely (see, for example, Alekseyenko 1967, 174; Vasilevich 1969, 69; Lukina 1986, 133; Potapov 2001, 125, 133–134; Lar, Oshchepkov, and Povod 2003, 51). There is the same kind of demand for the Komi hunters, who cannot tell the truth about their catch or hunting practice in general (Sidorov [1928] 1997; Konakov 1983; Lipin and Leete 2000; Ilina and Ulyashev 2009; Leete and Lipin 2012).

As already mentioned, this secret hunting language has not been analysed in detail (see Konakov 1983, 192–193). The rule is that not only must expressions be misleading, but the whole narration should also remain unclear. This is not a simple demand for deceit but an attempt to cause, in the perception of an audience, a state of hesitation. The criterion of story-telling is that the audience must be spellbound by confusion. Cognitive hesitation is a required condition for management of hunting beliefs as the way of narrating is still produced according to rules of vernacular hunting religion.

Stewart Guthrie argues that ambiguity drives religious thinking (Guthrie 1980, 187–188). Approaching beliefs from a rather different angle, Willerslev claims that animism enables people to avoid uncertainty. Instead, animistic experiences become more particular, specific in actual situations (Willerslev 2007, 16, 2013, 44). The Yukaghirs make a clear difference between humans and other beings. Joking, irony and trickery that substitute the serious treatment of spirits mark this difference (Willerslev 2013, 50–54). Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1940) discussed joking as a culturally formalized, somehow asymmetrical and antagonistic form of alliance. Irony, as well as joking, is also among the significant aspects of story-telling for the Komi hunters. Intended confusion presumes employing irony and jokes in the course of narrative episode.

Our argument is that hunters do not consider the world or knowledge about it uncertain. However, narrating about hunting is intentionally confusing among the Komi (cf. Willerslev’s [2007, 160] discussion of the Yukagir hunters who prefer experience to stories). Although the Komi hunters tell stories in an ambivalent way, they have rather certain understanding about “the order of things”. They simply do not reveal it to the audience directly. Mistrust towards narrating does not mean that the overall frame of understanding is missing. The Komi hunters know that one cannot trust stories and that narratives are bound to reality in a conditional way. Hunters’ narratives include semi-hidden hints to particular knowledge and beliefs. In the Komi hunters’ storytelling practice there are rather strict rules for uncertainty.

Discussion

Komi hunters’ story-telling is built upon constant negotiation over the models of meaning and truth. This dialogic process is predominantly implicit but understandable for expert narrators and audiences. During a successful story-telling episode, a narrator aims to confuse the audience, mixing real and fabulated motifs so creatively that the truth behind a story becomes almost imperceptible. Understanding of hunting stories is reached through this confusion, through the eventual impossibility of determining the exact truth in hunting narrations. Although establishing the truth is an important part of interpretation, confusing stories are functionally correct as they produce the right mood for hunting conduct in general. This conversation also employs “continuous art of individual interpretation and negotiation” of fluidly expressed beliefs (Primiano 2012, 384, 388).

In the Komi hunting narratives truth and lies are expressed simultaneously; one cannot separate them easily in a particular speech act, and somehow, this exact distinction is unnecessary. The concurrent presence of differently coded messages creates a mechanism for increasing confusion. As hunters have developed diverse individual “codes”, the exact understanding of any story becomes complicated. The same quality makes hunting stories enjoyable and highly valued for a culturally competent audience (cf. Baumann and Briggs 1990, 66).

Story-telling is also deeply influenced by the relationship between narrative strategies and social processes. The text examples analysed enable us to illuminate the manner in which poetic outlines employ discourse from exact speech episodes and communicate the diversity of social situations (cf. Baumann and Briggs 1990, 61). Vernacular poetic strategy is always in conditional accordance with local cultural norms and is shaped by collective practices. This traditional group-specific framework assumes certain challenges to the recognized story-telling approach. Cognitive contradiction may itself be a part of the poetic establishment.

Narrating is a social mode of action that reveals the dynamic character of language and the diverse functionality of signs. In narrating, language works through code-switching and illuminates negotiations over identities, social relations, and the constitution of the community itself (for discussion, see Baumann and Briggs 1990, 62–65). We argue that Komi hunting narration can be interpreted not primarily as based on code-switching, but rather as an application of a fluid code. Dialogic poetics between the fixed and freely changing is processed during the narrative event. A narrator changes perspectives during story-telling episodes and by doing so follows a socially determined approach. Narrators themselves do not recognize clear switching between truth and lie, seriousness and joke, or movement between genres during hunting story-telling. Fluidity and uncertainty keep narrative practices, identity and social relationships in a vernacular order.

Hunters’ story-telling also employs a mimetic effort in order to negotiate messages properly. In human evolution, mimetic behaviours preceded accumulation of knowledge. Mimesis functions through analogy, association, and resemblance that are not explicitly labelled (Donald 2005, 283, 284). In this way, mimetic story-telling can trigger creative understanding. Mimetic copy employs or assumes “the character of power of the original”. While utilizing mimetic cultural practices, people imitate, yield to something else (Taussig 1993, xiii). Imitating is not mere copying but includes a specific shift in a dialogue between groups or persons. Seemingly complete yielding is usually illusory. Mimesis in hunting story-telling is structured by certain rules. The Komi hunting stories are supposed to include a significant number of lies despite the fact that most of these narratives are actually more or less true stories. Hunters’ story-telling can be interpreted as a mimetic expressive practice. When telling stories, hunters always imitate a truth and a lie simultaneously. In these narratives, truth must copy lie and lie must sound as truth. Sometimes stories sound logical but the events described are impossible, while apparently illogical stories may be possible.

