Shoyna (;

Nenets The Nenets (; ), in the past also called 'Samoyeds' or 'Yuraks', are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to Arctic Russia, Russian Far North. According to the latest census in 2021, there were 49,646 Nenets in the Russian Federation, most of them l ...

: Сояна’я, ''Sojanaꜧja'') (also spelled Shoina) is a coastal

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

('' selo''), located on the

Kanin Peninsula The Kanin Peninsula () is a large peninsula in Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Geography It is surrounded by the White Sea to the west and by the Barents Sea to the north and east. Shoyna (also spelled Shoina) is one of the few communities o ...

in northern

Nenets Autonomous Okrug The Nenets Autonomous Okrug (; ) also known as Nenetsia ( ) is a federal subject of Russia and an autonomous okrug of Arkhangelsk Oblast. Its administrative center is the town of Naryan-Mar. It has an area of and a population of 42,090 ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It had a population of 300 as of 2010. It was founded in the 1930s by fishing families who named the settlement after the Shoyna ("cemetery" in Komi language) River. An abundance of fish and sea life led to prosperity within the collective farm organized there, and by the 1950s some 1,500 People lived in Shoyna with a fishing fleet numbering more than seventy vessels. Ultimately, reckless trawling led to the utter annihilation of the

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

life, which decimated the fishery. More than half of the village is now buried under sand dunes deposited by the wind. It is thought that damage to

permafrost Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below ...

and destruction of the sea bottom released the sand, which has overwhelmed residents' abilities to control the drifts. The collective farm no longer operates; today, just three hundred inhabitants live at Shoyna, supported mainly by unemployment benefits and pensions. There is a lighthouse at Shoyna, built in 1960 as a navigational aid to mariners on the

White Sea The White Sea (; Karelian language, Karelian and ; ) is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia. It is surrounded by Karelia to the west, the Kola Peninsula to the north, and the Kanin Peninsula to the nort ...

. Several shipwrecks line the shore as a testament to the treacherous waters. No roads or railroads connect the area with the south. Transportation to the outside world is by ship or air. The civilian airport is a dirt runway 650 metres in length. Local travel is by "truckcycles" (motorcycles with truck wheels). In 1994, documentary filmmakers came to Shoyna and shot footage of the community. The resulting film, ''Zanesyonnyye Vetrom'' (''Blown in with the Wind''), was released in 2000. The village is also the subject of the documentary Between Sky and Sand (2017). Shoyna lies immediately south of the 167 square kilometer Shoyninsky State Nature Reserve, established in 1997 to protect the spring and autumn staging area for the

lesser white-fronted goose The lesser white-fronted goose (''Anser erythropus'') is a goose closely related to the larger greater white-fronted goose (''A. albifrons''). It breeds in the northernmost Palearctic, but it is a scarce breeder in Europe, with a reintroduction ...

(''Anser erythropus''), an Arctic species threatened with extinction. In 2002, Dutch researchers discovered that the nearby Shoyna marsh is an important stopover site for brent and

barnacle Barnacles are arthropods of the subclass (taxonomy), subclass Cirripedia in the subphylum Crustacean, Crustacea. They are related to crabs and lobsters, with similar Nauplius (larva), nauplius larvae. Barnacles are exclusively marine invertebra ...

geese, with counts approaching almost ten percent of the total Russian flyway population.

Climate

Shoyna has a

subarctic climate The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a continental climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of ...

(''Dfc'') with short, moderately warm summers and long, cold winters.

References

External links

Photos by Alexey Golubtsov2005 photographs by Sergey Maximishin
{{Authority control Rural localities in Nenets Autonomous Okrug