The potentially life-sapping cold of continental Siberia requires a specific lifestyle. In Yakutia, the world’s largest administrative and territorial region, people must adapt to long, brutal winters with average temperatures of -50°C. The lowest temperature recorded was -71°C, the coldest on Earth outside Antarctica.
Keep busy, keep warm
This short documentary gives a snapshot of family life in this harsh environment.
Yakutia is not a place to be lazy; everyone pulls their weight. Simple things like drinking water take preparation and effort. There are no water treatment facilities here, since the pipes can’t stand the cold. So water is harvested from a local stream in November and then piled up in big blocks of ice outside the house to melt as required.
Families have to heat their houses for nine months a year, so collecting and chopping firewood is another essential daily task. Fishing and hunting are almost equally vital.
Arian is just nine years old, but he might already have more (and better) practical skills than I do. He descales and guts fish with his mother, goes ice fishing with his father, and chops wood for the fire with a not insignificantly-sized axe.
“I believe every single man has to be able to make something by hand,” Arian’s knife-crafting father says. “At least knives or dishes.”
‘Snow days’ are rare
When it’s “warm” enough, Arian gets a break to go to school. The children in Yakutia only go to school when it’s warmer than -54°C. If it is any colder, the government considers it too dangerous to venture outside.
But on this day, it’s a balmy -40°C, and Arian gets kitted up for a mini-polar expedition — the 10-minute walk to his classroom. He seems a chipper kid, unfazed by what most people would consider life-threatening conditions. During this short 20-minute watch, Arian and his family seem happy. Their lifestyle looks almost idyllic if you don’t think about it too hard.
“There is no such thing as bad weather, there is just weather and your attitude toward it,” the narrator says, borrowing a quote from American self-help author Louise Hay to wrap up the video. It’s a nice sentiment. However, I doubt Hay ever had the runs while it was -71°C, and the only toilet was outside and unheated.
