Svalbard Island: where it is, who owns it, interesting facts. Guardian of the North Star. development of the archipelago. Grumant father
IN I remember April 23, 1981, Moscow, Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. With caution, like a bare live wire, I hold a slide in my fingers, which depicts a board charred by time, on which, as if with a knife of Alexei Ivanovich Inkov, is carved about their weak spirit artel worker: Head of the Spitsbergen archaeological expedition, candidate of historical sciences VF Starkov makes a report on the results of the first three field seasons.
Now more than eighty monuments are known, - he says. - The northernmost of the excavated by us is located on the Brögger Peninsula, on the shores of the Kongsfjord Bay, it is under 79 degrees north latitude, four kilometers from the village of Ny-Ålesund. During its excavations, more than seven hundred objects made of metal, leather, wood, clay, birch bark were found. Pomeranian graves, crosses and houses are also higher, under the 80th degree. And in the bay of Resherzh, on the north coast of Belsund, the remains of four housing and utility complexes were identified and studied, which included nine living quarters, six cold cages and a bathhouse. This is the largest Russian settlement known so far in Western Svalbard. It is also important to conclude that the habitation of the Pomors in Svalbard was of a regular and long-term nature and that the main form of habitation of the Pomors was a village, and not a single winter hut.
Almost two and a half centuries separate us today from those times. But the thought does not get tired of reaching out, often collecting facts bit by bit, in the darkness of centuries, wanting to see the life there clearly and correctly.
Stored in the Department of Manuscripts of the State Public Library named after M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in Leningrad Collection of Novgorod and Dvina charters of the 15th century. And there is in it the "act" of Prince Andrei of Novgorod - a message to the people of the Dvina and the Cold (White) Sea. The letter was written by statute. The letters are straight, powerful, and they bring us from seven hundred years ago the tension of life big and hot.
Prince Andrey Alexandrovich sent three bands of his from Novgorod with the ataman Andrei Krititsky “to the sea to the oshan” and orders the Pomors to give them “food and carts, according to the duty, from the graveyards.” And at the end of the letter, he also noted for the chieftains: “as it went, under my father and under my brother, do not go to the Terek side of the Nougorod, and now do not go.”
And the Terek side is the Kola Peninsula. And the princely gangs of Novgorodians were not ordered to go there either for fishing or for quitrent, because in this XIII century it was still impossible to disturb the Terek settlers, because from time immemorial the sovereigns encouraged bold explorers who expanded and mastered the boundaries of princely possessions, encouraged by liberating them from state hardships and did not limit their freedom in any way. For the time being, of course.
However, on the same Studen sea, on Solovki, by 1429, the monks were already driving simple Pomors by force and threats “from this island, God destined for the habitation of monastics,” as Archimandrite Dositheus puts it. So, thirty years later, “Solovki from the sea of the ocean” was assigned to the monks by the granted Novgorod letter, and in 1471, the villages of the Tersky coast were already indicated in the list of the Dvina lands: Karela Varzugskaya and Umba.
A hundred years pass - and the tsarist, boyar guardians of power, no less than monasteries, impudent and armed, are already pulling their hands here.
And again they break away from their homes, and people go into the unknown, to the North, to the sea, to the islands, where it is freer for the soul and for fishing; moreover, not all kinds of people go, but strong in spirit, greedy both for labor and for will, and deeply peaceful, not out of cowardice, but by nature. Such are the pomors.
In the letter of Grand Duke Ivan Vasilievich dated December 18, 1546, we learn that the people of Kargopol and the district volosts buy salt ... "from the Pomortsy by the sea." And this is probably the first written evidence of such a definition.
And life in the Russian North by the middle of the 16th century actually reaches its peak.
Take the diaries and testimony of Stephen and William Barrow. These English navigators, who met with Pomors in 1557, tell, for example, that the Mezens of the White Sea, as one, went to the Pechora in June "to catch salmon and walruses" and turned out to be amazing sailors. They deftly brought the English ship out of the disastrous fog, another time their twenty-oared karbas, going downwind, outstripped the English leading ship and from time to time waited for the English, lowering their sails. It turned out that the Pomors were amazingly wise in predicting the weather and taking into account tidal and ebb currents. On Kigor (Peninsula Rybachy) on the day of St. Peter, that is, on June 29, many people gathered for the Russians “on the occasion of bargaining”: both Karelians, and Lapps (Saami), and Normans, and Danes, and Dutch - and “their affairs were going fine here”; moreover, at the same time, the Russians spoke to the British about the Big Stone (Urals) and Novaya Zemlya.
