This website (www.nartosetia.ru) extends a hand of friendship from Osetia to both the West and the East. It contains epic texts, tales of the Narts translated into Russian, English and Farsi. Folklore nowadays became only the domain of special interest groups. As a result, there is a risk that this form of history will be lost for the general public. On the contrary, familiarity with fairy tales and folklore of other cultures provides common ground, removes misperceptions bringing people closer together and cultivating peace and mutual understanding.
To enable the tales of the Narts to have a wider reach and be appreciated by both people from East and the West we have provided translations in Farsi and English. Each text has been provided with additional comments and illustrations.
Audio versions of the texts are already available in Osetian. Future audio versions in Russian, English and Farsi are under way.
Another aim is to help improve familiarity with the languages used on the website and hopefully will be of interest to Russian, Persians and English speaking people to get the opportunity to see and hear these texts in different languages.
The texts are divided into sentences, which greatly facilitates the study of the material. The translation is literary, but close to interlinear, which minimizes the need to use a dictionary. Supporting materials — the genealogy of the Narts, information about the narrators of the epic, about its collectors — will help you quickly enter the world created by the ancestors of the Ossetian people at a time when the world was young, and people’s ideas about it were full of myths and miracles.
In addition to the Narts, the website also contains other ethnographic materials, for example, part of M. Gardanti’s book on Digor customs, so far only in two languages, as well as a school textbook on geography in Russian with translation into the Digor language. The reason for displaying these materials on the website is different: the rapid loss of language by small nations. I would like to believe that using the website at school will slow down this negative process.