#novgorod

[mim70]

Yurievo, Veliky Novgorod

[nastiaph]

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Doodles Made by a 6-year-old Boy Named Onfim, from Russia, c. 1240-1260 CE: these drawings were scrawled onto the homework of a little boy in Novgorod nearly 800 years ago

Over the last 75 years, excavations in and around Novgorod, in Russia, have led to the discovery of hundreds of documents dating back to the Middle Ages. These documents were made using pieces of bark from the local birch trees; they include letters, notes, spelling exercises, shopping lists, receipts, and legal documents, among other things.

The most famous examples are the panels that contain the writing exercises of a 6-7 year-old boy named Onfim, whose work was often accompanied by drawings of knights, fantastical beasts, battle scenes, and depictions of himself in various forms.

These are just a few examples:

Birch-Bark Document no.199: on the back of a panel that had been used for his spelling exercises, Onfim drew this picture of himself as a wild beast, writing "I am a wild beast" in the center of the drawing; the beast is also shown holding a sign that says "Greetings from Onfim to Danilo," likely referring to a friend or classmate.

Birch-Bark Document no.200: Onfim began writing the Cyrillic alphabet at the top of this panel, but he then stopped to draw a picture of himself as a warrior on horseback, labeling the figure with his name; the drawing shows him wielding a sword while he impales his enemy with a spear.

Birch-Bark Document no.202: the boy's mother and father are depicted in this drawing, which accompanies another writing exercise.

Birch-Bark Document no.206: Onfim began to copy a liturgical prayer (the Troparion of the Sixth Hour) onto this strip of bark, but he apparently got distracted after writing just the first few words, and started drawing a row of people along the bottom of the panel instead.

The examples above are just a few of the many documents that have been unearthed in Novgorod (now known as Veliky Novgorod) and its surrounding areas. More than a thousand birch-bark manuscripts and styli have been found throughout the region, suggesting that there was a high rate of literacy among the local inhabitants. Most of these documents were created during the 11th-15th centuries, when Novgorod served as the capital city of the Novgorod Republic; they had been buried in the thick, wet clay that permeates the local soil, in conditions that allowed them to remain almost perfectly preserved for hundreds of years.

I know that Onfim's drawings are pretty well-known already, but my most recent post involved a very similar writing exercise/doodle from a child in Medieval Egypt, so I just thought I'd post some of Onfim's work, as well.

Sources & More Info:

Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences: Birch-Bark no.200, no.199, no.202, no.203, no.206, & no.210 (the site is in Russian, but can be translated)

Institute of Slavic Studies: Full Database of Birch-Bark Documents

The New York Times: Where Mud is Archaeological Gold, Russian History Grew on Trees

Russian Linguistics: Old East Slavic Birch-Bark Literacy - a history of linguistic emancipation?

[ripstefano]

On the cover: During the Battle of the Frozen Lake in 1242, Alexander Nevsky, Prince of Novgorod, kills a knight from the Teutonic Order.

[inkyami]

Wedding

Illustration for the soon-to-be released finale of the "Our Garden" dilogy (part of the Golden Lands series)

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[illustratus]

Alexander Nevsky by Nicholas Roerich

[christliche-kunstwerke]

Terracotta. Heavy, warm, ancient. It presses against you before you even look up. The deep brick-red of the nimbus, the frame, the robes - Theophanes the Greek understood something about sacred color that science would take centuries to name. Red at this depth doesn't excite. It grounds. It pulls the blood downward, steadies the breath, asks the body to be still. In "Christ Pantocrator, on the cupola of the Church," every surface hums with this earthbound warmth, as if the fresco itself radiates low heat from within the plaster. Then - the pale, chalky white behind the figure. Silence made visible. Where the red anchors, the white opens. It creates space for the eyes to arrive, those enormous frontal eyes that hold you the way gravity holds stone. The ocher and umbra of the face carry the weight of soil, of age, of something older than language. And those thin strokes of light - probela - rising on the nose, the brow, the cheekbones: not sunlight, not candlelight, but a luminance that psychology might call calming and theology calls divine. Theophanes painted in the world of hesychasm, the Eastern tradition of inner stillness and uncreated light. Every color here serves that theology - not decoration, but doorway. What does this silence look like in your own prayer? Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

[witekspicsoldpostcards2]

Nizhnij Novgorod -> Russia