Siberia occupies 67 percent of Russian territory and is inhabited by over 30 ethnic groups. The Republic of Sakha is the largest region. Spanning 3,100,000 square kilometres, it’s 10 times as large as Italy with only a million inhabitants. Around half of it is beyond the Arctic Circle and it’s all enclosed within the permafrost area with permanently frozen soil. There is an active surface layer of around three metres that melts during the summer to freeze again in the winter. Below this is a layer measuring 300 to 1500 metres that has not melted since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago. In Yakutia in the village of Oimyakon, there is the ‘Pole of Cold’, the coldest inhabited place in the world, where temperatures of –71° C have been recorded.

Thirty-two-year old Ivan is the head of the first of the three Dolgan encampments I’m going to live in. He has driven from his camp on a snowmobile to meet us in the village of Yuriung-Khaya. We finally reached here after five hours of a cold and bumpy flight from Yakutsk, the capital town of Yakutia, to the village of Saskylakh. This was followed by 11 hours in a jeep along the frozen Anabar River. The Arctic Sea of Laptev in front of Yuriung-Khaya has captured some ships that now have to wait until spring to be freed from their long and forced hibernation. Here everything and everyone patiently and meekly await their fate; you decide very little yourself in Siberia. You can only learn to build up your defences to withstand the deadly cold. All your efforts would have to be concentrated on surviving; and if you do, you are either a hero or have been saved by a miracle. The Dolgan belong to the first category. The name of this ethnic group has a relatively recent origin. At the end of the 17th century, four of the clans from the Ewenki tribe that lived in Yakutia near the river Lena adopted the local Yakut language (from the Altaic group of Turkic origin) and moved west to the present Autonomous Taimyr Region.

The group of nomads who left Yakutia called themselves the Dolgan named after one of their clans, but today they claim they have an identity distinct from either the Ewenki or the Yakuts. They have their own language, although many scholars consider it only a dialect of Yakut. Except for the older members everyone speaks Russian. Today there are nearly 7330 Dolgan (1992 RAIPON) of which over 70 percent live in the Taimyr Peninsula and the remaining 30 percent still live in the Anabar district in the Republic of Sakha.

We leave Yuriung-Khaya. Ivan drives recklessly, as if plummeting into emptiness. He is not equipped with a compass or any kind of instrument – all he has is a deep and instinctive knowledge of every difference in the snow and ice streaming from below us. His valued vehicle, a legacy of the old Soviet system, pulls our rudimental wooden sleigh. Bold, my assistant, Maria, my interpreter from Yakutsk and I remain glued to our seats for seven long hours. We are racing towards a totally unknown horizon. Our initial enthusiasm at the novelty of the experience of being surrounded by this spectacular landscape with its almost surreal colours and boundless space begins to wane after the first two hours. There is a sudden sense of emergency that changes the atmosphere. Our toes start to go numb. From now on our energy will be concentrated exclusively on attempting to save our limbs by moving them. But Ivan’s encampment is still a five-hour jour–ney away and our minds are easily distracted.

His three-year old son Alexei lives in the camp, along with his 56-year-old mother Zinaida, his 63-year-old father Anufri and Anufri Jr. who is his 24-year-old brother. Sometimes his wife comes down from the village to visit him, along with their eight-month-old-daughter Svetlana. Next month, when the weather becomes milder, they will move back to the tundra with the family.

The Dolgan are the only people in the world to live in the balok, small wooden huts fitted with runners that can be pulled by reindeer. They seem to have been copied from those used by the early Russian fur traders. They can accommodate three to four people. Inside there is a stove, but there is no wood in the tundra. In winter nomads leave the open tundra of the far north and come down south to camp closer to the northerly edge of the conifer forest where they can find fuel. For a Dolgan, ‘close’ means five-six hours on a reindeer-driven sleigh and another five-six hours back. Be it a snow storm or the temperature dropping to 50° below zero, it’s a matter of survival.

Hunters by origin, the Dolgan nomads now breed reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) for their skin and meat, which is popular all over Siberia. In the Anabar district in Yakutia there are around 20,000 animals, meaning some 3,000 heads for each of the seven different brigate, the reindeer breeder’s teams. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the commune system, the government still pays the wages of most of the families living in the tundra. It owns the reindeer and wants to have control over the nomads’ territory, rich in oil and diamonds (99 percent of the diamonds extracted in Russia, which accounts for 25 percent of world production, comes from this Republic).

Despite this, the Russian Federation has recently approved some laws that seem to foster a certain independence of the indigenous population. According to these laws the Dolgan should be free to set up private cooperatives (like those of the Inuit in Canada, for example) for protecting the original culture, ancient traditions and economy of these people. The problem is that nomads need initial economic aid in the form of loans because their wages which “sometimes arrive and sometimes not,” as an old hunter of the tundra tells me, and which in any case are less than those paid during the era of the USSR, are obviously insufficient to launch these ventures. In addition, the government had cut back funds for developing social infrastructures. At the moment there are no laws that enable these people to have direct access to loans.

