Now, when the traditions in the North are rapidly being destroyed and the ethnic identity is being lost, bringing shaman practice back is perceived as the integral part of ethnic revival (Pentikäinen 1995). Meanwhile, in many places in the North, traditional shamanism is lost in so much with regard to some Northern peoples we have to discuss the problems of not how to preserve the existing tradition, but how to reconstruct it or even to create a new one. That shamanism, which has been reconstructed now, does not usually assume the traditional appearance, but it takes the forms, which contemporary reality can offer. As the specialists, native people whose job is to show the native folklore on the stage, explain it, the cultural establishments, the system of boarding schools and the administration, which helps them to organise the Soviet festivals, or just national festivals (as it is now called), put them before the necessity to step onto the stage (Olzina 1997: 10). The new contemporary forms of cultural life bring forth the request for performing folklore on the stage. But there was not (with some exceptions) a good professional base to satisfy these requirements and to arrange the folklore. As a result, such pseudo-folk compositions appeared on the stage, which has almost nothing in common with authentic folklore. In another extreme, authentic folklore, not arranged at all and not adapted to conditions of the stage, was brought to the stage. It happened when not the actors and singers, but the bearers of the tradition themselves went onto the stage. "In contrast to the European peoples, who bring to the stage arranged folklore," writes Olzina, "we have brought to it the part of our own life, which is authentic folklore" (1997: 10).

This was the real shaman, who practices in traditional surroundings, could appear on the stage as the performer of folklore and sometimes (in other auditorium) even as a lecturer, who popularise his shamanic activity. This phenomenon (the appearance of a shaman on the stage) has become widespread nowadays. Shamanic actions have begun to be performed at folklore festivals. In Yakutsk, the shamanic theater has been opened. The organisers of the national festivals have started to include, in their programs, shamanic sacrifices. What is more widespread nowadays, mass healing has also led the shaman onto the stage. The essential peculiarity of all these new forms of shamanic practice is that they are not naturally developing from tradition, but being introduced from outside, borrowing from the other cultures or artificially created by the local workers in the field of culture. One of the main arguments of those, who support the spreading of these new forms of shamanism (neo-shamanism) created the statement that distinctiveness of the Northern peoples is shown, first of all, simply in shamanism and these ones can indicate the originality of the folk culture and preserve it only by maintaining shamanism. The idea of neo-shamanism, as a means of preserving ethnic identity in the North, became very popular. Thus, Mihály Hoppál writes: "They select from the past a segment which is suitable – or at least, seems to be suitable – for expressing and maintaining, with vital intensity of feeling, the emotional ties of attachment to the ethnic group. In other words, this neo-shamanism could be an excellent symbol – and, at the same time, technique – of the reproduction of ethnic identity in a postmodern milieu" (1992: 201).

At the same time, everyone can see clearly how the new phenomenon differs from the tradition shamanism. Just the fact that the shaman does not perform a ritual (or does not perform just a ritual) on the stage, but demonstrates in public ¹ his art of singing and dancing has change the habitual stress. The stage or just the presence of onlookers can correct the content of the ritual performance. This only fact makes us ask the question, to what extent the shamanism is identical to the traditional one. Thus, M. Hoppál, who speaks about shamanism as a means of keeping ethnic identity, contradicting himself, doubts at the same time if this new shamanism is identical to the traditional one. "It is open to debate," he says, "how far shamanism, when uprooted from its original cultural context, remains identical with itself" (Hoppál 1992: 199).

Using the concrete material collected in the expeditions among the Nanais, let us examine, to what extent, stage shamanism promotes the preservation of the identity of the culture and how the bearers of the tradition and the shamans, who practice in their habitual surroundings, treat these new forms of shamanism.

