#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. On March 25, the Taimyr coat of arms turned 25 years old. The Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug’s Duma approved the image of a red-breasted goose in free flight against a blue sky under the sun rays in 1998.
According to the materials of the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore, the flying goose is a symbol of Taimyr’s movement towards progress. Its flight to the right indicates that the development of Taimyr went from West to East, from the side of the “gold-boiling Mangazeya”. The blue field symbolizes the grandeur and beauty of the vast Taimyr expanses – with hundreds of lakes and rivers that permeate the entire territory of the peninsula. The silvery sun disk reflects the whiteness of the northern snows that cover the area during the long polar winter. The sun itself is a symbol of warmth, which the northerners need so much.
The work on the coat of arms creation was carried out for two years from the moment of the creative competition announcement. The prize fund of the competition was established, the competition commission included the Taimyr Autonomous District intelligentsia – employees of the local history museum, writers, journalists, artists.
21 authors from different cities of Russia presented 32 works to the commission, of which the two best ones were selected. The second prize was awarded to the Norilsk architect Andrey Uskov, and the first prize was awarded to Vladimir Taranets, an artist of the District Center for Folk Art.
The winner’s sketch depicted a red-throated goose, one of the rarest birds on the planet. It breeds in only three places – on the Gydan peninsula, in Taimyr and in Yamal. More than 70 percent of nestings – up to 20 thousand individuals out of 28 thousand included in the Red Book of that time – were in Taimyr. This fact played a decisive role in the final decision.
By the way, there are several versions of the coat of arms, sketches of which are kept in the funds of the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore. They, along with documents, drawing tools, books, notebooks were handed over to the museum by the emblem creator Vladimir Taranets.
Earlier, the This Is Taimyr reported that Norilsk got its own coat of arms in the 1970s: a polar bear with a key personified the power of high latitudes and the key to the riches of the Arctic.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, Photos: Vitas Beneta, Denis Kozhevnikov, Marina Peshkova, Taimyr Museum of Local Lore and Taimyr Reserves
