Naukan

The wind reaches you first. It comes straight off the Bering Strait, cold and salty, and it pushes against the grass on this steep slope. Underfoot, the ground is uneven: moss, loose stones, and low hollows in the earth. Some of the pale shapes in the grass are not stones. They are bones, weathered grey and white by decades of rain and snow. You are standing in Naukan, an abandoned village at the far eastern edge of Asia.

Look out to sea for a moment. On a clear day, the water stretches east toward Alaska. Somewhere beyond the horizon, North America begins. This part of Chukotka sits close to Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point of the Eurasian continent. For the people who lived here, though, this was never the edge of anything. It was the centre of their world, a place between two continents where sea and land both fed them.

Naukan was home to Yupik people, Arctic hunters related to communities on the Alaskan side of the strait. Their language, known today as Naukan Yupik, is a distinct form of Yupik speech. Linguists treat it as its own language, separate from its close relatives across the region. It is now spoken by only a small number of people. Much of what survives of it, survives because elders remembered the words of this village long after they left it.

The village was built on a slope above the water. This was a practical choice. From high ground, hunters could watch the sea for walrus, seals, and whales. They could read the ice and the weather before they set out in their boats. The skin-covered boats were light, strong, and suited to these waters. Life here followed the seasons of the animals, and the sea set the rhythm of every year.

Now look closely at the ground around you. The hollows and low mounds mark the remains of old dwellings. Many homes here were partly dug into the earth, which helped them hold heat through the long winter. Their frames often used what the sea provided. Whale bones, especially the long jawbones and ribs, served as supports where wood was scarce. On this treeless coast, a whale gave food, fuel, and building material all at once.

Here is something many visitors miss. The bones scattered across this slope are not random debris. Each one may once have held up a roof, marked a meat store, or framed a doorway. When you see a curved white shape rising from the moss, you may be looking at part of a family's home. The village is not a field of ruins so much as a floor plan, drawn in bone and stone.

The twentieth century changed everything for Naukan. In the Soviet period, the authorities moved many small Indigenous settlements across Chukotka. They called these villages unpromising and closed them. Naukan was one of them. In 1958, its people were relocated to other settlements along the coast. Families left their homes, their graves, and the hunting grounds their ancestors had known for generations. The slope fell silent.

For the people who were moved, the loss was not only about houses. A hunting community depends on deep knowledge of one stretch of coast. That knowledge includes where the ice breaks first, which currents are dangerous, and where the walrus gather. When a community leaves its coast, much of that knowledge loses its use. Former residents and their descendants have spoken of Naukan with grief and longing. For them, this is still home ground.

That is why you may notice signs of memory here. Former residents and their families have returned over the years to remember the village. Memorial markers stand on the site, placed by people with direct ties to this place. Treat them with care. Do not move stones or bones, and do not take anything away with you. This is a cultural landscape and a place of remembrance, not a souvenir field.

Naukan also sits near a famous chapter of exploration. In the seventeenth century, the Cossack explorer Semyon Dezhnev sailed through these waters. His voyage in 1648 is often described as the first known passage by Europeans between Asia and America. The cape nearby carries his name, and a monument to him stands on the heights above the sea. But Yupik hunters knew this strait long before any European arrived.

Pause and listen. Out here, the sounds are simple: wind across the slope, waves against the rocks below, and the calls of seabirds. In season, birds nest on the cliffs of this coast, and their noise rises and falls with the wind. Sometimes, a dark back breaks the surface far out in the water. Whales still pass through the strait, as they did when the hunters of Naukan watched for them from this hill.

The weather here changes fast. Fog can roll in from the sea and cover the whole slope in minutes. Then the light turns soft and grey, and the far shore disappears. A moment later, the fog may lift and the sea shines again. Reaching this place is not easy. Most visitors arrive by boat or with organised expeditions, and the sea decides when landing is possible.

Before you leave, stand still for one more moment. Look at the hollows in the ground, the white curves of bone, and the grey water beyond them. Think of the boats coming home up this slope, heavy with meat, and of children running between the houses. As you walk back down toward the shore, the wind will follow you. It is the same wind the people of Naukan felt every day.