From the same English one can also learn some names of simple Pomors of the sixteenth century. These are Fedor and Gavrila from Kola (Murmansk), Kirill from Kolmogory (Kholmogory near Arkhangelsk), feeder Fyodor Tovtygin and a White Sea feeder nicknamed Loshak.
And it is not surprising that in 1576 the Danish king is trying to use the nautical knowledge of one of the Russian feeders - the Pomeranian navigator Pavel Nikitich from Kola. “It became known to us,” writes the king, “that last summer several Trontgey burghers entered into relations with one Russian feeder, Pavel Nishets, who lives in Malmus (Murmansk) and usually sails to Greenland around Bartholomew’s Day (June 11) in Vardø.” Not without reason, then, it was at the same time that the well-known project of the occupation of the Russian state from the north arose. To capture Muscovy and turn it into an imperial province, according to the calculations of one of the nimble Western Europeans, “200 ships well supplied with provisions are enough; 200 pieces of field guns or iron mortars and 100 thousand people; so much is needed not to fight the enemy, but to occupy and hold the whole country.”
The Dutch expeditions, who visited Novaya Zemlya at the end of the 16th century, are striving to hollandize all oral Pomor names on it, especially since there were no outlines of the Russian North on the maps of Muscovy at that time. And it wasn’t because the Russian North did not represent “anything controversial in those years.” And in the fact that the traces of the fishing activities of the Pomors, often encountered by Dutch sailors both on Novaya Zemlya and on Svalbard - processed walrus carcasses and tusks, navigational crosses - are nothing more than traces of Russians, and not Norwegians, someone who, but the Dutch, by the way, no doubt. And they have no doubts, if only because, say, and through the same clerk of the Stroganovs, who fled to Holland, Alferius Brunel, they knew well what - narrow, long, albeit high-speed, but unsuitable for navigation in ice - the boats of the Norwegians and which - short, walnut-shaped, sewn without nails and adapted to ice (even with skids) - Russian boats. So, when the Norwegian fishermen were not going to rise above Jan Mayen, in extreme cases, they were not going to rise above the Bear, the Russian St. into custom.
“In the summer of 7113 (1605) in the city of Samara,” the legend says, “there was a Pomorenin man, named Athanasius, his birth was beyond Solovki on Ust-Kola. And he spoke about many wondrous marvels of the sea, but heard about others. And he traveled by sea on sea vessels for 17 years, and walks in the dark land, and there is darkness, like a dark mountain; From a distance, over the darkness, you can see snowy mountains on a red day.
V. Yu. Vize, citing this legend in the biographical dictionary of Russian polar sailors, notes that the mentioned "dark land is, undoubtedly, either Svalbard or Novaya Zemlya."
It is also interesting that the first cartographic evidence of Russian Pomors in Spitsbergen also falls at this time. The map of Svalbard, the second in a row, but the first in terms of practical value, is a map with the name " new country, or in another way Svalbard”, published in 1613 in the book of Hessel Gerrits “History of the country with the name of Svalbard”. The author talks about unsuccessful negotiations between Dutch whalers and Russian fishermen regarding the organization of a joint trading partnership and places a map drawn up in the fresh footsteps of his fellow countrymen, on which one can see one of the Pomeranian bays, called by the Dutch "Mouth of the Muscovite".
There is another early cartographic document about Pomors, but already on English map 1625. It shows a Russian ship rushing to the southern tip of Svalbard, where just from that time for a whole century the Pomors were driven out by the British, Dutch, and later by the Danes, Germans, Spaniards, whose expeditions were always richly equipped with cannons and cannonballs.
But here comes the year 1694, when the 22-year-old Tsar Peter I goes to Arkhangelsk, to the Pomors, with a great and daring thought about a military maneuver, with the implementation of which a “window to Europe” will be cut through. True, the Pomors will pay a high price for their identity for the much-needed “window” for Russia, which was then called Petersburg, because the Tsar ordered the Pomeranians to build Pomeranians in Arkhangelsk City instead of their Pomeranian kochmars, ranshins, shnyaks and lodias, powerful military ships on the model of the Dutch.
For eight years, cursing the tsar and his clerks, the Belomorye fulfills sovereigns in a row, and in 1702 a real squadron of the first northern Russian warships (13 ships) goes from Arkhangelsk to Solovki, and from the village of Nyukhcha, on the Pomeranian coast White Sea, and to the village of Povenets, on the shores of Lake Onega, a fantastic flooring is being cut - the legendary Sovereign's road, a clearing road, a walkway, a portage road, along which two ships will drag in ten days - "Holy Spirit" and "Courier ", which will then go out along the Svir to Ladoga, the ancestral home of the Pomors, in order to return it to Russia together with Shlisselburg forever.
