This article is based on the field-work of the authors and their colleagues in the Mezen region of the Arkhangelsk Oblast and on the Kanin peninsula of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, 2006-2018. Interviewing and discussion on Pomor-Nenets neighbourhood was not an original goal of the research, but the topic still arised frequently in the interviews with the informants, and, therefore, became an unobvious result of the Pomors’ telling about themselves. The article mainly describes the view of the Pomors on the Nenets. In spite of the rapid changes in the way of life of reindeer herders and Pomors in recent decades, the opposition between the tundra/village and the sedentary/nomadic lifestyles remains one of the most prominent in this region. The opposition contributes to the forming of stereotypical ideas about the “other”, which are still relevant. From the point of view of the Pomors, the affinity of the Nenets to nature endows them with special knowledge, used both for good and for harm. Folklore plots remain the same, they are repeated and become actual in the new conditions of closer ties between Russians and Nenets. The principle, unifying the Pomors and the Nenets, is the code of the tundra and the North - an unwritten set of norms of behaviour which binds people within the same ethnic group and neighbours of different ethnicities, living in the same landscape, as well.

In contemporary East Slavic ethnology (ethnography, folklore, ethnolinguistics), the study of the folk calendar still occupies an important place. This article, based on field, archival and published ethnographic materials, analyses the phenomenon of harmful magic in the period of Ivan Kupala in the traditional culture of the countryfolk of the Vitebsk-Pskov borderlands. The functional pragmatics of witchcraft and its features are revealed, the techniques of apotropaic magic are analysed. The material for the work was a set of descriptions of the rite and folklore texts recorded on the territory of the borderlands in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries. The analysis of folklore and field materials allows us to characterise the functional pragmatics of harmful magic, its gender specificity, as well as take into account the peculiarities of witchcraft in the conditions of modern developed communication. The purpose of the study is to identify the specifics of magical practices dedicated to the day of Ivan Kupala, in the area of the Belarusian-Russian (Vitebsk-Pskov) ethno-cultural border. The transboundary status of the region (borders on Russia, Lithuania and Latvia), makes the study of Kupala rituals seem to be even more relevant.