The Chud Tradition in Finno-Ugric and Russian Folklore: An Ethnographic Case Study for the Hominin Mythology Project

Abstract

This paper presents an ethnographic summary of the Chud tradition — a legendary small-statured, underground-dwelling population from the folklore of Finno-Ugric peoples (Komi-Permyaks, Komi-Zyrians) and Russian settlers of Northern Eurasia. The synthesis draws on Komi-Permyak, Russian, and Scandinavian sources, and is framed within the Hominin Mythology Project's investigation into whether global folklore may encode observations of archaic hominin populations. The paper documents the Chud's morphological, behavioral, and ecological traits — small stature, light-shyness, underground dwellings, and a distinctive material culture (awls instead of sickles, stockings instead of sacks). It includes an experimental validation of the awl-and-stocking harvesting technology, demonstrating that the mythological detail encodes real ecological and technological knowledge. The paper positions the Chud as a Type B (Gracile / Small-Statured) anchor for the European/Arctic region, and provides a comparative analysis linking the Chud to the Sikhirtya and other circumpolar "underground small people" traditions. This work is part of the Hominin Mythology Project (OSF: https://osf.io/mdb84/), which systematically investigates whether global folklore preserves compressed survival protocols encoding encounters with non-human hominin populations.