One misfortune - from century to century, the Pomors, although literate, have not been revered by the case of “walking with a pen”; they believe most of all in their living memory and hope in the memory of their sons. There are no words, it's a shame that the royal decree of 1619, which imposed a ban on the conduct of sailing directions, completely discouraged the desire to start a logbook or keep a diary of observations on lodia. And all the moral rules, all the father's covenants and seafaring signs were passed from mouth to mouth.
Only after Peter's reforms did they have nautical books, or Pomeranian sailing directions. But even then, all entries in such handwritten books were kept nameless and in a mean businesslike manner. However, let's try to retell one of the Pomeranian cases.
There was a wind for eight days - the lodia from the Mezen itself went quickly to the coast, which means to the north-west, and the Arctic Ocean comforted the soul.
And on the ninth day the wind changed and turned the ship to the east. Drove, drove and nailed to the bare island, in the "butt to the ice." The Pomors recognized the island: this is Small Oshkuy, that is, Grumant the bear turned out to be. It was then that the greasy ice moved and swaddled them, and soon the beetle began.
They see the Pomors: it’s a serious matter, it’s stinging and squeezing - you need to prepare for the worst, maybe you’ll have to spend the winter. The feeder remembered that there was a camp somewhere here, and decided to check.
The four of us went: the feeder Alexei Inkov himself and with him three rank-and-file soldiers - Khrisanf Inkov, Stepan Sharapov and Fyodor Verigin.
Walk a mile to the shore. And the ice cracks - as if someone is squeezing it in a vise - from time to time, like from a cannon, it sighs and swells, and crawls on top of each other, and then it swells - and a thick ice floe sticks out, as if alive, rises into a ropak.
In order to go faster and not to drown from gravity, the Pomors took little cargo. In total, there was one gun, a horn with gunpowder three charges per brother, the same number of bullets, an ax, a bowler hat, a knife, a bag of flour - five pounds per person, a fire with tinder, a bubble of tobacco and a pipe in a wooden smoking room. And the clothes are all the same that they are wearing.
Finally got there. They see: zaleda is a coastal land that lies under the ice. From here to the camp hut, as it turned out, was less than half a verst of everything. They found a machine. They flooded the clay oven without a chimney. The smoke spread along the ceiling, curls, sways, swells up to the top of the window, pours into a square black cloud, but does not fall below - it flows into the crack of the window. The house warmed up, and the Pomors decided to spend the night in it.
At dawn, as the wind calmed down, the coast-dwellers hurried to their own - en naked around, the wind dragged, as it is, both the ice and the boat with it into the ocean.
It became hard on the soul of St. John's wort; stand like a pillar, numb. Finally, the feeder Aleksei Inkov moved his beard, looked around the golomyan ocean and said contritely:
- Eco sighed father! Grumanlanka (lodiya. - Auth.) Duck took ours. And where are you, our other comrades? Have you accepted death?
(And so it happened: eleven, all that remained in the lodia, all drowned.)
Suddenly Alexei Inkov hurried up and shouted:
- Don't be shy! Tease the wind!
And he whistled loudly. And that’s all: Chrysanthus, and Stepan, and Fyodor followed him with a hoot-kali and whistled! ..
However, the wind did not go back and did not drive their Grummanlanka, their native Pomeranian lodia.
Then the Pomors ceased, in their expression, to tie the wind, that is, to pray to it. “He doesn’t want to know, Nikola, the god of the sea, accept us,” they said. They said something, and looked at the bald bulge of the sea for a long time.
But you have to live. And the feeder said a word:
- We are all equal here now, and turn ours, robyatki, equal.
And went on to get on with artel life.
The Pomors began with the fact that they killed, according to the number of bullets, twelve deer, prepared for the future meat and skins for clothing, and made a bed for each of crumpled deer skin. For the furnace, the fin was dragged from the coast for the first winter and for the next. The hut was straightened and moss was firmly fennelled with dry moss. They made all the necessary tools: they found a ship's board nailed by the sea, thick, with an iron hook, with nails and with a hole; it made a hammer; and from a suitable stone - an anvil; nails - so consider that ready-made tips or fishing hooks, and even each postgalese-needle, they managed to forge from them.
There were ticks from two deer antlers.
They were afraid of only one bear, a bear, looking at a terrible one. Painfully, he was curious and stunned: he would come, growl, thick hair on end; moss is tearing out of the logs, breaking into the hut - as much as a creak and crackling - look, the box will fall apart along the log!
They made two horns out of strong branches, and soon the first, very bold, was raised on them; others have become quieter. And in just six winters, ten were killed.
