When winter lasts 7 months and summer lasts only 3 month, Yakut people feel over-excited about the arrival of summer
Every year, during the summer solstice, Yakut people are celebrating “Yhyakh” festival
the rebirth of nature after the long freeze which symbolizes another start to the year.
During the Yhyakh festival, locals are wearing their finest traditional outfits. Classic women’s
yhyakh attire consists of an elegant dress called khaladaai with embroidered vest, bag and
leather boots with Yakutian traditional patterns.
Furthermore, no women’s yhyakh outfit is complete
without traditional earrings which feature Yakutian ornamental motifs like flowers and birds.
Most women will also adorn themselves with a headdress called a bastynga
and a necklace-like chest adornment known as a ilin kebiher which also work as a talisman.
It’s made of pure silver, it’s very expensive and extremely heavy,
some of them are weight about 17 kg.
On top of that, both women and men
are carrying deibiir, which is a horsetail used to swat mosquitos and evil spirits.
The festivities commence with the opening ceremony
where a shaman asking for a blessing from the spirits.
After the colossal opening ceremony, everyone join
the ceremonial dance with thousands of people gathering in a large circle,
dancing in bouncing motion and moving in the direction of sun, known as an ohuokhai.
The most spectacular and long-awaited part
of the festival is a national multisport competition called “the Games of Dygyn”.
The Dygyn Games attract the strongest, most dexterous, and fastest sportsmen from
across the whole region. The winner of the Dygyn Games will get $20000.
The participants take on 7 strongman challenges to compete for the honor of
being named the winner of the Dygyn Games. One of the competition is stick-wresting. Whoever
pulls the other opponent over the board, lifting him from his seated position wins.
Another competition is Yakutian version of wrestling called khapsaghai. The objective
of Khapsagai is to make the opponent touch the ground with any part of his body above the knee.
The final contest is the boulder carrying. The boulder weighs
115 kg and whoever travels the longest distance while carrying the stone wins.
The Dygyn games are extremely popular in Yakutia and the winners are revered as national heroes
and thought of as examples for young people to emulate.
Activities continue throughout the night. It never becomes completely dark during summers in Yakutia.
Around two in the morning, when twilight fades and glowing red
streaks begin to spread across the sky, locals are gathering together
for the most important part of the festival - the Greeting of the Sun.
Locals raise their arms, their palms facing the rising sun to soak up solar energy,
reenergize themselves for the approaching nine months of winter and showing such appreciation
for things taken for granted in so much of the world: warmth, summer and the sun.