Arctic mirrors

"And, sovereign, having captured a shaman in battle, we asked him: what kind of man are you and do you have kinsmen? And he said: I am the best man of the Shoromboiskii clan and I have four sons. And so we kept him as hostage.". For over five hundred years the Russians have been wondering what kind of people their Arctic and sub-Arctic hostages were. "They have mouths between their shoulders and eyes in their chests," reported a fifteenth-century tale. "They rove around, live of their own free will, and beat the Russian people," complained a seventeenth-century Cossack. "Their actions are…