Thorir the Hound, a Viking, a magnate, and a brigand, was in all possibility the first person to give an account of the Golden Woman. This gentleman had led an attack on the shores of the White Sea in 1023. He discovered the ancient name of the Golden Woman, Yumala. Apparently the seasoned brigand was unsettled by reports about the idol. Yumala, he learned, was located in remote forest, placed on a mound, and the ground around the idol .was full of treasures and riches. The ground of the mound beneath Yumala was mixed with golden coins. This thread leads to Finland.

Kalevala is the Finnish national epic, compiled from ancient oral poetry. It consists of old Finnish ballads and lyrical songs depicting "the sons of Kalevala. In Kalevala one finds wonderful tales of the gods of Finland, the gods of air and water, of fire and the forest, of Heaven and the Earth.

Yumala is the queen of the underworld in this epic. Stag is the favorite animal of Yumala... Kaleva is the mythical kingdom where most of the epic takes place. It is similar to Kalama of the Sumerians. Inanna abandoned the E-muc-kalama in Bad-tibira, and descended to the underworld. This is yet another connection with the wondrous land of ancient Sumer and its mythology.

It is curious that the symbol of the cosmos and the mother of the sun were represented as a stag in the Hungarian mythology. There are also links to both the Finnish epic Kalevala and the Sumerian tablets containing the Sumerian creation myth that can be traced to Hungarian legends.

Alessandro Guanini, the Italian who authored Description of European Sarmatia (1578), described the worship of the Golden Woman. Besides the sacrificial furs, the idol was also presented with animal sacrifices. The choicest deer were slaughtered, and their blood used to smear the idol's mouth and eyes. Then, a short time later, all of the blood mysteriously disappeared. Guanini wondered if the dead idol drank it all. Yet, were the Golden Woman dead? Apparently, the idol responded to inquiries with correct answers, and issued accurate predictions.

Another European world traveler, a German spy, was actually an eyewitness who (according to at least one account) saw the Golden Woman talk and even shout. Baron Siegmund von Herberstein (1486-1566) visited Russia in 1517; and then in 1526-27. He published the book Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Vienna, 1549). The author was a capable and keen observer of Russia. Herberstein presented a great description of the tribes who dwelt in the lands to the east of the Ural Mountains.

However, the Baron also wrote that the accounts of the Golden Woman were translated from Russian descriptions brought to him. He tried to find those who had actually saw the paranormal developments in the reports he received, but could not find a single person who did. So he left the analyses to others. He did comment that the Golden Woman statue must have had hollow areas inside it, and that the wind would cause shout-like sounds while blowing through them.

Anthony Jenkinson, English merchant and adventurer, traveled in Russia from 1557 to 1560 . Jenkinson journeyed from Archangelsk to Moscow (where he met with Czar Ivan the Terrible). Later he sailed the Volga River and Caspian Sea to Bukhara, one of the cities on the ancient Oriental Silk Route. He returned to England in 1560 where he compiled detailed accounts of his expeditions; and he prepared a large-scale map on four sheets, which was first published in London in 1562. A land called "Ugria" was shown to be located at the lower end of River Ob. The accompanying illustration depicted Ugrans who knelt in front of a female idol. A note, according to Aado Lintrop from the Institute of the Estonian Language, located in Tallin, Estonia, clarified the image:

In all fairness, it is important to present Aado Lintrop's opinion about the Golden Woman, from the same publication of the Institute:

In actual fact, no European has ever seen that idol and most probably it never existed in the described form (as a full-length woman made of gold). Grounds for that kind of rumors were provided by the Ob-Ugrian folklore, where Kaltesh-ekva is usually described as golden.

Already in 1032 CE, Russians regarded the Mansi as enemies, and the Novgorod warriors unsuccessfully raided them. There had been other bloody conflicts between the Russians and the Ob-Ugric people throughout the centuries. Tatars, too, attacked the Ob-Ugric tribes and waged war against them.

Beginning with the XV century, the Great Novgorod Republic and later (in the XVI century) the Moscovite state had already intruded upon the Ob-Ugric people and founded distant trade-towns. Khanty together with Mansi numbered approximately 16,000 at a time when the population of Moscovite Russia was most likely about 10 million.

Siberia was adjoined to the Moscovite State after a legendary and bloody campaign of Yermak Timofeyevich, the ataman (chieftain). The leader of a vataga (band) of independent Russian Cossacks, he spent his early career plundering the Czar's ships on the Volga. Later he entered the service of a wealthy and legendary merchant family, the Stroganovs.