Nganasans in the arctic periphery

Authors

• Larisa Leisiö

Keywords:

nganasanit, lingvistiikka, Taimyrin niemimaa

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the Nganasans, a Northern Samoyedic ethnic group, almost all of whom live on the
Taimyr Peninsula, Siberia. The paper recounts the history of the Nganasans and their life during the Soviet
era and provides a detailed report on the present life of the Eastern Nganasans in the village of Novaya. An
important theme of the article is the loss of the native language and the language shift from Nganasan to
Russian that is by now almost fully complete. Now Nganasan is a moribund language and out of 862
Nganasans there are around 100 native speakers. The paper considers the situation of Nganasan through
the centre-periphery model in the political, economic, geographical and cultural dimensions.