Syrada-nyamy, the Mother of the Underground Ice, is the Nganasan ruler of the cold realm of the dead that lies beneath the earth. Where the Earth Mother gives life, Syrada-nyamy receives the dead into her icy domain below, and the elemental opposition between them frames the Nganasan cosmos. She is the mother of the syrada-nyantu (the seven or nine 'Lads of the Underground Ice'), beings linked with sickness and death whom the shaman confronted on behalf of the living. Her name draws on the Nganasan words syra 'snow/ice' and syrada 'underground ice'. She is documented in the classic ethnographies of the Taymyr Samoyeds and in recent comparative studies of Siberian concepts of the dead.