Num

On the Yamal Peninsula, the wind comes off the Kara Sea with weight in it, and the reindeer move across snow that holds the print of a boot for weeks. Above them is the sky the Nenets call Num. Above them is also the god of that name, because in Nenets the two are inseparable. The word for sky and the word for the highest god are the same.

Num is the sky father of the Samoyed peoples of western Siberia, and his domain begins at the moment a person looks up. He is the creator of earth and of everything that walks, swims, or grows on it. He lives in the upper world, and his sons rule the heavens beneath him in layers, seven or nine according to which storyteller is speaking. The cosmos he made is a stack, and the highest plate of that stack is where he resides.

He does not come down. That is one of the first things to understand about him. Where other creators take human form and walk among their creations, Num keeps his distance. The Nenets pray to him, sacrifice to him, name him in oaths, but they do not expect him to appear. Contact runs the other way. A shaman in trance climbs the stack toward him, passing through the layers with the help of assistant spirits, and Num’s answers come back down through that same channel. The reindeer herders below send up smoke and blood and bread; the god above sends down weather. His name and the Nenets word for weather are the same as well, which is the kind of compression a language develops when the things it describes cannot be separated.

The creation is told more than one way. In one telling, Num shapes the world out of a primordial muddle of mud and liquid clay, calling solid ground out of chaos and setting the living things upon it. In another, he works alongside Nga, his son and his shadow, in a collaboration that is also a rivalry. Num makes; Nga unmakes. Whatever the father builds, the son tries to spoil, slipping death and misfortune into the design before the paint dries. What emerges is a world of balance that is also a world of contest. Num holds the upper; Nga takes the lower. Light, order, life, and the open sky belong to the father. Darkness, sickness, death, and the underground belong to the son. The stories disagree on whether Num made Nga deliberately or whether Nga simply came into being beside him, the way a shadow does when a thing first stands in the sun.

A normal day for Num passes in the upper world, where he watches the lives below without often intervening. The reindeer thin in winter; the rivers freeze; the women in the chum tents stitch and wait; the men go out across the tundra and come back, or sometimes do not. None of this requires his attention to occur, but all of it occurs under his name.

The myth that brings him out of his remoteness is the one in which the world itself began to fail. A shaman sought him out, climbing toward the heavens in trance, because the ground had started to give and the sky to lean. Num heard him and gave instructions that sent the shaman the other direction, down into Nga’s domain. There the shaman bargained with the death god, married Nga’s daughter, and emerged from the underworld changed. From that point on he held the world up with his own hand and was known as the Old Man of the Earth. The reconciliation is the shape of the story. Num cannot fix the problem on his own. Nga cannot be ignored. A human mediator has to walk the whole stack, top to bottom, to keep the thing standing.

Picturing him is the difficulty. The Nenets do not seem to have given Num a stable body. He is the sky itself, and the sky does not need a face. What he does have is sign and presence on the ground. Across the tundra, his sacred sites rise where reindeer have been killed for him, heaped antlers and skulls that grow with each migration past, piles three meters high in places, and at the most important sites polar bear skulls and carved wooden idols ring the offerings. The most sacred of these stands on the northern coast of Yamal and is called Severn Chums. There Num is honored without ever being depicted, and the honoring is mostly a matter of leaving things behind: food, cloth, butter, sometimes money, sometimes blood. Twice a year, at the beginning of winter and again in spring, formal sacrifices are made. Dogs or reindeer are killed for him, or food and clothing surrendered in their place.

His powers are the powers of the sky and of the act that made the world. He commands weather. He set the heavens in their layers and placed his sons over each. He gave humans their lives and watched, through a son, the negotiation that gave them their deaths. He is remote, but he is not absent. The Nenets oath that calls on him calls on something the speaker believes is still listening.

He does not always answer. That is the weakness in him, if it is a weakness, because the same distance that makes him supreme also makes him hard to reach. He acts through shamans, through weather, through the slow indifferent turning of the seasons, not through descent into the camp. A grieving mother is not granted a vision. A starving herd is not visited. The mediation has to be done by someone who has trained for it, and even then the answer might be no. The arrangement is older than complaint. It is simply how the world above and the world below stay in contact at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Num in Nenets mythology?

Num is the supreme sky god of the Nenets and other Samoyed peoples of western Siberia. He is the creator of earth and all living things, and the word “num” in Nenets means both “sky” and “the highest god who resides in the heavens.”

What is Num the god of?

Num is the god of the sky, creation, weather, and the upper world. He rules over a layered heaven of seven or nine spheres, with each level governed by one of his sons, and he holds the benevolent half of the Nenets dualistic cosmology against his malevolent son Nga.

Who is Nga, and what is his relationship to Num?

Nga is Num’s son and his cosmic opposite, the Nenets god of death, evil, and the underworld. In some myths Num and Nga collaborate to create the world while also competing, with Nga introducing death and misfortune into Num’s design. The two together form the dualistic balance at the center of Nenets cosmology.

How do the Nenets worship Num?

The Nenets honor Num at sacred sites scattered across the tundra, often piles of reindeer antlers and skulls that grow with each migration. Twice a year, at the start of winter and again in spring, formal sacrifices are offered, either bloody offerings of dogs or reindeer, or bloodless offerings of food, clothing, butter, and money. Direct contact with Num is reserved for shamans, who reach him in trance.

Does Num have a physical appearance?

Nenets tradition does not give Num a stable physical form. He is identified with the sky itself rather than depicted as a body, and even his most sacred sites honor him through offerings, antler piles, polar bear skulls, and wooden idols rather than through an image of him.

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