Written down for the first time in the indigenous Sakha language of Yakutia (Sakha Republic, northeastern Siberia) in the early 1930s by the politician, poet, and story-tellerPlaton A. Oyunsky (1893-1939), this first English translation was proclaimed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Olonkho is the general name for the entire Yakut heroic epic that consists of many long legends--one of the longest being "Nurgun Botur the Swift," consisting of some 36,000 lines of verse. Like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Yakut Olonkho is an epic of a very...
Written down for the first time in the indigenous Sakha language of Yakutia (Sakha Republic, northeastern Siberia) in the early 1930s by the politi...
