Wacław Sieroszewski o eposie Jakutów

In 1880–1892 W.L. Sieroszewski, a well-known Polish social-political activist, writer and ethnographer, lived in the Yakutsk Oblast as a political exile. Drawing on his experiences, he wrote a monograph, Twelve Years Among the Yakuts, which was published in 1896 in Saint Petersburg. The ethnographic material he collected during his stay in Yakutia included the Yakutian epic poem, olonkho, from the second half of the 19th century. Sieroszewski classified it as a distinctive genre of the oral folk tradition of the Yakuts. He also described its characteristic features. Sieroszewski’s conclusions concerning the topic have remained valid to this day.