Shaman on stage

Bringing "a piece of real life" to stage guarantees the essential attribute of a performance, its authenticity. But at the same time it leads to some special problems. As the practice has shown, the authentic performance is alien to the stage laws that are to hold the audience's interest. Authentic folklore, which existed well in its natural surroundings, was badly perceived by uninitiated onlookers. It has turned itself (how they begin to tell about it) as not to be real entertainment, not good amusement (Olzina 1997: 10). What is more, they have not succeeded in turning shamanic ritual into a variety show, because their spirits-helpers, as the shamans affirm, come to them even on the stage, so they have to communicate with them right before the onlookers' eyes, who did not even suspect it. That's why most of the shamans badly treat this contemporary experiment. The untimely communication with their spirits is objectionable for the shamans. Not on the stage only, but also in their everyday lives, the shamans are scared of their spirit helpers. They are frightened to take a false step to irritate them and so be punished. "If you laugh at the endur ('the spirit')," the shaman-woman Nyura Sergeyevna said, "you will straightaway die!" – "If a shaman is silly," said she the next time, "and gives away too much, he won't live long. He must not say too much!" The ritual for show could make the shaman forget about caution and to cause the unpredictable reaction of his spirits disturbed. The same Nyura Sergeyevna said: "Once some people from Leningrad came to my place with Valeri Grigoryevich. He told me: "Well, put on your amiry ('the dressing-gown of fish leather') and let you dance in shamanic way round your house!" I told him: "I must not do that! Nobody must do it like this! I can dance just at home, but if I do it like you want me to, I'll fall ill and die!" So I did nothing for them that time."

There is a fragment of another shamaness Lindza's ritual, in which she boasts that has yielded to no persuasion and has never taken part in any contemporary cultural programs:

Lindza has actually never travelled anywhere and has never stepped on the stage. In 1991, she nevertheless agreed to be the head of the ritual kasa³ ('sending souls of the diseased to the other world') that was performed before a video camera. The ritual was considerably changed in comparison with its traditional variant. We can see this, judge by how much it was cut (several hours instead of three through seven days according the tradition). According to some participants' replies, they all the time realised of being before the video camera (they worried, for example, if ringing of the small bells on shaman's hat are being recorded well). They did not also forget that they are acting against the tradition and exposing themselves to danger. That's why, when Lindza began the ritual, she sang appealing to her spirits:

Let nothing bad happen to the people who have come to shoot a film.
Let nothing bad happen either to grandfather or to me,
No matter what we are saying…

And she explained why she worried:

What we are going to do now is against our rules.

Several days after they performed this ritual, Lindza said: "It was ridiculous what we were doing! Vexing and ridiculous! We were performing, but I turned aside and asked (the spirits): "We are making such noise, such hubbub! But spare us!"" And she concluded: "Maybe some of us will fall ill now!" Later she actually affirmed that just because of that ritual performed before the video camera, one of its participants died, the son of another one also died and her own pig with all its piglets died too.

Nowadays, in the program of different festivals held in Nanai district, like everywhere in the North of Russia, they have begun to include the "local ethnographical material". The old people who know the traditions well are invited to perform traditional rituals before the onlookers. But the old people themselves usually treat this innovation with suspicion. Maria Vasilyevna Beldy has been a worker in the field of culture for all her life.

That's why, on the one hand, she is in sympathy with those who try to organise such arrangements. On the other hand, she has lived a long life and knows the traditions well. That's why she as the other aged people, fear the contacts with the spirits not planned by the organizers. "At the festival," she said, "they made us bow to Temu (the spirit of water). They made us feed the water. They took me with them in order I would bow too. But two women (who were invited with the same purpose) refused to bow. Well, will I bow alone? And we told the head of the cultural department: "We won't go to the beach⁴!""

Today the request for those shamans, who agreed to show their art before an audience, has become nevertheless so big, and the opportunities opened before them has become so tempting, that some ones could not stand their ground. Thus in 1994, shaman woman Mingo Geiker agreed to go the United States, where she showed her art in Seattle Unity Church and on Bainbridge Island (Washington State), where a special seminar was conducted (Beldy 1999: 15, 17). Great success and the presents turned her head. She told me after she had returned: "I have conquered America!" and recollected with exaltation how one of the Americans even kneeled before her. But she was already sick by that time. She fell ill immediately after she returned home. Then she had an operation and died soon afterwards.

