Dve Viski

Dve Viski lies in Pokhodsky Rural Okrug of Nizhnekolymsky District in the Sakha Republic, in the lowlands of the lower Kolyma. Its position can be read most clearly through two distances: 105 kilometres from Chersky, the district’s administrative centre, and 60 kilometres from Pokhodsk. Those wide separations give the locality its place within a thinly settled northern territory, where named rural places sit far apart and links between them span considerable distance. The locality is classified as a selo even though the surviving record says little about its built form.

The name opens another view of the surrounding geography. Its element viski is the Yakut word for channel and has no connection with whisky. That meaning points to the waterways embedded in the region’s local vocabulary, while the Russian spelling of the settlement has encouraged an unrelated reading. Together, the channel word and the long distances between named centres make Dve Viski a place understood through hydrography and direction.