This is a collection of mythological texts from the Koryak, a traditional
people who live on the Kamchatka peninsula, in the far east of Russia.
The similarity of these tales to native American folklore, particularly
from the Northwestern region,
is very striking.
The characters, although they occupy a supernatural dream-world, move in
the same context as the people who tell the stories, hunting, fishing
and gathering, celebrating good hunts and going hungry when there is no food.
There are trickster figures, and stories about them include
gruesome and/or scatological pranks.
One gets a vivid sense of the brutal environment which the Koryak inhabited.