Then a spruce root turned up, which resembled a bow with its bend. They pulled a vein from the first bear on him with a bowstring - and immediately arrows were needed. Four iron tips were forged and with the veins of the same oshkuy they were tied tightly to spruce sticks from one end, and from the other, feathers from a seagull were screwed. With such arrows, they killed two and a half hundred deer and many blue and white foxes.
The bowstring will whistle, the arrow will hiss, it will yell at the deer - the beast will spin, and it rushed over the mossy hummocks, bucking. And Chrysanthus in pursuit - it is impossible for the arrow to disappear! A kukhlyanka, like a sack, firewood over the head - arms, thighs are bare, on the body there is one short shower jacket and shoe covers on the legs - and that’s it, and young Chrysanth flies, the daring Chrysanth runs no worse than that deer, but better, because he catches up with a deer that is running away , catches up.
The meat was smoked and dried - in the hut, on sticks, under the ceiling. Stocks replenished over the summer. And it went instead of bread. Save the flour. If they cooked it, then occasionally, with deer meat. There was flour on the fire dish. They made a kind of lamp from clay mixed with it, dried it in the sun, wrapped it in shreds from shirts, and scalded the shreds in reindeer fat again with flour, and dried everything again. Zhirovik turned out. The underwear went to the wicks. The fire has not been fired since. And then, after all, there was very little tinder, and how many sweats descended while the so-called live fire was removed: twist a dry maple stick so that the tinder, stuffed around it in a narrow hole in a birch log, would smolder!
So life went on in worries and labors.
I soon began to overcome the illness - scurvy. The Incas fought with it as best they could: they drank deer’s blood for this, and ate raw and frozen meat in pieces, and worked a lot, and slept little, and here’s another thing - in the summer they collected spoon grass, from which they cooked cabbage soup, or so, also raw , ate - as much as possible. “..And that grass grows a quarter of an arshin high and higher, and its leaves are round, the size of the current copper penny, and the stem is thin, but they take it and use those stems with leaves, except for the root, but they don’t take and don’t use the roots ".
Three of the Pomors resisted scurvy gloriously. Only Fedor Verigin was lazy and weak in will. And therefore, in the very first year, he fell into the weakness of scorbutic disease, fell ill and weakened so that he himself did not rise. For a long time, the comrades fussed about him: they gave him a spoonful of broth, breathe fresh air they took it out, smeared it with bear fat, said prayers ... However, all the same, on the fourth spring, Verigin took off his soul, died.
There were also times among the Pomors when neither shoe covers were sewn, nor kukhlyanka, nor leather was rumpled, nor kalgi-skis got along, nothing else to do around the house suddenly you had no need, no desire. Then they did what the soul liked: Chrysanth, for example, carved a box of round bone with a knife, Alexey mokh smoked, about his wife, children, about the mainland, and listened to Stepan as he sang a song with a tear, thinking the same thought:
Grumant is gloomy, I'm sorry!
Let us go to our home!
Living on you is dangerous -
Fear death at all times!
Moats on mounds-slopes.
Fierce animals there in holes.
Snows do not go down -
Grumant is always gray.
And so they lived alone, beyond the seventy-seventh parallel, in the land of midnight, as you know, six winters and years and three months. And they had order and harmony, and there was neither strife nor despair. Not even a flea or a louse started up.
Once (exactly: August 15, 1749) Inkov Alexei was sitting on a hillock, on soft green-red moss; he whittled the knot, thinking: maybe some kind of smoking pipe to make from it; he thought and looked with the envy of a hunter at how white whales flirt.
So he sat, so Pomor, looked at the sea, at the belugas, at the little kulich ... But suddenly, he was frightened that he was tempted, he seemed to be dreaming of a wonderful miracle, a clear sail! And the sea is smooth; the wind is gentle and in the face.
“Something flashes in the eyes,” Inkov said to himself. And my heart was beating harder.
But the bright flap of the sail has grown. And then Alexei picked himself up like a youngster and started to run. At the hut shouts:
- Robes! .. Dear ones! .. Signs with banners ... hurry to mark!
(There is such a naval command: give a sign.)
They got lost right away. “Where are you going?” - they ask.
- Pull the bed, pull the bed duck! .. Yes, fire! Fire with a bowl!
They figured out the fires. Fired up, regretting nothing. Then the deer skins were planted on spears, and quickly let's swing them, and yell that there was enough spirit.
And soon the Russian fishing boat dropped its sails near the Incas.
So they finally returned to Arkhangelsk.
