What Does Matter?: Idols and Icons in the Nenets Tundra

• Main Author: Vallikivi, Laur
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 2011
• Subjects: Nenets; Pentecostalism; missionaries; iconoclasm; materiality; Arctic; Sever; nenets; Tundra
• Online Access: https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/JEF/article/view/22586

This paper examines a mission encounter in the Nenets reindeer herders’ tundra. In post-Soviet Arctic Russia, Pentecostal and Baptist missionaries of Russian and Ukrainian origin have been fighting against idolatry and trying to persuade the Nenets to burn their sacred images or khekhe’’. They claim...