"Mingo died right after she returned home," Chapaka said. "Having come back, she fell badly ill. Her eyes hurt, she even lost consciousness. That's how (her spirits) punished her! (Her spirits meant: "She was traveling all around chattering and did not give any attention to us!") Her own sewens ('spirits') have tortured her to death. Her own sewens! As some of the shamans has gone somewhere, as he died. They travel and die. I pity them!" The reason for Mingo's death was explained by her trip to the States. "She danced and sang in the shaman way on the sea shore in America," Nesulta said. "And the people filmed her. She fell ill right after she came back. Such grief! Before the operation she called me from the hospital every day and asked me to bow (to the spirits) for her. Sometimes she herself, sometimes Tonya, her daughter, called me. I bowed. That time I had a little of my own medicine (vodka) for sugdy ('sacrifice'). Then Tonya came to my place and we bowed together. She (Mingo) was not already able to bow herself. We sacrificed a pig." What was the reason for her decease? I try to specify it, and Nesulta answers me once more: "Because of the fact she was singing in the shaman way in America."

The tours of the other Nanai shamans also ended tragically. As far back as in 1983, a shaman woman Gara went to Moscow to the Festival of the Art of the USSR's Peoples. After she returned home, her husband Ecto died. She lived a little more than a year after this trip and also died. Lindza explained both these deaths with Gara's appearing on Moscow stage. "Gara came to Moscow," said Lindza, "and something bad has struck her. She shamanised just like that, playing with it. She was travelling and shamanising. Do they like it? Do the ambans ('the spirits') like it? The word sung in the shaman way is not a joke! Wherever they have taken her! Wherever they have carried her! Everywhere she danced in a shaman way. (Having returned,) she told me: "There was nothing bad in it!" But the amban does not like when they shamanise in vain!"

Shamaness Maria Petrovna's death is also considered to be the sequel of her tour to France and Italy and of her performance there⁵. Mentioned here, Maria Vasilyevna went there with her. She remembers that dancing with a drum on the stage, Maria Petrovna herself feared that something bad it could happen. "She was just dancing on the stage," recollects Maria Vasilyevna, "but she was afraid to sing in a shaman way. She was chanting just two words: "Mimbie ajasigoando!" ('Don't do me any harm!') She repeated only these two words. She did not tell much (did not sing). One must not (shamanise) just being in jest! But she is playing on the stage! If she does it playing, she'll fall ill. Her sewens ('spirits') will punish her. In general, shamanic matter is a fearful one!" – in this way Maria Vasilyevna concludes her reasoning. But just the same as Mingo and Gara, having come home, Maria Petrovna, was overwhelmed with impressions, recollected her trip with delight and even thought to change her life in order to continue singing and travelling round the world. "When she was back from the trip," Nesulta said, "Maria Petrovna told me that she is stopping to shamanise and is becoming a singer. After that she did not live long. She fell ill and died and did not become a singer." When I brought to Lindza the news about Maria Petrovna, who has just died in the nearby village and has not been buried, yet, Lindza took her drum and began to cry about her and to sing recalling also Gara, who died before.

They were crying and when I stop crying I don't know…
Poor thing! Why were not you ashamed? …
You lived that way to be like you are now, with no breathing…
You went to the city and sang there and made such noise
That the ground cleft, and your cry (went in) there.
What have they covered it with? What have people let you go with?
You should not have permitted them to torment you like this!
What did you want to become living this way? …
What did Gara and you find there (in the city),
if you agreed to give away your own breath (for this)?
(Gara also) went to make noise (to shamanise for filming) to an island.
What was good in it?

