Chud white-eyed - legends and facts

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

This is most likely a misunderstanding. Indeed, according to the legends of the north of Russia, this people went to live in the underground more than a thousand years ago. However, in Karelia and in the Urals even today one can hear eyewitness accounts of a meeting with representatives of the Chudi. The famous ethnographer of Karelia Aleksey Popov told us about one of such meetings.

Alexey, how plausible is the history of the existence of Chudi, this mythical people?

- Of course, the chud actually existed, and then left. But it’s not known exactly where. Ancient legends claim that it is underground. Moreover, surprisingly enough, there is a mention of this people even in Nestor's Tale of Bygone Years: “… the Varangians from the overseas imposed tribute on the Chud, Slovens, Merya and Krivichi, and the Khazars - from the glades, northerners, Vyatichi, took tribute on a silver coin and the veveritsa (squirrel) from the smoke. It is also known from the chronicles that in 1030 Yaroslav the Wise made a campaign against the Chud “and defeated them, and established the city of Yuryev”. Today it is one of the largest cities in modern Estonia - Tartu. At the same time, on the territory of Russia, there is a huge number of toponymic names that remind of the mysterious people who once lived here, only the people themselves are not there, as if it never existed.

How did the chud look outwardly?

- According to most researchers, ethnographers and historians, these were creatures that outwardly strongly resembled European gnomes. They lived on the territory of Russia until the ancestors of the Slavs and Finno-Ugrians came here. In the modern Urals, for example, there are still legends about unexpected helpers of people - white-eyed low creatures who appear from nowhere and help travelers lost in the forests of the Perm Territory.

You said that the chud went underground …

- If we summarize the numerous legends, it turns out that the chud went down into the dugouts, which she herself dug in the ground, and then filled up all the entrances. True, the dugouts could well be the entrances to the caves. This means that it was in the underground caves that this mythical people hid. At the same time, they most likely failed to completely break with the outside world. So, for example, in the north of the Komi-Permyak district, in the Gain area, according to the stories of researchers and hunters, you can still find unusual bottomless wells filled with water. Locals believe that these are the wells of ancient people, leading to the underworld. They never take water from them.

Are there still known places where the chud went underground?

- Today no one knows the exact places, only numerous versions are known according to which such places are located in the north of Russia or in the Urals. Interestingly, the Komi and Sami epics tell the same story about the departure of the “small people” to the dungeons. If you believe the ancient legends, then the Chud went to live in earthen pits in the forests, hiding from the Christianization of those places. Until now, both in the north of the country and in the Urals, there are earthen hills and mounds called the Chud graves. They supposedly contain the "sworn" treasures of the Chud.

NK Roerich was very interested in the legends about chud. In his book "The Heart of Asia", he directly tells how one Old Believer showed him a rocky hill with the words: “It was here that a chud went underground. It was when the White Tsar came to Altai to fight, but the Chud did not want to live under the White Tsar. The chud went underground and filled up the passages with stones …”However, as Nicholas Roerich argued in his book, the chud must return to earth when some teachers from Belovodye come and bring great science for mankind. Allegedly, then the chud will come out of the dungeons along with all its treasures. The great traveler even dedicated the painting "The Chud Has Gone Underground" to this legend.

Or maybe, by chudyu they meant some other people, whose descendants still live happily in Russia?

- There is also such a version. Indeed, the legends about the Chudi are most popular precisely in the places of settlement of the Finno-Ugric peoples, which include the Permian Komi. But! There is one discrepancy here: the descendants of the Finno-Ugric peoples themselves have always talked about the Chuds as about some other people.

Legends, some legends … Are there real monuments left by the chudyu that you can touch with your hands?

- Of course have! This, for example, is the well-known Mount Sekirnaya (local historians also call it Chudova Gora) on the Solovetsky archipelago. Its very existence is amazing, because the glacier, passing these places, cut off, like a sharp knife, all the irregularities of the landscape - and there simply cannot be large mountains here! So the 100-meter Chudova Mountain looks on this surface as a clearly man-made object of some ancient civilization. At the beginning of the 2000s, scientists who studied the mountain confirmed that partly it is of glacial origin, and partly, artificial - the large boulders of which it consists are not laid chaotically, but in a certain order.

And what, the creation of this mountain is attributed to the chuds?

“Archaeologists have long established that the Solovetsky archipelago, centuries before the monks came here, belonged to local residents. In Novgorod they were just called Chudyu, neighbors called them "sikirtya". The word is curious, because translated from the ancient local dialects "skrt" is the name of a large, long, elongated embankment. So, an elongated haystack is directly called a "haystack". Obviously, the neighbors of the ancient people also called sikirtya for their life in "bulk hills" - houses built from improvised means: moss, branches, stones. The ancient Novgorodians also confirm this version - in their annals they note that the sikirtya live in caves and do not know iron.

You mentioned the mysterious meetings with the Chudyu in Karelia and the Urals today. Are they real?

- To be honest, knowing a lot of similar stories, I have always treated them with a fair amount of skepticism. Until at the end of summer 2012 an incident occurred that made me believe in the real existence of this mythical people in the mountains or underground. Here is how it was. At the end of August, I received a letter with a photograph from an ethnographer who, in the summer months, works as a tour guide on a motor ship on the Kem - Solovki route. The information was so unexpected that I contacted him. So. The photo showed a rock, in which the outlines of a large stone door were guessed. To my question: "What is this?" - the guide told an amazing story. It turns out that in the summer of 2012, together with a group of tourists, he sailed past one of the islands of the Kuzov archipelago. The ship was sailing near the coast, and people were enjoying the picturesque cliffs. At that time, the guide told them stories about mysterious encounters with the mythical chudyu-sikirtya. Suddenly one of the tourists screamed heart-rendingly, pointing to the shore. The whole group immediately fixed their gaze on the rock to which the woman was pointing.

The whole action lasted for several seconds, but tourists managed to see how a huge (three meters by one and a half) stone door was closing in the rock, hiding the silhouette of a small creature. The guide literally ripped the camera off his neck and tried to take some pictures. Unfortunately, the shutter of his camera snapped shut when only the silhouette of the stone door was visible. A second later he disappeared too. This was the first case of mass observation of the entrance to the Chudi dungeons. After this event, there is no reason to doubt the reality of the existence of this legendary people in the rocks and underground!