🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Yakuts

The Yakuts, or Sakha, are a Turkic people living in the valleys of the middle Lena and nearby lands, one of the coldest inhabited areas in the world. Unlike most peoples of the North, their traditional economy is horse breeding and raising cattle of hardy local breeds that can survive frosts below −50 °C.

Mare’s milk is fermented into kymys (koumiss), the main drink of the summer festival of Yhyakh. Yhyakh is celebrated around the summer solstice as the welcoming of the new year: a ritual specialist, the algyschyt, offers kymys, horsehair and festive food to the spirits and deities and pronounces a blessing, after which the osuokhai round dance, contests and feasting begin. Kymys is drunk from carved wooden goblets called choron.

From cow’s milk the Yakuts make butter, cream, suorat (soured milk) and kerchekh — whipped cream with berries. Dairy food was prepared in summer and stored frozen.