"People took her all over the taiga and the meadows," Lindza recalls Gara, "they tormented her in such a way that her old disease recommenced. She would have to say a million times a thousand times: "I don't want! I don't want!"" – "I feel sorry for her! She went so far," next time Lindza says. "The people asked her to say different things. It was as if they hurt her making her say different words. It was as if is they tore her body asking her to tell. And she told. She applied to the sky, to something else and asked for mercy. They took Gara to different places. They took her to the taiga and made her dance in a shamanic way. It would have been better if she shamanised on the floor (in rooms), but they took her everywhere. And she could not bear it any longer. If she had lived quietly, she would be still alive. They had just taken her to the hospital and she died at night. She did not know what else she could do for herself (how to help to herself), so she went to the hospital. When she came to my place before it and I made pergechy ('foreseeing') for her, her panyan ('soul') was already dead. How could I tell her: "You have already died!" It is impossible to tell people such things. Despite this it was not possible to shamanise then, I tried to do everything according to her wishes. I felt sorry for her! I feel sorry for everybody! People cry before their death. Although he cries, how you can save him! Your time has come and you die!"

If you have shamanised in the right way, you would be still alive…
Being occupied with such a matter,
permitting people to take you everywhere,
Have you earned much money?
Were you so merry because of a ruble or two?
You had enjoyed yourselves so much that (let them) took your breath away!
You bring so much junk, that you are not able to carry it in your rucksack.
But I ask people nothing!

After Gara returned from Moscow, Lindza dreamt of her coming to her place and saying:

My sister, no one (of my spirits-helpers) has stayed with me…
All my sewens ('spirits') have been left in Moscow,
Because I shamanised in the wrong place, played the fool and made noise.

Lindza dreamt the same about Maria Petrovna, who has just returned from her trip:

Maruska went to the city,
When returning, she sat behind my (closed) door and
peeped through the chink.
Seeing her while she was peeping, I asked her:
"My sister, why don't you come in?
You were able to travel all over different countries.
Why cannot you also come to my place?
But she never came and went away.
She thought I would tell her something.
Oh, my friends, I feel sorry for them!

According to traditional ideas, when a shaman performs on the stage and unwillingly calls his spirits-helpers, these spirits don't wish to appear to give the shaman an opportunity to demonstrate to the audience (who don't really perceive the essence of what is going on) just the character of traditional ways of singing. If they have come, they want to do something habitual and to get for that a reward for this. These presentations follow the common idea that shamanic spirits cannot work without profit, that is, without sacrifice not on the stage only but in any other place.

"The sewens ('spirits') force their master to work all the time," says shamaness Olga Yegorovna. "Come on, work! Heal people! Do something don't sit like this! Come on, work! If a shaman does not want to work, his sewens would punish him. His company doesn't wish to sit inactively. They are sitting but they must work! Because they want to eat! If one does not feed his sewen, it will kill his own master. It will start to crunch him: " It is you who forces us to crunch you! You don't want to feed us!" We," Olga Yegorovna continues, "work in the kolkhoz in the same way. If the kolkhoz pays us nothing, we abuse our predsedatel ('chief') as well!"

The unlucky shamans-artists also perceived all this. As far as both Gara, who had just returned from Moscow, and Maria Petrovna, who had not yet travelled anywhere, were alive, the latest one discussed Gara's trip in this way: "Gara took her drum to Moscow with no certain purpose. The master of the drum (spirit) wants to heal in order that people would then feed it. The master of the drum thought to profit by this. But they gave him neither work nor sacrifice!" So Maria Petrovna decided that a disappointed spirit choose a victim on his own. He chose a chief of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev, who died exactly during those days when Gara was in Moscow. "On the way back," continues Maria Petrovna, "it was the same. It was travel in vain with no work and no gain. So in Daerge (where Gara lived) he chose the old man Innokenty as a victim. After Gara came, Innokenty died." According to Chapaka's opinion, shamanic spirits could leave their masters alone only if they would be successful in turning their trips into big rituals and in involving in it all the onlookers.

