Yurts
are known in Mongolia as a ger. They have been
used by the nomads of Mongolia as homes for thousands
of years.
There are three main types of yurt in use today. The Turkic or
Khazak yurt with a bentwood roof and crown, the two tiered yurt,
with a pointed roof, and the Mongol ger. The Mongol ger is the
yurt in most common use today, being home to three-quarters of
Mongolia's people.
The Mongolians use the word ger, meaning home rather than yurt,
which is of Russian origin. There is evidence that yurts were used
by the Scythian and Pazaryk peoples 2,500 years ago.
The
traditional Manas poem describes a yurta this way:
Look
at her beauty!
White as snow she was.
Made not from felt,
but from cloth.
Trellised wall varnished was.
And a mat, made from chij
Was with silk braided.
Ropes round the yurta Of quaint beauty were.
A
Mongolian wedding party
A
Mongolian family inside their
yurt.
The
yurta costs the Kyrgyz about the same
amount of money as a nice car. Today,
it is not unusual to see a shepherd's
yurta with a car parked beside it. There
are no nails in a yurta. The pieces of
wood fit together, although they can
also be tied with leather thongs. It
takes a craftsman about 25 days to build
a yurta but it will last for 25 years.
Once it's built, it only takes a few
hours to set up or take down.
The
wooden ger is a permanent structure and
is more commonly found in Siberia in
areas where the inhabitants do not nomadize
as often. Many Buryat families would
keep one ger for the winter and another
for the summer in better grazing areas.
Wooden gers are rare in Central Asia
except in parts of Mongolia and Inner
Mongolia inhabited by Buryats.
