Etnolog w podróży (8): Mandar, człowiek niezwykły
Ethnologist on the Road (8): Mandar, an Extraordinary Man

Summary/Abstract: Ethnographer’s dilemma: to construct his ethnography on what is average and typical for a given society/culture, or, rather, to look for those outstanding, unusual individuals. And, to what extent might their particular experiences be considered representative. One of such unique personalities is Mandar Uus, a Sakha (Yakut) blacksmith, or, to be precise, a multitalented artist, handicraftsman and storyteller. He is famous in the whole Siberian Yakutia not only for making remarkable hunting knives or documenting in hundreds of drawings old folk ornament but also for telling in public moral lessons from his mystic encounters in the wilderness of taiga or presenting an ingenious cosmology of his own. Although he is a rather idiosyncratic, one of a kind personality, he is positioned in the Yakut media discourse as a perfect representative of ”the old Yakut knowledge, traditions and values”.

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