Exhibition 'Tofalars: Lost in the Sayan Mountains'

About exhibition

The exhibition, on display at the Russian Museum of Ethnography, is dedicated to the traditional culture of one of the smallest (only about 700 people) peoples of Siberia. The lifestyle of this ethnic group, which lived in the hard-to-reach areas of the Nizhneudinsky uyezd of the Irkutsk Governorate until the late 1920s, was defined by mountain-taiga pack-and-mounted reindeer herding. The exhibition sections display reindeer care items, means of transport, traditional clothing, and shamanic ritual objects, accompanied by historical photographs. The vast majority of the Tofalar collections of the Russian Museum of Ethnography (RME) were acquired in 1908 by the renowned ethnographer and collector Viktor Nikolaevich Vasiliev and were transferred to the museum in 1911 through the mediation of Emperor Nicholas II. Today the museum holdings are almost the only source for studying the material culture of this remarkable people. Due to the isolation of their settlement area, all items, despite their simplicity and archaic character, are unique. The RME's Tofalar collection was successfully exhibited in regional museums in Novosibirsk and Irkutsk in late 2023–early 2024 as part of a joint project. RME staff are now presenting it in Saint Petersburg as part of the series 'Small Peoples of a Great Country'. Many exhibits were restored specifically for the exhibition and are being shown in Saint Petersburg for the first time.