Symskalin
Itelmen · deity · mythic / first times (creation of Kamchatka) · Recorded classification
In the cosmogony recorded from the Kamchadals by Stepan Krasheninnikov in the 1730s, the creator Kutkhu came down with his wife Il'kkhum to the primeval sea; she sank to her breast in the water and there gave birth to a son, Symskalin, who floated with his head to the west and his feet to the east, and Kutkhu commanded the boy to turn into the earth. Krasheninnikov also records a competing version in which Kutkhu and his sister Khutlyzhich brought the earth down from the sky and set it upon the sea. Symskalin thus stands at the very beginning of the Itelmen first-times, the primordial child whose body is the land.
Parentage
- parent: Raven (Kutkh)
Domains
- formation of the land
Powers
- to turn his body into the newly made earth
Relations
- sibling: Tyzhil-KutkhuTyzhil-Kutkhu is Kutkhu's later-born son, brother of Symskalin in Krasheninnikov's account of the creator's family.S. P. Krasheninnikov, Opisanie zemli Kamchatki (1755), vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 11. (secondary)
- sibling: SidukaSiduka is Kutkhu's daughter, sister of Symskalin in Krasheninnikov's account of the creator's family.S. P. Krasheninnikov, Opisanie zemli Kamchatki (1755), vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 11. (secondary)
Sources
- Symskalin is the first-born son of the creator Kutkhu, borne at sea by Kutkhu's wife Il'kkhum, from whose body, at his father's command, the earth was made.: S. P. Krasheninnikov, Opisanie zemli Kamchatki [Description of the Land of Kamchatka] (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1755), vol. 2, pt. 3, ch. 11, 'On God, the creation of the earth, and the dogmas of the Kamchadal faith'. (secondary); S. P. Krasheninnikov, Explorations of Kamchatka: North Pacific Scimitar, trans. E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1972). (secondary)