WEDDING CEREMONY ON THE VERKHNYAYA UFTYUGA AT THE BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

The article is devoted to the wedding tradition of the upper reaches of the Northern Dvina River. Therelevance of such a study is due to the need to generalize the results of folklore and ethnographic activities in this region.The purpose of the work is to introduce into scientific circulation the recording of a local version of the NorthernRussian wedding ceremony recorded in the village of Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the Solvychegodsky district of the NorthDvina province (now the Krasnoborsky district of the Arkhangelsk region) in the 1920s. The manuscript (currentlylocated in the archive in the Krasnoborsky Historical Memorial and Art Museum named after S. I. Tupitsin) is the resultof the collection and fixation of folklore tradition by the teacher of the local school O. A. Shestakova. This record of theVerkhneuftyuzhsky wedding ceremony is an isolated case in her collecting practice in the upper reaches of the NorthernDvina River region; its format is close to the field records of modern folklorists. The collector-local historian carriedout fruitful work with the informant: the text contains additional questions and comments on ritual actions; she recordedall phases and persons that are characteristic of the Northern Russian wedding tradition and the lyrics of the songs. Thepublished document is interesting both as a record of one of the local variants of the Northern Russian weddingceremony, and as an organic example of the “golden age” of local history – a period in the history of the developmentof Russian folklore in the system of local lore at the beginning of the XX century. In addition to recording the weddingceremony, the object of research in this article are materials for the biography of the collector. The involvement of insufficiently explored and hard-to-reach sources in the study, their introduction into scientific circulation and a comprehensive commentary constitute the scientific novelty of the work.

Verkhnyaya Uftyuga, local history, local folklore tradition, museum collection, Russian North, wedding ceremony, collecting activities