In the coldest inhabited place on earth, the Yakuts and Evens tell of the chuchunya — a tall man in skins who lives alone, steals reindeer and runs off at improbable speed. In the 1920s enough reports accumulated that the Academy of Sciences sent an expedition under Pyotr Dravert. Ethnographers suggest the figure stands on something real: outcasts and the remnants of vanished clans who took to living away from people.