North Ossetia-Alania Map

North Ossetia-Alania is a federal subject of Russia located in the Northern foothills of the Greater Caucasus. This exclusive territory with the capital in Vladikavkaz is a combination of history, culture, and various landscapes, which make this place a real melting pot, including steep mountainous peaks and fertile lowlands. Despite the fact that it is commonly treated as a single republic among numerous other republics of Russia, North Ossetia-Alania can be distinguished because of its ancient heritage, its ever-developing cultural landscape, and simply the very name of this republic (Alania), which screams of the past. Today the modern and traditional life have become intertwined against the dramatic background of the Caucasus, and the whole experience to be received by a resident or a visitor of this state is as complicated as it is beautiful.

History

The North Ossetia-Alania can be delivered as the epic narration alternated with the stories about wars and conquests, and transformations in culture. The history of the region will start with its ancient population, the Alan people were nomadic people of Iranian descent, whose arrival in the Caucasus can be dated back no later than the early Middle Ages. These Alans founded the Kingdom of Alania, which implemented Christianity in the 9th century but emerged as the hub of regional power and cultural interaction.

At its highest point, the Kingdom of Alania was a buffer zone as well as a bridge between the Byzantine world and the Steppe nomads. The Alans became more active in both military as well as trade networks that crossed the Caucasus and beyond. However, this prosperous kingdom was destroyed with the introduction of the Mongol invasions in the 13th century under the weight of an enlarged empire, leaving a lot of its citizens to seek refuge in remote and rugged mountain lands where their militaristic ways and customs remained unchanged.

Its remodelling into the Russian sphere started slowly at the end of the 18th century. It was the beginning of the Russian influence over the lands of northern Ossetians, as the fortress of Vladikavkaz was built in 1784. There was piecemeal annexation in the subsequent decades when the Russian administration stretched towards the Caucasus between the years 1774 to 1806. During this time, the region was split: the northern region was absorbed into administrative units such as the Terek Oblast, and the southern regions were governed by the Tiflis and Kutaisi governorates. These boundaries, premised on the imperial decision to govern a plural frontier, both transient and troubled, would in due course have lasting effects on both regional identity and governance.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought about a new era of struggle and hardships all over the North Caucasus. North Ossetia-Alania was not left out of the storm that was rocking the region. In 1992, ethnic unrest occurred in the Prigorodny District amongst the ethnic Ossetian majority and the Ingush minority, who are mainly Muslims. This was a short and acrimonious war that still bore the mark on the relationships between the interethnic groups in the region. However, later, in 2004, the tragic school siege in Beslan made the world at large realise the weaknesses of the area where more than 300 people died and showed that such a region with an intricate political and ethnic mosaic poses certain risks.

Culture

North Ossetia comes in the form of Alania, and indeed, the cultural scenery is as dramatic and rugged as the landscape. Under the strong impact of its ancient heritage, the cultural identity of the Ossetian people represents the fusion of the local traditions, the foreign influences, and streams of modernity.

The core of the republic has been its culture, which is full of art, music, dance, and even stories. The Ossetian folklore with its traditions and historic tendencies is characterised by the epic descriptions of the heroic deeds, mythic combats, and the fight of the ancient Alans. Not only is one able to hear these stories heard during the celebratory events, but they are also being used in present-day theatre and literature as well. And the examples of local theatres, such as the famous North Ossetian State Drama Theatre, are the sources of contemporary cultural context, where the traditional stories are both maintained and reinvented to keep the oral and performative culture on the map of the living art shows and presentations.

Most of the Ossetians are Christians, and they are primarily Eastern Orthodox. Unlike most of their neighbours in the North Caucasus. It is a religious identity applied centuries ago and has harmoniously existed with the indigenous beliefs. Close to 30 per cent, depending on which reports one reads, also adhere to Uatsdin, the traditional ethnic faith popularly translated as the True Faith. This intermarriage of religion and custom makes the religious practices of the locals distinctive, and their ceremonies, rituals and symbolism date back to pre-Christian customs and even before the religions and are extensively and tastefully woven in Orthodox practices.

