Yakuts (Sakha)

The Yakuts, who call themselves Sakha, are a Turkic people of the Siberian branch. In the Middle Ages their ancestors moved north from the Baikal region into the Lena River valley. Yakuts live in some of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, where winter temperatures fall to -60 °C.

The Sakha Republic is the largest federal subject of Russia, with its capital at Yakutsk. The summer festival Ysyakh greets the sun and nature. The heroic epic Olonkho was inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2005.