Reasons for motives “to furnish with knives” and “to sharpen a knife” in the Koryak tales

On the material of the most popular Koryak tales subjects the article reviews reasons which lead for changes of motives in the traditional Koryak folklore. The first reason is the change of the economic structure. Details which are unclear and unknown for a narrator, references to traditional and now lost technologies vanish from the folklore texts. Those details are replaced by the motives which seem more logical for a narrator. The second reason is the impact of Russian fairy-tale narrative tradition. The most stable, emotionally rich motives of Russian fairy tales are imprinted in minds of the Koryak readers, and then are incarnated into their national texts.