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The topic Mansi is discussed in the following articles:
western Siberian peoples, living mainly in the Ob River basin of central Russia. They each speak an Ob-Ugric language of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages. Together they numbered some 30,000 in the late 20th century. They are descended from people from the south Ural steppe who moved into this region about the middle of the 1st millennium ad.
...language probably began to disperse by 3000 bc, when the Ugrians formed their own group. One branch moved northeast, behind the Ural Mountains: the Khanty, living east of the Ob River, and the Mansi, living west of the Ob River. The other branch spread southward and made contact with the Bulgar Turks and the Khazars; in 895 this branch (the Magyars [Hungarians]), together with certain...
...sea among the water birds, asks the red-throated loon to dive for earth from the bottom of the sea, and with the earth makes an island. A rarer, but apparently ancient, myth is found among the Mansi: the god of the skies lets earth come down from heaven and places it on the surface of the great primeval sea.
As its etymology implies, the term applies in the strictest sense only to the religious systems and phenomena of the peoples of northern Asia and the Ural-Altaic, such as the Khanty and Mansi, Samoyed, Tungus, Yukaghir, Chukchi, and Koryak. However, shamanism is also used more generally to describe indigenous groups in which roles such as healer, religious leader, counselor, and councillor are...
TITLE: Arctic SECTION: Peoples of Fennoscandia and northwestern Siberia
The Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) are closely related groups that inhabit the low-lying swamp and forest country around the Ob River and its tributaries. Their economy was traditionally based on hunting and fishing, but they adopted reindeer husbandry from the Nenets about the 15th century. The Selkup (Ostyak Samoyed), though related to the Nenets in language, were in their traditional...
...but there also are numerous non-Slavic peoples. These include the Kazakhs in the south, the Altay and Shor peoples of the mountains, the Tatars of the Irtysh basin, the Khanty (Ostyak) and the Mansi (Vogul)—whose autonomous district (Khanty-Mansi) occupies part of the taiga—and the Nenets, Nganasan, Enets, and Selkup peoples of the north. The valleys of the river are more...
...Cheremis), Udmurt (Votyak) and Komi (Zyryan), and the closely related Komi-Permyaks live around the upper Volga and in the Urals, while Karelians, Finns, and Veps inhabit the northwest. The Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) are spread thinly over the lower Ob basin.
...The Nenets are a Samoyed people of the Pay-Khoy region, and their language belongs to the Samoyedic group of languages, which is widespread throughout northern Siberia. Farther south live the Komi, Mansi, and Khanty, who speak a tongue belonging to the Ugric group of the Finno-Ugric languages. The most numerous indigenous group, the Bashkir, long settled in the Southern Urals, speak a tongue...
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