In Khanty and Mansi

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

, the Menk is a forest spirit of these peoples' mythology. The Khanty and Mansi are

Indigenous people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

living in the

Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra (Russian and Mansi: Ханты-Мансийский автономный округ — Югра, ''Khanty-Mansiysky avtonomny okrug — Yugra;'' Khanty: Хӑнты-Мансийской Aвтономной � ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

Mythology

The menk is part of the

Siberian Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...

. These beliefs were retained by the Khanty and Mansi people, even though they became, or were compelled to become Russian Orthodox Christians in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the Khanty

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, the menk are presented as "formidable forest spirits". The Hero-Prince typically inflicts many "pseudo-deaths" on a menk until he is able to inflict a "total death". Menk are protected by gods who intervene to prevent their deaths, however the laws of the gods can be bypassed by humans. In the epics, menk occur in sevens, such as seven menk from one mother, or seven menk with one soul. According to the mythology, menk's eyes cannot look down, so the Hero-Princes often attack them from below while fighting in rivers. In Khanty mythology, local people of ''Por'' ancestry are aligned with menk, who they believe to be "just like humans, only spirits of the parallel forest world".

Popular culture

According to skeptical investigator Benjamin Radford, a 2014

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel (known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery) is an American cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. , Discovery Channe ...

program that suggested a menk was responsible for deaths in the Dyatlov Pass incident is "a textbook example of modern cable TV mystery-mongering".

References

{{Wiktionary Khanty Mansi Russian folklore