Traditionally, fishing played an important, sometimes leading role in the economic system of the indigenous peoples of the North. In the 17th–18th centuries, many researchers of the Ostyak (Khanty) way of life emphasized the importance of fishing for the nomads: the traveler Evert Ysbrants Ides, the physician and botanist Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, the ethnographer Grigory Ilyich Novitsky and others.
In Khanty cuisine, fish was valued more than meat: it was cooked, smoked, salted, baked or eaten raw; dried fish was made into flour. Fish insides were used to make glue, and clothes were made from processed fish skin.
Large fishing settlements (10 to 30 households) were separated by distances of up to 100 kilometers or more. In the 18th century, Ivan Ivanovich Lepyokhin, an academician and traveler, explained this tradition by claiming that “every family or yurt is allowed to fish only within their dachas [territories].”
The Khanty used a variety of equipment, including morda (lit. — “muzzle, snout”) fish traps. This device is made of two cones of willow twigs inserted one into the other, about one and a half meters in length.
Vladislav Mikhailovich Kulemzin and Nadezhda Vasilyevna Lukina, the authors of the book “Meet the Khanty” note that fish traps called “pon” were some of the most popular types of equipment of the Siberian peoples. The researchers describe that these traps were made “from smooth pine [two-meter-long] ‘pencils’. They were inserted into the holes of a square frame and tightened at the other end — the tail of the trap. This frame was tied in several places with split and straightened cedar roots.”
It took several days to make one such trap. The craftsman tried not to be distracted by other activities in order not to “get rusty”. It took a few more days to weave the net.
While fishing, the base and upper part of the trap were weighted with sinkers, for instance stones, and the upper hole was plugged with hay, the entire structure was tied to a bush or a peg stuck in the bottom.
In places with a fast current, the trap created whirlpools, and fish, trying to find a quiet place, swam into the trap. Therefore, the traps were traditionally hung on one cable, which blocked off a suitable section of the river.
The displayed morda trap was made in a traditional way by Mikhail Timofeyevich Voldin, a resident of the village of Bolshoy Atlym in the Oktyabrsky district.