The people wondered. The director of the Kola whaling company, Vernizober, also expressed his amazement. Expressed - and wrote about what happened in St. Petersburg. The following year, the Inkov brothers were summoned to Count Shuvalov. And he ordered to make a book about what had happened. Le Roy, educator of the count's children, such a little book in French and German after 16 years amounted to. And she went around the whole scientific world of Europe, now surprising the Germans, and the French, and the British, and partly the Russians themselves.
And our glorious coast-dwellers, the Incas, lived like everyone else, and hunted as before, differing, however, from others in that for a long time they could not eat bread in any way - they were swollen from it, but they could not drink any drinks, because got used on their island only to the purest glacial water ...
Now we can say with good reason that the Pomors remained on the archipelago for long time back in the 18th century. And so close I see the opened dark crowns of seaside huts, once assembled here from imported forest, sometimes standing on the whale vertebrae of the foundation, broken nameless ships turn white with the ribs of the frames, such native mosses turn green and glow, sparkle among the brown-black gravel of screes fat glaciers, finally, rickety crosses stand so aching, stretching their stumps of wooden arms from south to north ...
And I don’t know why my heart is beating so hard: either because two polar trains have been lived on Svalbard, or because the voices of ancestors are heard.
- Vadim Fedorovich! I ask Starkov. - You consider the time of active voyages of Pomors in the Svalbard region from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The log cabin of a tree was found in the 16th century. Could there be earlier things too?
- Yes, although we have not yet met earlier monuments, - says Starkov.
The scientist, of course, is very cautious with conclusions. But the search continues, because even Alexander Pushkin said: "Respect for the past is the feature that distinguishes education from savagery."
In order to clarify...
50th anniversary of the first through navigation in one navigation by the Northern by sea. This laid the foundation for the systematic development of the most important national economic sea route, the first discoverers of which were, in essence, the Russian coast-dwellers.
Pomorie gave many glorious names to Russia and the whole world. Among them is the great M. V. Lomonosov, the “Kamchatka Ermak” - V. V. Atlasov, the famous Semyon Dezhnev, who became a Yakut Cossack. From here, from their native shores, detachments of brave explorers set off on long hikes, whose exploits and heroic deeds are entered in golden letters in the annals of the great Russians. geographical discoveries XVII-XVIII centuries. The population of Pomorye also played a significant role in the development of Siberia. Pomeranian ship's apprentices and craftsmen, skillful builders of reliable boats, ship carpenters and helmsman-navigators "set up" nautical business under Peter I in previously unexplored spaces Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. But the most polar frontiers of Russian sailors have long been arctic archipelago- Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya. And quite naturally: everything connected with the study of these lands is of great interest.
The author of the essay spent two winters on Svalbard, fell ill with the North, and since then has been quite successfully studying its fascinating history. In the Geographical Society of the USSR, he made (in Leningrad and Moscow) interesting reports on the important clarification of the path of the expedition of V. Barents, which in 1597 opened for Western Europe Svalbard. To the well-known scientist, the author of a kind of Arctic encyclopedia "History of the discovery and development of the Northern Sea Route" to Professor M. I. Belov, the developments of Yu. Mansurov, undertaken, as he wrote, "in order to clarify historical event", seemed commendable and gave "the impression of solid research." And this impression, I think, is not deceptive.
Yu. A. Mansurov suggested back in 1977 that Mezen Alexei Inkov, in a conversation with Academician Le Roy, could call Svalbard and Greenland as Small and Big Oshkuy (Le Roy has Small and Big Brown), but, they say, after as a foreign scientist, not understanding the Zyryan word "oshkuy" ( polar bear), demanded clarification, the quick-witted Pomor gave him the Scottish translation "oshkuya" - "brown". It seems that it is time for toponymists, specialists in the origin and interpretation of geographical names, to take up this bold hypothesis.
Not without interest in the essay and the first cartographic evidence of the Russian coast-dwellers in Svalbard. Turning to old maps, the author confirms the existing scientific world ideas about the wide possibilities of use and the need to increase attention to ancient cartographic materials. After all, old maps are surprisingly capacious and meaningful sources for the historical geography of our vast Motherland.
L. A. Goldenberg, Doctor of Historical Sciences
Ancient legends and chronicles told people that the path to the Far North was laid by sailors for hundreds of years. Probably, light ships of the Normans were in the waters of the "Cold Sea" about 1000 years ago. But reliable information about this has not been preserved. Russian chronicles say that hundreds of years ago, Pomors, settlers on the shores of the White Sea and the Kola Peninsula from Novgorod, walked along the harsh waters of this sea. Courageous, free from the yoke of serfdom, Novgorod peasants united in squads and went to unknown lands for precious furs, to fish and sea animals.
