[The Walled People of the Northern Urals][1]
And I want to tell what I heard four years ago from Iuriata Rogovich of Novgorod, who told me the following: “I sent my man to Pechora[2] to the peoples who pay tribute to Novgorod; and my man went to them and from there to the Iugra; and the language of the Iugra people is dumb[3] and they are neighbors of the Samoyeds in the northern country. The Iugra people told my man, ‘It is a real wonder that we did not hear of it in previous years, but heard it three years ago—that there are mountains [the Urals] which go to the gulf of the sea [the Arctic Ocean], and they are as high as the sky. And inside these mountains [one hears] shouting and [voices] speaking, and [these people] are [trying to] break through the mountain because they want to get out. And there is a little window cut into the mountain and they speak through it; but we do not understand their language, and they point to iron, waving their hands and asking for iron; and if someone gives them a knife or an axe, they quickly give furs in exchange. But the way to the mountains is impassable because of the snow and the forest. Therefore, we cannot always get there. They are farther away to the North.”
But I said to Iuriata, “They are the people walled in by Alexander, King of Macedon, as related by Methodius of Patar: ‘I went to the Eastern land, to the sea, called the Land of the Son, and I saw there the impure tribes of Japhet, and I became aware of their impurity. They eat all manner of impure [food] and do not bury their dead. And they eat the female izvorogi[4] and all manner of impure animals. Alexander saw this and took fright that they may corrupt the land, and chased them into the high mountains of the northern land.”
Following God’s commandment, the northern mountains encircled them, and they did so save for a space of six arm-lengths. Then there were erected gates of copper and they were covered with sunklit[5], a compound that can neither be burned by fire nor destroyed by iron. In the latter days, according to the commandment of God, eight tribes will come out from the Yathrib desert, and after them evil tribes will come out of the northern mountains, where they are now locked up.
But let us now return to our original narrative.
[1]Year 1096, Povest’ vremennykh let.
[2] A region along the Pechora River in the extreme northeast of European Russia.
[3] Nem, “dumb” or “foreign”.
[4] A fetus after miscarriage.
[5] According to Methodius of Patar, a legendary indestructible compound.