Fernando Santos-Granero (2009, 487), who discusses Taussig’s ideas, claims that agents of mimesis do it partially and for a time, thus enabling them to hold their own way of being. Mimetic social actors are open to become somebody else and ready to convert to the other, although temporarily. This openness is mostly dynamic and in the Komi hunters’ case, intentionally confusing (cf. Leete and Vallikivi 2011). The Yukaghir hunters’ practices also contain traces of mimesis that is not complete in order to distinguish hunters clearly from imitated game (Willerslev 2007, 9, 12). In their narratives, the Komi hunters attempt to copy truth as perfectly as possible. Although an audience (normally constituted by other hunters) knows that hunting stories cannot be completely true, a narrator aims to convince the listeners of the opposite. Despite this effort of completeness, the perfectly copied story never realizes completely. So, for exaggerating the confusion, hunters tell the truth in the way that it is supposed to make listeners believe that a story is a lie. This narrative practice can be viewed as a double mimesis: truth must be told as a lie, but somehow an audience must be also become convinced that it is still the truth. Actually, all stories must sound similarly in regard to the truth and this makes the task of understanding more complicated for listeners. To understand narratives adequately the audience must know the story-telling rules and the vernacular narrative strategies (cf. Ben-Amos 1969; DuBois 1996).

Donald (2005, 284) argues that story-telling contrasts with the mimetic mode of representation because of linearity and indirect re-enactment of episodes. However, if we observe narratives that imitate different kinds of narratives, mimesis can also take place in the domain of story-telling. Donald (2005, 294) admits that mimetic rules “continue to affect the way we use language and symbols”. In principle, language and metaphors enable us to expand mimetic representation to “many episodes and levels of meaning” (Webb 1995, 154).

In the case of the Komi hunting stories, there are no predetermined clear textual models that enable understanding. Meanings in hunting narratives are not fixed but fluid and dialogical, depending on negotiations between a story-teller and his audience. Confusion is a prominent element of the aesthetics of hunting stories, although so too is a quality of understanding. If an audience cannot establish exactly what happened in a depicted hunting episode, the dialogue was developed correctly. Confusion is needed because, according to Komi vernacular beliefs, complete understanding of a hunting story ruins hunting practice. According to the worldview of the Komi hunters, direct and honest descriptions of the catch and the course of hunting episodes destroy one’s luck in the forest. Thus the Komi men must tell everything that concerns their forest practice through narrative drift that enables one to preserve a magical ability to be successful in the hunt.

The Komi hunters’ concept of truth is complicated to interpret. The hunters themselves express the conviction that there exists always a certain narrative truth, even if it is given jokingly (Leete and Lipin 2012, 295–298). One can claim that an overall attitude towards truth and story-telling is shared among hunters, but particular approaches may be different. Truth must been hidden behind narrative ambivalence. Perhaps researchers may often initially expect that the truth would be told directly or in a way that is clearly distinguishable. This cognitive starting point is in accordance with Immanuel Kant’s idea that intuition always precedes sensation and cognition appears mostly from models that have settled in one’s mind before actual experience (Kant 1965, 65). One recognizes the truth if it is already known and expressed in an appropriate way. However, in a cross-cultural dialogue one must also be skilled in recognizing culture-specific treatment of the truth. The Komi hunters have rather strict ideas about truth as a fixed “order of things”, but they cannot express it directly and clearly. Truth is negotiated through a culturally established narrative filter because directly expressed facts are not recognized as valid. This mimetic treatment of the truth can be seen as a vernacular aesthetics of confusion.

In this paper we discussed the different functions and poetical mechanisms of the Komi hunting narratives. We established the most prominent functional areas of hunting stories as entertainment, knowledge transmission and negotiation of vernacular belief. We interpreted the Komi hunters’ narrating episodes as arenas for dialogic and mimetic mediation of knowledge and beliefs. During story-telling episodes, messages are communicated between a narrator and his audience in such a way that confusing spiritual conditions are achieved. This confusion is related to the overall functional mechanisms and dynamics of local hunting beliefs. Analysed narrative strategies are fundamentally nurtured by the hunters’ magical worldview.

Recognizing the disposition of hunting story-telling and confusion involves the threat that a researcher could get stuck in vague explanations. Employing consistent interpretation and contextualization of field data can solve this difficulty. In prospective research, accumulation of more field data may enable us to detect aspects of hunting traditions that are more grounded. This will allow production of adequate interpretations of hunting narratives and functional aspects of beliefs in order to reach a more coherent scholarly understanding of some aspects of the vernacular world-perception in the North.

Additional information

Funding

The article has been written with the support of the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence, CECT) and the Estonian Research Council grant PUT590.

Notes

1. We avoid presenting the real names of the hunters in the article for ethical reasons.