In Nanai tradition, there is actually a ritual-trip undy, during which a shaman visits the houses of his patients. He goes not only round his own village, but also round some neighboring ones (if his patients live there). The people, who meet the shaman, sacrifice pigs, cloths, money to his spirits and this way join themselves to those who depend now on this shaman. Thus, the shamans-artists should have finished their trip as if it were an undy ritual. "Coming back, they should have entered their houses dancing and singing in a shamanic way as if they were doing undy." But their tours have not become the rituals, and Lindza, who mourned their death, had to sing about it like this:

You went to the different cities,
And you really don't know what you have left there, what you have lost.
Were you able to cope with that (spirit)
You should have given a sugdy ('a sacrifice')?
(Did you overpower) that nye ('spirits'), which needed a sacrifice,
When you enjoyed yourself travelling round the cities?

Continuing to shamanise, Lindza sees invisible to us Gara's spirits helpers, which she had not been able to overpower.

Gara, the dyaka (your spirits')
Are behind you bristled up and spread wide!

Those, who organise shamanic performances, consider them to be just a cultural measure, a chance to demonstrate the ethnic identity of traditional art. But this thought is in sharp contradiction to the traditional ideas, according to which any word, sung by a shaman, causes the contact with spirits, sometimes really unsafe ones. And if in some cases it was possible to change the mind of some shamans for a while and to induce them to go on a tour, the other shamans, who stayed at home, held to their opinion that desacralisation of the ritual, bringing it down to the variety show, impossible because nobody else but sewens oppose it. Appearing of shamans on the stage and before the video cameras, for sure, can promote preserving the memory of the traditional art and fixing it documentarily. But the question is still opened up if they actually help to preserve this art by bringing to the stage the "piece of real traditional life".

An actor performed a role of shaman

Another phenomenon widespread recently is performing as a shaman by an actor, an uninitiated person, who does not believe in any spirits and is not afraid of anything. But even in this case, as the bearers of tradition affirm, if an actor sings in shamanic way quite accurately, he inevitably brings the spirits to the stage and it happens irrespective of his, the actor's convictions. As the contact with spirits is believed to be unsafe even for the shaman, especially it is considered to be fraught with danger for the uninitiated one, who does not know how to cope with them. There are many stories about such staged performances. "One person performed a shaman," Nikolay Petrovich said, "and that moment got very ill, he fell down right on the stage." His wife, a shaman Mingo listening to him clarified: "One must not sing in the shaman way without a reason. Otherwise he will fall ill and die. The sewen ('shamanic spirit') comes to you, but you have no special yay sewen ('which permits you to sing like this'). What will you do, when it jumps upon you? Of course, you will die! If you are not a shaman, you must not sing (in a shamanic way)! You can go out of your mind or fall ill and then die!"

Meanwhile some resourceful Nanais have however found a means to earn money using the request for shamanic singing. They go for tours, even abroad and don't expose themselves to danger of contact with shamanic spirits. The bearers of tradition explain that it happened because such actors listened to the shamans and learn what means they can bring into play and what way they must not perform as a shaman. The most effective means to draw spirits is shamanic singing (jaji) that is special incantation of special words. The certain elements of shamanic dress are also important because spirits can be embodied there. On the other hand, dance (meury) is a quite neutral element of the ritual. During the traditional rituals, most of their participants (not shamans) take in turns the drum; tie the shamanic belt with metal pedants and dance. But they dance in silence and they don't wear any shamanic cloth. While dancing they don't draw spirits, but just confirm their devotion to the shaman, the main performer of the ritual. Following this example, the actors, who have to perform a shaman on the stage, intentionally distort the most effective, as they believe, elements of shamanic behavior and to relieve in this way the ritual from its dangerous strength. Wearing the dress, which we would not call ethnographically authentic, they dance, beat the drum and clang the metal pedants, but either do not sing at all or sing some lyric words with some lyric tune. So they are not afraid of performing a shaman because they use purposely-wrong words and wrong intonation.

