ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how a small group of Iakut, residing in the area of Lake Essei, Krasnoiarskii Krai, Siberia, constructs, inhabits and perceive the landscape. This isolated group of Iakut has been strongly influenced by the culture and economy of neighbouring Evenki communities, yet remains distinct in terms of their language and traditions. The chapter examines how the narratives told by the native residents at Lake Essei contain references to significant pathways and places in the landscape. Then it explains the Iakut understandings of landscape are often connected to the ancestral past, and to the memories that contain that past. The chapter examine how links to the landscape are expressed by the significance that Lake Essei Iakut place on the importance of knowing the land'. Finally it brings together these three themes of narrative, memory and knowledge, which run through engagements with landscape and aiylha, through a more detailed analysis of the ethnography of fishing at Lake Essei.
