Koryak national costume

From time immemorial, Koryaks have lived on the territory of the Kamchatka Peninsula. Nomadic tundra tribes were engaged in large-scale reindeer herding, sedentary coastal settlers hunted and fished, gathered berries and roots, went to sea for hunting.

For Koryak, deer and wild fur-bearing animals hunted were not only food, but also served as yarang covering material for sewing clothes and shoes. Women were engaged in sewing and embroidery, and men made walrus jewelry, carved figures from bone, and worked on metal, wood, and stone . It is these elements that serve as the idea for the Koryak folk costume.

Types of traditional Koryak costumes

For living in harsh conditions, the Koryaks had winter and summer clothes. The cut of all the suits was deaf, they were worn over the head. In the cold season, reindeer herders and hunters warmed a double layer, in the warm - a single layer. The source material for sewing was the skin of a deer . All details were made of fur or rovduga (deerskin suede leather). The sedentary coastal inhabitants used, in addition to deer, the skins of marine inhabitants.

Chavchuven men's suit (Koryak-reindeer herder) consisted of the following parts:

  • kuhlyanka - long-sleeved shirt (coat) with a bib and a hood;
  • konayts - trousers;
  • malachai - headdress;
  • torbasa - fur or ravuzhnaya shoes;
  • kamelyka - a wide shirt made of rovduga or fabric;
  • Lilith - mittens.

Women's outfit is similar to men's:

  • overalls;
  • a kitchenette or a gagagle (a long shirt with an inner layer of fur);
  • sausage;
  • Lilith.

What does a national costume look like?

Winter and summer national costumes are similar to each other in cut, decoration elements, but there are differences. For the cold season, clothes were made from deer skin, supplemented with details from the skins of fur animals. The summer outfit was sewn mainly from fabrics; fringe, beadwork and beads were traditionally used in the decoration.

The national costume consisted of a kamelyka (a fur shirt from a deer), a kitchenette, and sausages. Men wore pants, and women wore jumpsuits with trousers to the knee.

clothing

Men's kamelyka wore over the kitchenette, it protected from precipitation and bad weather. Kamelyka could be not only fur, but also rovuzhny or woven. The latter was worn in the summer. Outerwear, which was previously smoked and subjected to treatment with urine, well protected from rain.

The deer skin or kamus (fur from the animal's tibia) served for sewing the upper trousers, and the rovduga or leather from the old covering of the yaranga was suitable for the lower or summer ones. For coastal Koryak, the material for trousers was sealskin. In them, the hunters went fishing. In winter, men and women hid their hands in mittens (lilith), consisting of one or two layers of fur or deer camus.

Important! Men didn’t wear anything under fur clothing, only some coastal residents wore fabric shirts bought from Russian settlers.

Women in difficult weather conditions of Kamchatka wore overalls. They were sewn to the knee length from the thin skins of young animals. The summer version was made of hide or rovduga, well-smoked to protect from rain and insects. A kitchenette was put on top of the jumpsuit — one or two layers — like a man’s. The rest of the time they wore a long gagaglu with fur turned inward.

Koryak shoes

National shoes of Koryak - sausage . The options for men's shoes for winter and summer were sewn the same way, they differed only in length - to the knee or to the ankle - and the material for sewing. Features of the production of sausage:

  • for warm sausages they took an inverted camus;
  • on summer shoes there was a skin of a seal, a seal, a dog, a rovdug or a waterproof smoky skin of a deer on which the pile was removed;
  • the sole was cut out of the skin of lahtak, walrus leather, deer brushes (long-haired deer skin over the hoof of an animal);
  • women's shoes were made of the same materials, had the same cut, but were additionally decorated with appliqués made of white and white dog leather.

Hats

Koryak men at all times of the year wore fur malachi, sewn like a hood with headphones. Ahead was sewn on the edge of an otter or a dog. Cut malachaya suggested, if necessary, the deaf can be closing the forehead and ears.

Women usually left their heads uncovered if the weather allowed. In the cold, the hood was used as a headdress, and the wives of nomads in the tundra used cattle malachas to drive cattle. Resident women borrowed a scarf from their Russian population in their wardrobe.

What do children wear?

A small child was dressed in a jumpsuit with a hood. Until he could walk, sleeves and trousers remained sewn, and a layer of one of the types of moss was placed in overalls, which served as a diaper and had an antiseptic effect. A grown child moved in shoes sewn to the trouser leg of his overalls.

Children's clothes, like adult outfits, at different times of the year, were single or double. By the age of 5–6 years, children began to dress according to gender: boys in men's suits, girls in women's suits.

Decorations of folk costume

The fur of a dog, fox, wolverine, wolf, Koryak sewed on a kitchenette or kamleyka as an edge, which not only insulated it significantly, but above all, served as a decorative frame for the outfit.

Important! The Koryak winter suit has a characteristic feature - a patterned border on the hem - a puvan, which was made from darker shades of deer fur and decorated with bead and bead ornaments.

The front and back of the kitchenette, gagagli and kamelyki were also embroidered with patterns, complemented by thin fringe straps, beads, colored pieces of dog hair and seal fur. For the holiday, the outfit was always supplemented with bracelets, earrings, pendants, pendants made of old silver and copper . Both men and women had ornaments in the form of a bandage or ribbon around their heads.

Funerary clothing

Of particular note is the clothes of the Koryak, in which he went to another world. Such an outfit lasted several Kamchatka winters and still had to remain unfinished so that the owner’s death was not premature.

The hem in the kitchenette and the hood remained without edge, while the owner was alive. Shoes, too, were not stitched: there was no sole. All this had to be completed while the deceased was in the dwelling. Sleeping before burial was not allowed, but hastily stitching everything in large crooked stitches - as was customary - just the time .

White tones predominated in the burial clothing; it was possible to sew it only from a white deer. Black only relied on the widow's shawl. Men were usually sent to a funeral pyre in a kitchenette, trousers, headdress, mittens and shoes. Women were also dressed except for trousers.

The decor of such shirts is very interesting and complicated. The strip and wolverine fur, embroidered with geometric ornaments, decorated the hem of the kitchenette, hood, hat, sleeves. Decorated clothes with various brushes, fringe, pieces of dog fur. The inner layer of the kitchen was stained red.

When dressing the deceased on his last journey, parts of the costume were worn in an unusual way, for example, a hat could sit crookedly on his head, and the mittens - left and right - were mixed up and put on different hands . In this form, the deceased went to the funeral pyre, which was built from the dwarf cedar.

Clothing for national dances

On holidays, the Koryaks always wore the best clothes that ever existed. For dancing, women put on a caramel with national ornaments, a headband in the form of a bandage, embroidered with beads, with long tassels, bright earrings made of beads, sometimes to the very shoulders, and shoes made of deer kamus. The attire of the men was identical, only the head ornaments were more concise, in the form of a ribbon embroidered with beads.