Icha

Culture-hero / trickster tier; classed 'demigod'. The chief Selkup hero; northern name Icha/Itja, southern Itte. English-leading 'Icha' is the conventional name; native variants in term. Documented by Prokofyeva and Pelikh and synthesised in the Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies (Tuchkova et al.). Note: parented to Nom per the 'later version' the sources cite, since the brief foregrounds Icha; the alternative orphan/grandmother tradition (raised by Ilyntyl Kota) is flagged in the claims.

Parentage

• parent: Sky (Nom)

Domains

• culture hero and protector of the people
• trickery and cunning

Powers

• outwit the cannibal giant and the underworld lord

Relations

• descendant of: Living Old Woman (Ilyntyl Kota)The orphan hero of the Itte cycle is reared by his grandmother, identified in some tellings with the life-mother Ilyntyl Kota.N. Tuchkova et al., Selkup Mythology (Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies 4, 2010) (secondary)

Sources

• Icha (Itja; southern Selkup Itte) is the Selkup trickster culture-hero — a kind, pure-blooded Selkup, protector of his people — orphaned and raised by his grandmother Ilyntyl Kota (in a later tradition, son of the sky-god Nom); he lives at the river-head or in the sky.: atlaskmns.ru, 'Selkups. Spiritual culture' — Icha and his name-variants. (tertiary); Tuchkova, N.A. et al. (2010). Selkup Mythology (Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies 4). (ethnography)
• Icha's antagonist is his cousin Kyzy, the evil lord of the underworld; among the southern Selkup the parallel hero Itte fights the cannibal giant Pyunegusse, the pair explaining the two intermarrying halves of Selkup society.: Tuchkova, N.A. et al. (2010). Selkup Mythology — Icha/Kyzy and Itte/Pyunegusse cycles. (ethnography); Prokofyeva, E.D.; Pelikh, G.I. — Selkup folklore. (ethnography)