The tenacious hands of the boyars and the sovereign's servants did not reach the distant shores of the White Sea. Ordinary people went to the North not only from the lands of Veliky Novgorod. Peasants fled here from the central and northwestern regions countries in order to get rid of the master's oppression, unbearable extortions and debt bondage.
In the XII-XV centuries. Novgorodians explored and mastered the coast of the Kola Peninsula, the shores of the White Sea. They built strong ships and traveled far from their villages on the seas of the Arctic.
Pomors discovered the islands of Novaya Zemlya, Kolguev, Medvezhiy, Svalbard (then this archipelago was called Grumant's Land).
Often the brave coast-dwellers had to stand up to defend the lands they had mastered, which foreigners began to covet.
The Russian North has long been a lively trading place, where foreign merchants from Western Europe flocked. They bought here precious furs, fat and skins of marine animals, walrus tusks and other goods that were delivered from Western Siberia by land, through the polar Urals, and by sea.
In voyages to the east along the "Arctic Sea", Western European travelers, as a rule, used the help of Russian sailors. The first Russian pilots appeared on the Neva and Volkhov during the time of Veliky Novgorod.
They were then called ship leaders ("leaders"). In the North, in Pomorye, there was even a special horse-drawn trade and artels of ship-leaders.
Russian sailors went far into the depths of the seas. On the islands of the Arctic, researchers many times found the remains of Russian Pomeranian winter quarters and their fishing equipment. Known to explorers of the Russian North is the Pomor Ivan Starostin, who settled for many years on Grumant (Svalbard). Was mastered Russian islands Bearish. His north coast foreigners even called it "the Russian coast".
Russian coast-dwellers laid the foundation for a new type of navigation - ice. They managed to explore not only the European North, but also a significant part of the Asian coast.
The study of the ships of the ancient Novgorodians and Pomors, who settled in the North, showed what abilities and ingenuity the first Russian Arctic sailors possessed.
Russian sea boat of the 16th century. could take on board 200 tons of cargo. It was a three-masted deck ship with straight sails. Smaller boats, with a deck and two masts, were usually intended for navigation on the White Sea. Pomors sailed on ships of other types. The most ancient ship is the kochmara, or koch, a three-masted deck vessel. By design, koch is very reminiscent of a lodya, only it smaller size. Pomors and simpler types of ships were built: ranshins, augers and karbas.
On some types of ships, the Pomors attached the skin to the ship's hull with the help of juniper roots. In some cases, northern shipbuilders preferred a wick to iron nails, as they were convinced by experience that it was more reliable than iron. Sheathing sewn with vice was more watertight than that fastened with iron nails. When sailing in the ice, the ship's hull loosened and leaked in places where there were nails. In addition, the nails quickly rusted and destroyed the skin. With a wooden fastening, the vice, swelling, almost did not let water through at all. Sheathing boards, sewn to the frame of the ship in a special way, held tight.
In addition to juniper, a young thin spruce up to one and a half meters high served as a material for wooden "threads". The trunks of such Christmas trees were cleaned of branches, twisted and dried. They were steamed before use. With such "threads" the lodya was sewn. The master's set of tools usually consisted of an ax, a saw, a drill, a level and a sazhen, broken into arshins and vershoks. Ships were built on the banks of the river, near the customer's house. Immediately with a pole on the sand or in a hut with chalk on the floor, the master made a drawing and made the necessary calculations. First, the frame of the vessel was built, which was then sheathed with boards outside and inside. Then they put and fastened high straight masts and laid the deck.
A large ship - a lodya - was built by an artel of carpenters in one winter.
By decree of Ivan the Terrible for the construction of ships on the White Sea at Solovetsky Monastery the first large shipyards and even a dry dock were built.
In ancient times, sails on Pomeranian ships were sometimes made of suede - deer skin treated with the fat of a sea animal. Sea hare skin was used for belt gear.
The boats had a flat wide bottom and a small draft, so when sailing in the ice to "unprecedented lands" they did not need special harbors in order to hide from the storm or spend the winter. Sometimes Pomors had to pull their boats onto the ice or onto the shore. With all these advantages, Pomeranian ships also had their drawbacks: they were worse than keel ships, they obeyed the helm, especially in waves.
Sailing the Arctic Ocean with its harsh climate, heaps of ice and unknown currents was a good school for sailors. Hardy and courageous, not afraid of hard frosts and strong winds, Pomors boldly embarked on long voyages along the stormy waves of the ocean on their small wooden ships.