Anufri has no money to buy more reindeer; he owns just 20 of the 3,000 animals he breeds for the government. When he needs to kill one to feed his family, he goes hunting for wild reindeer or kills one of his own. And yet every morning at dawn, old Anufri is already out there in the icy cold. Steadfast and proud, he follows the rhythm of the seasons, much like his herd. Helped by his sons, he captures the animals with a lasso to harness them to the sledges. The few working animals that remain close to the balok are used every day to reach and bring back the great herd which has removed itself grazing. But when the herd is no longer visible to the naked eye, it’s time to move camp. There’s no longer anything for the reindeer to eat in that area. In winter the Dolgan follow them moving their small houses every 15 days. Whereas in summer there’s more food available and the reindeer don’t have to look for it far and wide under the snow. The nomad families can then once again reunite and the number of people in the camps grows considerably. More women and children live in the villages of Saskylakh and Yuriung-Khaya during the winter in order to be able to go to school.

Anufri Jr. joins us in our balok every evening to learn more about our countries. Bold, my assistant and interpreter, tells him about his country Mongolia. I ask Anufri: “What place would you visit if you could leave?” “Paris”, he replies without missing a beat. “Why Paris?” I ask. “Once when I was in the village, I saw a television documentary on the Eiffel Tower. I’d like to go to the top and see what it’s like to see a big illuminated city below.” It’s a very special evening since we host many guests in our little home. Tomorrow will be Karal, the day in which all the reindeer are tallied up. Many men have come from other camps to stay over in ours and help Ivan and his family. Conversation is lively since everyone wants to express his or her secret dream:

Ivan would like to visit the pyramids in Egypt while Zinaida would rather meet some Lapp people and compare her reindeer with theirs. “Would you work in one of these places if they asked you to,” I ask them out of curiosity. A moment of complete silence follows. Then Ivan lifts his head and acts as their spokesman. He looks me in the eye with a disconcerting kind of self-assurance, almost as if trying to gently hint at the fact that I’ve just made an absurd remark. “We would never abandon our reindeer.”

The first camp is only four hours away from the second by sleigh. This is the most I can stand outside with a temperature of –44°C, (that was today’s temperature reading) before I come down with signs of losing my toes. Two couples come to meet us: Elia and his wife Anna are both 34 years old; while Dimitri is 36 – three years older than his wife Katia. They have offered us one of their baloks. Outside every house there is a sleigh full of ice – it’s the water supply for every family. It’s very valuable because when it runs out, about every three days, the Dolgan have to fetch a new supply from the frozen lakes which can be as far as three hours from the camp. They are certain that reindeer haven’t soiled the ground in this area, ensuring themselves clean washing and cooking water. The nomads eat cooked reindeer meat, which is very tasty and easily digested, and make bread and a kind of noodles with flour. Delicacies of the tundra include straganina, raw fish frozen whole and cut lengthwise and dipped in salt reindeer liver and kidneys, also raw and frozen.

The second camp is livelier than the first. Along with the two women, three children also live in the camp. They are Serghei and Olga (Elia and Anna’s children) and Igor (Dimitri and Katia’s son). Although they have nothing to play with, they are happy children nonetheless. They chase after reindeer or fall to the ground pretending to be dead. That’s something they must have learned when going along with their parents on a hunt. Dimitri is outside all day long hunting wolves. He’s very upset since in this period they often attack the reindeer herd and kill off a few. Each time this happens, Dimitri has to pay the reindeer back to the government. Just like all the other nomads, he manages to withstand the - 46°C weather for 12 hours at the most. And strange as it may seem, the only thing that’s frozen is his moustache. The Dolgan nomads love the great outdoors. Their small wooden baloks are simply a bare necessity for their survival; but their true home, the one they hold precious in their hearts and eyes, is the infinite wide horizon that holds nothing beyond and of which they have no fear.

Trifon is 73 and the most famous white-fox hunter in the Republic of Sakha. His intelligence shows in his weathered face with its light-blue eyes that communicate with just a glance. He lives in the third camp I visit along with his son Nicolas and one of his grandsons. His wife passed away many years ago. There aren’t any women in this camp, so the three men take care of themselves. Trifon is very proud of the life he has led but he seems to be quite lonely. The attention Maria and I give him each evening when he comes inside our balok fills him with happiness. We can sense this because his eyes shine brightly every time we prepare his meal or carefully listen to his hunting tales and his adventures in the tundra. He smiles and seems to be very moved by all of this.

As each day goes by, he comes around to visit more regularly and a bond gradually grows between us. He offers us the pro–tection of a wise, proud and brave grandfather; we make him feel protected with the care of two thoughtful granddaughters. I’d like to spend more time with him. It’s like listening to the stories of a hero; you never tire of hearing his unusual past exploits. His son Nicolas seems to have a hard time accepting the role of this important parent who postpones yielding his command. He is 30, and like any other true nomad, it’s a long time since he learned how to face the perils of the tundra.

One evening Trifon shows me all the fox skins he has captured with snares hidden in strategic spots only he himself knows about. I buy 16 white fox skins from him. It’s an excuse to give him some money without offending him; I know he needs it. It’s late at night. As usual I come out of my balok to look at the aurora borealis. The sky is a spectacular feast of great white ribbons quivering in the silence. There is no longer any smoke coming from the balok. Everyone is sleeping. A single small flickering light illuminates the window of a house. It belongs to Trifon who is still awake. By candlelight he is devoutly cleaning and brushing my white fox-skins with ancient wooden tools. This is a secret I shall forever treasure in my heart and do not wish to capture on film.