How We Celebrate Summer in World’s Coldest City_ Yhyakh Festival

When winter lasts 7 months and summer lasts only 3 months, Yakuts people feel overexcited about the arrival of summer. Every year, during the summer solstice, Yakuts people are celebrating Öhök festival, the rebirth of nature after the long freeze, which symbolizes another start to the year. During the Öhök festival, locals are wearing their finest traditional outfits. Classic women's Öhök attire consists of an elegant vest called Haladay with embroidered vest, bag and leather boots with Yakutian traditional patterns. Furthermore, no woman's Öhök outfit is complete without traditional earrings, which feature Yakutian ornamental motifs like flowers and birds. Most women will also adorn themselves with a headdress called Bastinga and a necklace-like chest adornment known as Elin Kebiher, which is also work as a talisman. It's made of pure silver, it's very expensive and extremely heavy, some of them are weights about 17 kg. On top of that, both women and men are carrying Daybir, which is also horse tail, used to ward mosquitos and evil spirits. The festivities commence with the opening ceremony, where a shaman asking for a blessing from the spirits. After the colossal opening ceremony, everyone joined the ceremonial dance with thousands of people gathering in a large circle, dancing in bouncing motions and moving in the direction of the sun known as Ahokay. The most spectacular and long-awaited part of the festival is a national multi-sport competition called the Games of Dugin. The Dugin Games attract the strongest, most textures and fastest sportsmen from across the whole region, and the winner of the Dugin Games will get $20,000. The participants take on seven strongman challenges to compete for the honor of being named the winner of the Dugin Games. One of the competitions is the stick wrestling. Whoever pulls the other opponent over the board in lifting him from his seated positions wins. Another competition is a Gudian version of wrestling called Hapsagay. The objective of Hapsagay is to make the opponent touch the ground with any part of his body above the knee. The final contest is the boulder carrying. The boulder weighs 115 kg and whoever travels the longest distance while carrying the stones wins. The Dugin Games are extremely popular in Yakutia and the winners are revered as national heroes and thought of as examples for young people to emulate. Activities continue throughout the night. It never becomes completely dark during summers in Yakutia. Around 2 in the morning, when twilight fades and glowing red strikes begin to spread across the sky, locals are gathering together for the most important part of the festival, the greeting of the sun. Locals raise their arms, their palms facing the rising sun to soak up the solar energy, re-energize themselves for the approaching nine months of winter and showing such appreciation for things taken for granted in so much of the world, warms, summer and the sun.