In this way, the traditional form is intentionally changed. Maria Vasilyevna remembers that in 1950 they put on the stage a drama and offered her the role of playing a part of the shaman there. Dancing with a drum Maria Vasilyevna repeated only the words: "Piktesy ajagoando!" ('Let we, your children are healthy!') "I could say just these words," she explains, "I must not say anything else during all the play. Otherwise I could fall ill. If I had repeated what the shaman actually sings, the ambans would have heard me! They are always nearby, as Lindza says! They would have heard me and I would have fallen ill. It would have been bad for me! Why would I repeat it? I would not have been well. For those, who are not able to repeat the shamanic words…? No, of course, I fear!"

According to the traditional presentations, the most effective in the shamanic ritual is a special word chanted in a special way. Just words, intoned in certain rhythm, draw the spirits. Putting on the real shamanic suit is also considered to be dangerous. But anyone can dance with a drum. That is why those, who have to perform a shaman, are not afraid to beat a drum and to dance. But they intentionally pronounce "wrong" words, which are chanted in a "not right" way, that is not like a shaman would intone them, but like they sing their everyday lyric songs. When some reporters came from Khabarovsk to film a shaman, Maria Vasilyevna, who wanted to earn some money, agreed to dance like a shaman round the fire. Before going to the beach where the fire had been made, she asked Lindza what is she to change, to distort in her performance, to guard herself against the contact with the spirits. This fact is quite significant for our topic. How can such a performance be a means of maintaining the ethnic uniqueness, if (according to the traditional ideas) actors can secure themselves against the spirits only having refused to adopt the authenticity of what they are performing? Artificial growth of "secondary" staged shamanic folklore hardly can be considered to be the reliable means of keeping ethnic identity.

Ethnic mixing in the image of a staged shaman

Probably just that causes such typical mixing of different ethnic features in the image of a staged shaman⁶. This image is quite common for different Northern peoples of Russia. Now such an "international, average" shaman appears not only before those, who would like to see a show, but also for those, who wants to be healed. Following the numerous healers and extra sensors, some "shamans" come to the stage to heal the audience. But we should find out at first if they are really shamans, to what extent they are bound to the tradition, and if their action is effective for keeping ethnic identity. We have never heard about a traditional shaman, who made up his mind to change the methods of his activity and to go to the stage. In our view, it is impossible because all this activity is really connected with all traditional surroundings. Only some shamans-innovators and autodidacts can do that. They often have shamanic inheritance and that's why can demonstrate some unusual abilities. But they use new forms borrowed from the contemporary reality, not traditional ones.

Young representatives of Northern peoples identify the shamanic activity with the work of a contemporary healer, because they consider shamanic spirits to be such a kind of energy, which the healers use as well. Quite significant is recently the appearance of a dissertation, in which the author for the first time, as she writes, has formulated a concept that Nanai shamans use "extra sensory abilities". As this author considers her the bearer of Nanai language and culture, we can look to her point to be typical for today's generation of the Nanai (Beldy 1999). As young successors of the shamans don't care now, which cultural form should they choose to demonstrate their shamanic abilities, we have to raise serious doubts that new revised shamanism is the most important means of preserving ethnic identity of Northern peoples. "Last summer," Olga Yegorovna relates, "here came a man. Nanai. His wife is a Tatar. He said: "I have grown up in a children's home in Komsomolsk. I have no parents." He does not understand a word in Nanai. The newspaper "Tikhookeanskaya Zvezda" published an article about him. (In the photo there) he is with a shamanic drum wearing not Nanai dress, some another nationality dress, but a shamanic one and the shamanic hat with fringe. And the title: "I am studying to become a shaman!" How can one become a shaman if the spirits won't punish you? (She laughs.) "I am studying to become a shaman!" He will surely be a shaman! Some bad ambashky ('spirits') will come to him and he will shamanise with them. They (the spirits) need to eat!"

