Uncle Vanya's Village - With The Pagans Of Mari El

There is a country in the vastness of the Russian empire that hardly anyone knows about: Mari El – the land of the Mari. The small autonomous republic where the Mari live side by side with Russians and Tartars is a full 14-hour train journey east of Moscow. The Mari are a group of people who settled in the hills and woods on either side of the Volga back in the 5th century. These were predominantly poor farmers from Finland who came here seeking a better life. These early settlers honoured more than 20 nature gods. The Mari prayed to the gods before hunting and before the harvest. And the same is true today. Their religious festivals remain closely bound to the main events of rural life: sowing and harvest, marriage, birth and death. In the village of Karamass we meet Uncle Vanya and his family. We walk with him through the woods to his apiary, we go fishing with him and attend a pagan sacrifice ritual near the capital city of Joshkar Ola. We attend a Mari wedding, spend an afternoon talking to the old folks of the community and experience the normal day-to-day life of a people in an almost unknown country. The journey to Mari El and Uncle Vanya is also a journey into the past of Russia and Eastern Europe – to a people who succeeded in holding onto the early origins of their culture like hardly any other on the Old Continent, despite constantly being faced with major obstacles.

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