In the daily struggle with the elements, the Pomors have studied the "Cold Sea" well. They knew that the magnitude of the ebb and flow is related to the position of the Moon in the sky, and they figuratively called the tidal phenomena "the sighs of the sea-ocean."
“His chest is wide, powerful,” they said, “when he sighs, he lifts his chest, then the water has arrived: the tide means. Exhale - the water leaves: the ebb comes. The ocean-father does not breathe often: he inhales twice, exhales twice - the day will pass.
The Pomors knew the compass, which they called the queen. They have long recognized time by the sun and stars.
The winds, depending on the direction, they also called in their own way. "Midnight", for example, was called the northeast wind; "sholonnik" - the wind blowing from the southwest; "coastal" - northwest wind; "Luncher" - southeast. Russian sailors studied not only winds, but also currents, ebbs and flows, and the state of the ice.
They knew well and used local remedies against scurvy: cloudberry, spoon grass, raw meat and warm blood of animals. Northern sailors from ancient times had handwritten maps-drawings and handwritten directions, which briefly described the sea coast, indicated profitable and safe routes and the best time for sailing ships.
The oldest handwritten sailing directions had such headings: "Charter as a Vessel to Drive", "Ship Progress of the Russian Ocean-Sea", "Progress of the Grumanlandskaya".
Sailing along the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean developed dexterity, unique methods of controlling a ship. Pomors improved their experience and passed it on from generation to generation. If, for example, the wind strongly heeled the boat, threatening to instantly capsize it, the Pomor threw a sharp ax or knife into the sail, and then the wind tore the sail to shreds, and the boat leveled off.
Northern sailors have long used blubber as a means of calming unrest. On the ships of the Pomors, there were always several barrels of seal or seal oil in stock.
In 1771, the well-known Russian academician I. I. Lepekhin wrote about it this way: “This remedy consists in blubber fat, which is poured into the sea during the splashing of the ship, or sacks filled with it are let near the ship. This tool has been known to our Pomeranians since ancient times and for many years before they were in use, rather than European departments about this tool as a kind of important discovery have been printed." Northern sailors-Pomors were explorers of the Arctic Ocean. Fearlessly setting sail on the unknown harsh seas, they made valuable geographical discoveries.
northern ocean there is a vast field where it can be aggravated
Russian glory, combined with unparalleled benefits
through the invention of East Siberian navigation ...
Mikhail Lomonosov
And "sharp mountains" and "falling ice block
Svalbard means "Sharp Mountains" in Dutch. This name was given to the northern archipelago in the 16th century by the famous traveler Billem Barents. Trying to find northeast passage from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean, he made three expeditions to the northern seas. The last trip ended tragically. In the summer of 1597, the Dutch navigator died. This happened when the expedition members were forced to leave their ship, covered with ice off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, and set off on the return journey in two boats.
The Norwegians call Svalbard Svalbard. In the 13th century, the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus reported that very tall people. And the name "Svalbard", or "Cold Coast", was given by the Vikings who arrived there.
Skinning a whale (vintage engraving)
But on Svalbard, numerous expeditions have not yet found any traces and evidence of the Vikings being there.
Our Pomors began to explore these islands long before the Barents expedition. Some researchers believe that Novgorod sailors were there as early as the 10th century. The Russians called the archipelago Grumant.
Something like this in the old days was called Svalbard in some other countries. In 1493, the German scientist Hieronymus Müntzer wrote to the Portuguese King João II: "...Under the harsh star of the Arctic Pole... the large island of Gruland was discovered... on which the greatest settlement of people is located under... the rule of the Grand Duke of Muscovy."
But what does the word "Grumant" mean? Some researchers believe that this is “Greenland” changed to the old Russian way.
But there is another version. It is known that the connoisseurs of the "Cold Sea" - Russian coast-dwellers - had about a hundred terms for different types of ice. In the old days, they allegedly called a block of ice falling into the sea “grum” or “grumana”.
On Svalbard, which is full of glaciers, blocks of ice falling into the sea are a frequent phenomenon. Both today and in ancient times. Perhaps this is how the designation of the archipelago appeared.
In the ship's journal of the expedition of the famous Russian traveler, Admiral Vasily Chichagov, who visited Svalbard in 1766, it is noted: "It is noteworthy that every day great ice floes fell off the icy mountains."
Development of the archipelago
What attracted people in ancient times to these harsh icy shores? According to scientific data, during the geological history of Svalbard, the climate there has repeatedly changed. Millions of years ago this northern land buried in tropical vegetation. From this vegetation, the richest deposits of coal were subsequently formed.
