The article presents a description of the conceptual sphere with the basic concept of “winter”, based on the lyrical poetry of the famous Mansi poet Yuvan Shestalov. The article develops philological regionalism as a current trend in literary criticism. Based on a conceptual analysis of two volumes of the poet’s poems from his complete works, the article suggests this conceptual sphere, proving the objective choice of the nearest periphery concepts by providing examples from the texts. The immediate periphery includes such concepts and their variants as “snow” (ice, blizzard, snowstorm, snow squall); “sleep”; “night” (stars, moon); “road” (skis, sleds, deer, movement, path); “fire” (bonfire, flame, hearth heat, hot tea, ray of sunshine, northern lights). The key conclusion is that winter for the lyrical hero is a time of discovery, a time of learning new things, moving forward, a time of love and creativity. This perception of winter and Ugra as a whole is at odds with the generally accepted perception of the northern region. We believe the presented analysis will help visualize the mental space of the peoples from the North and the “winter” concept functions in the poet’s lyrical poetry to better understand his individual works, at the same time evaluating his work as an integral, mobile and developing system.