Wedding ceremony at Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the early XX century

The article deals with the wedding tradition of the upper reaches of the Northern Dvina River. The relevance of such a study is due to the need to generalize the results of folklore and ethnographic activities in this region. The purpose of the work is to introduce into scientific circulation the recording of a local version of the northern Russian wedding ceremony recorded in the village of Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the Solvychegodsky district of the North Dvina province (now the Krasnoborsky district of the Arkhangelsk region) in the 1920s. The manuscript (currently stored in the archives of the Krasnoborsky Historical Memorial Art Museum named after S. I. Tupitsin) is the result of the collection and fixation of folklore traditions by a local school teacher O. A. Shestakova. This record of the Verkhnyaya Uftyuga wedding ceremony is an isolated case in her collecting practice in the upper reaches of the Northern Dvina River region, with its format being very similar to the field records of modern folklorists. While collecting the information, the local historian worked with the informant very productively and efficiently: the text contains additional questions and comments on ritual actions; O. A. Shestakova recorded all stages and actors that are characteristic of the northern Russian wedding tradition, as well as the lyrics of the wedding songs. The published document is interesting both as a record of one of the local variants of the northern Russian wedding ceremony and as an organic example of the “golden age” of local history - a period in the history of the development of Russian folklore studies in the system of local lore studies in the early XX century. The objects of research covered by this paper are both the wedding ceremony recording and the materials for the collector’s biography. The scientific novelty of the work lies in using little-studied and hard-to-reach sources, introducing them into scientific circulation and providing a comprehensive commentary.