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16/12/2025. Foreign/Own: ”Artctic novels” and Umka in Karelian
December 16, 2025:
The program of the Foreign/Own project was dedicated to the Arctic theme in the literature. Participants got acquainted with different works and translated one of them into Karelia.
During the first part of the program, they visited an excursion to the Let’s Read about the Arctic exhibition opened at the National Library dedicated to the 500th anniversary of the Northern Sea Route. Participants learned, that the Russian literature about Arctic is a vast ”book ocean”. Among them, there are books for children and adventure novels for adults, science fiction books about animals and books about discoverers of the northern lands, poems and polar diaries of travellers. Information stands of the exhibition provide literature on ten different themes related to the Arctic. The exhibition objects and the interactive area of the exhibition make a vivid impression.
During the second part of the program, participants got acquainted with the "other Arctic”: books by foreign authors, revealing the image of the "White Silence". Among them, there are such famous names of classics as Jack London, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, as well as modern popular authors: Dan Simmons, Alistair MacLean, Dan Brown, Philip Pullman.
In foreign literature, the Arctic usually remains a mysterious, mystical land whose secrets eternally entice and torment the human mind. Among Russian authors, the idea of heroic discovery, exploration, and understanding of the Arctic predominates. Moreover, in this light, fiction books about Arctic animals are a way to learn about the North Pole through the story of an animal character, which, as a rule, evokes sympathy and compassion in readers. For preliminary reading and translation, the participants of the Own/Foreign project were offered the Umka novel by Yury Yakovlev. The book is familiar to many generations from the 1969 Russian cartoon. It is noteworthy that it was bears that gave the Arctic its name: in Greek, “arktos” means “bear.” The name of the main hero of the novel by Yury Yakovlev telling about a little polar bear is also not accidental: it is borrowed from the Chukchi and the Koryak word "óìӄà" (umqa) - "male polar bear". The participants of the project translated the novel into Karelian and reviewed the vocabulary on the topic "Animals of the North". At the meeting, they discussed the peculiarities of translation from Russian into Karelian and shared their opinions on the story.
