Las duchów

This travel reportage, which won the 2025 Ryszard Kapusciński Prize, presents two journeys made to remote Siberia by ethnographer Andrzej Dybczak. His travels establish the origin and purpose of artefacts from Kraków’s Ethnographic Museum, providing a platform for indigenous peoples to reveal their history.

In ‘Forest of the Spirits’, Dybczak seeks the Selkup people, who might explain two doll-like figures which he takes to be shamanic tools. His dangerous journey through increasingly remote settlements includes a near-fatal helicopter crash and encounters with suspicious locals who mistake him for a spy. Through persistence and conversations with a variety of characters, he gradually uncovers the figures’ significance.

In ‘Girl from the North Country’, Dybczak goes to the Nenets Autonomous Republic to research clothing sewn from furs, including wolverine, an animal with sinister spiritual significance. Through fragmentary information gathered mostly from native women, he reconstructs the probable story of the Polish exiles who brought home these items.

Beyond uncovering the mysteries behind the museum artefacts, Dybczak documents how the tsarist and Soviet regimes – and alcohol – have destroyed the culture of indigenous reindeer-herding tribes. Their shamanic rites have been replaced by Orthodox Christianity and former nomadic herders now live in city apartments and work for the corporation exploiting their land for gas and oil. Yet the author also finds people preserving traditional crafts, old beliefs, and folk songs in a dying language.

Illustrated by line drawings of the objects, Forest of the Spirits is a sad account of a world that is rapidly becoming extinct. It is beautifully written, often reading more like a novel than non-fiction.