Contemporary artificial revival of shamanism is being realised, as a rule, not in traditional surroundings. Adapting to these new surroundings, a shaman on the stage either avoids a contact with spirits (shaman-actor) or, on the contrary, uses this contact for his purposes (shaman-healer). But in both cases he is not able to use the traditional forms of shamanizing. The reason is these forms are closely connected with the traditional way of shamaning.

Traditional shamanism, if one can find it now, are inseparably linked with other elements of traditional culture, which all makes a one and indivisible system. Only this makes us doubt that one can use some isolated elements of this system as a means of preserving the identity. It is well known that the phenomenon of national self-consciousness hardly can be connected just with one isolated element of the culture (for example with a language or with a religion). Not only shamanism, but also language, folklore, ritual system, norms of behavior and some other forms to express ethnic, national self-consciousness fulfill the functions, which help us to differentiate one ethnos from another (Malygina 1993: 11). It goes in accordance with the traditional ideas, which are still kept in the North of Russia, and which say, that it is impossible to isolate an element of shamanic ritual and to show it on the stage as exclusively an art value. The neophytes, who want to practice shamanism like a kind of healing, are not able to return to the traditional shamanism any more. (Sharp changes in the way of life made it impossible.) They prefer to adapt to the new conditions and to borrow some contemporary forms of analogous activity. Both for the shamans-actors and for the shamans-healers, the new variant of shamanism has some distinctive traditional features, but is completely untraditional in general. Such shamanism, all the more, cannot be the effective means of preserving identity. It is rather its generalised symbol, which is not culturally authentic and which can at least contrast all the Northern cultures together with unified contemporary mass culture.

¹ Public is not just a group of passive onlookers. They do not only watch the ritual. The presence of everybody supports the shaman and is believed to have some mystical meaning.
² Maria Kaplan is a researcher of Nanai tales, who worked in Leningrad in Russian Museum of Ethnography.
³ As we know the ritual kasa has not been openly performed since 1930^th. Some people affirm that it was secretly gone through up to 1960^th. The ritual kasa, led by Lindza, was performed twice, in 1991 and in 1994. Juha Pentikäinen filmed them.
⁴ Later Maria Vasilyevna agreed to perform this ritual.
⁵ Another explanation of why the shamans die after they have come back is that the spirits from the other lands follow them, but the shamans do not know how to cope with such spirits. According to Chapaka's words, once Maria Petrovna, who had returned from the trip, was shamanising at her place. Suddenly she said that she sees a person, who is standing behind the door. For the other participants of her ritual this person was invisible. Chapaka was also there and she speaks about it this way: "Maria Petrovna asked Nyura, what she would advise her to do. "What must I do?" she said. "He wants to come in. He is standing behind the door." I did not like it," said Chapaka. "Why would she bring this spirit in?" But Nyura told her: "Well, bring it in!" And she had brought it in. It came to her place because it caught the smell of the sacrifice animal she fed her sewens. This food had drawn its attention. And it began to Maria Petrovna. It had not gone anywhere. That's why she had problems with her head. That's why those shamans, who have visited other countries, do not live long. They die."
⁶ In amateur talent activity, which was organised in the North by Soviet Power elaborated some common, average etalon of how to sing and dance. This etalon was common for all Northern peoples of Russia. J. Sheikin, who investigated this amateur talent activity in the North, noticed how similar and ethnically neutral are the songs of different Northern peoples, which they perform on the stage. This fact will impress us even more if we know to what extent their traditional songs differ (Sheikin 1996).

References

Beldy 1999 = Î. À. Áåëüäû. Íàíàéñêèé øàìàíèçì â èñòîðèè è êóëüòóðå êîðåííûõ íàðîäîâ Ïðèàìóðüÿ è Ïðèìîðüÿ. Àâòîðåôåðàò äèññåðòàöèè íà ñîèñêàíèå ó÷åíîé ñòåïåíè êàíäèòàòà èñòîðè÷åñêèõ íàóê. Ñàíêò-Ïåòåðáóðã: Ñàíêò-Ïåòåðáóðãñêèé óíèâåðñèòåò.

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