Olonkho (Yakut: олоҥхо; Dolgan: олоӈко; Russian: Олонхо́) is a series of Yakut and Dolgan heroic epics. The term Olonkho is used to refer both to the entire Yakut epic tradition and to individual epic poems. An ancient oral tradition, Olonkho is thought to date, in most of its poems, from before the northward migration of the Yakuts in the 14th century. This makes Olonkho one of the oldest epic arts among all the Turkic peoples. There are more than a hundred recorded Olonkho, ranging in length from several thousand to tens of thousands of verses, and its best-known poem, Nyurgun Bootur the Swift, contains more than 36,000 verses.
Olonkho was first documented by Europeans in the 18th century during the Russian conquest of Siberia. The documentation of the large-scale epics, however, was begun in the 19th century by scholars exiled to Siberia and, in the 20th century, by state-supported scholars in the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
The term Olonkho refers to the epic itself. In Yakut, the Olonkhohut is the person/storyteller who performs the epic.
Sources
- Turkish Wikipedia: tr.wikipedia.org
- English Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org