Crafts are also a great part of Ossetian culture. These crafts range from elaborate wood carvings, textiles, and metalwork, which are valued not only as useful tools but also as artefacts and a source of cultural identity. The artisans are mostly local who practice crafts that have been passed on through the centuries, with elements of the past and modern flair incorporated in the artistry. The help that is vital in the preservation of these traditional arts is museums and cultural centres in Vladikavkaz, as well as other towns, which serve to allow both local and foreign visitors to admire the phenomenal tradition that the Ossetian people have.

Language

The Ossetians attach a lot of significance to language, which is considered a core part of their identity and which is more actively used by the locals in order to build individual and communal life in North Ossetia-Alania. It is a formally bilingual region where the main instrument of the administration, teaching, and mass media is Russian, whereas the Ossetian language as an instrument is a strong symbol of ethnic and cultural identity.

The Ossetian (or Ossetic) belongs to a Northeastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is a language relative of the ancient language of the Alans and, more generally, that of the Sarmatian and Scythian languages once extended over the Eurasian steppes. Such a direct relation to antiquity not only gives Ossetian a unique grammatical and lexical distinguishability, but also strengthens its image of a living heritage of the rich history of the region.

There are two major dialects of Ossetian: Iron and Digor. The Iron dialect is more commonly spoken and is the one that is the foundation of the modern written standard, and the Digor dialect is the dialect that some communities in some areas use, which creates an interesting layer of variation in the language. This kind of dialectal variation enhances the cultural fabric of the area and acts as a reminder of past migration and settlement trends. In past centuries, the Ossetian script has used several different scripts.

Nowadays, however, it is predominantly written in a Cyrillic script that was normalised in the process of developing literacy and in the process of cultural revival. In spite of the fact that Russian has overtaken many spheres of life in terms of use in both official and social life, the fact that in domestic settings, cultural activities, and local media, people teach and speak Ossetian because they want to maintain an ancient tradition.

Geography

The natural setting of North Ossetia-Alania is nothing less than dramatic, an ever-shifting landscape of soaring mountains, fertile plains, jagged gorges, and climatic range that creates one of the most picturesque areas of the North Caucasus.

There are diverse landscapes and ecosystems in the republic. The lowland regions have steppe vegetation, and fertile black soils provide the best soils for farming. With the rise of altitude, these flatlands turn into dense deciduous woods, where the dominant trees are oak and beech. Higher on, the landscape changes to coniferous forests and this is blessed with spruce, fir and pine, forming beautiful and fresh forests. Alpine meadows substitute for forest right at the highest altitudes, and then above the meadows, there occurs the austerity of bare rock, stripped down to the bone, together with permanent ice.

The republic is situated in the basin of the upper Terek River and its swift-moving tributaries, mainly. These waterways are not only lifelines of the local ecosystems and agriculture, but in the past have also been vital trade networks through the mountains of the Caucasus. It is mostly temperate continental weather, but it changes considerably according to altitude. The climate in the lowlands sustains warm, long summers and not-so-cold winters. In its turn, the elevation is characterised by the shorter growing period, lower climatic conditions and increased precipitation rates, which contribute to the appearance of the alpine meadows and glacial development.

Situated in a good geographical location, North Ossetia-Alania is also blessed with a good geopolitical prominence in its natural beauty. The republic borders on a number of other Russian federal subjects-Kabardino-Balkaria, Stavropol Krai, Chechnya, and Ingushetia and the country of Georgia to the south. This meeting point of cultures and geographies has traditionally made the region an entrepot of trade, migrations and military strategy. In addition, the existence of two main European highways crossing the Caucasus (the Georgian Military Highway and the Transcaucasian Highway) contributes to the possibility of relations with European Russia and the trans-Caucasian region, as well, which promotes an even greater role of the republic as a bridge between the East and the West.

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