But in the Middle Ages, Svalbard attracted both the Russian people and the inhabitants of Scandinavia, of course, not with coal, but with an abundance of sea animals and fish.
Russian hunters hunted seals, walruses, polar bears, arctic foxes on the archipelago, and were engaged in whaling.
Obviously, the booty on Grumant was rich, since people dared to overcome the difficult dangerous path from the mainland and even winter on the islands.
Representatives of the famous Pomeranian family Starostin appeared on Grumant even before 1435. And one of their descendants, Ivan Starostin, wintered there 39 times.
The Norwegian diplomat and researcher Anker noted: “In terms of the number of winterings, Ivan Starostin set a record that none of the people who wintered on Spitsbergen could beat.”
On the largest island of the archipelago, the cape at the entrance to Isfjord is named after this hunter.
Russian people built not only housing and warehouses on Svalbard, but also erected wooden eight-pointed crosses along the banks. At their foot our pioneers buried their comrades. And these crosses were, according to the old Pomeranian rules, navigation signs. Their crossbars pointed north and south.
Grumant father
Of course, the Pomors who went to Grumant had their own special traditions, rituals, signs, songs, legends. Is it possible to do without them on the icy nights of the polar winter, on islands far from home?
Probably, one of the most famous Grumant singers and storytellers was Samson Ksenofontovich Sukhanov. He was born in 1766 into a peasant family in the Vologda province.
In his youth, he happened to spend the winter with hunters on Grumant. Later Samson Sukhanov became a famous stonemason. Thanks to his skill, the pedestal of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky appeared in Moscow, in St. Petersburg - the Alexander and Rostral columns near the Exchange building, sculptural groups of the Mining Institute, statues of soldiers on the Admiralty tower, a number of columns of St. Isaac's and Kazan Cathedrals. Samson Ksenofontovich's acquaintances recalled that, while living in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the master sometimes yearned for the northern expanses and often remembered Grumant.
Often he sang songs composed by him and told his friends there were legends of the "ice islands".
Grumant, gloomy, sorry!
Let us go home!
It's so scary to live on you
Fear death at all times...
Although this northern archipelago is dangerous, it still attracted people to itself: both those who had already been on it, and those who had only heard about it.
Sukhanov wrote down a lot of grumant legends and even special charms and traditions.
When the Pomors approached the islands of the archipelago, they always sang out:
Accept and let go, Gruman-father! Receive us as welcome guests. Save and protect from death and sorrow. Let us go unharmed and with rich gifts
When approaching the shores, the Pomors threw some object into the sea or onto the ice - “a gift for father Gruman” - and they always stroked the water, ice and some stone on the island with their palms several times and said: “Here is my warmth for you -“ cold father ". Save it and don't forget me."
Unfortunately, most of the records of Samson Sukhanov have not been preserved. For a long time, documents related to the development of the North have, for some reason, been unlucky in Rus'. They are stolen, taken abroad, accidentally or deliberately destroyed, for various reasons they are hidden from everyone in hiding places. And how many documents were destroyed in the fire! So, for example, in 1779, the richest archive of the Arkhangelsk provincial office completely burned down. Many securities disappeared in the fires of the Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Yakutsk and other archives.
Samson Sukhanov died in 1840. They say that before his death, he recalled his youth, walking on the seas and lands icy and difficult wintering in the archipelago. At the same time, the master added: “But Grumant-father with rich gifts let me go ...”
Ruzhetso, horn and hatchet
In 1719, the novel Robinson Crusoe was published. A few months later, he brought world fame to his author Daniel Defoe. The story of the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, the prototype of Robinson, has been published in most countries of the world. Daniel Defoe had many followers and imitators. Robinsonade haunted many writers. Hundreds of works appeared that told about the victims of the disaster and the survivors on uninhabited lands.
So it was in literature. And in life? History knows many cases of "Robinsonade" from the time of Ancient Egypt to the present day.
In 1766, a small book "The Adventures of Four Russian Sailors to the Island of Ost-Spitsbergen Brought by a Storm" was published. It described true story. The author of the book, Peter-Ludovik Le Roy, came to Russia in 1731. He was engaged in scientific activities and taught in St. Petersburg.
When an associate of Empress Elizabeth, Count Pyotr Shuvalov, learned about the "Robinsonade" of the four Pomors, he instructed Le Roy to write about their adventures.
Scheme of surface currents in the Central Arctic
Almost two centuries later, while studying this work, Professor M.I. Belov noted: “The study of biographical materials showed that in the book of Le Roy a gross mistake was made in writing the names of the Inkovs and the name of Khrisanf Inkov, who was erroneously named Ivan.
In connection with the discovery of new materials, it is necessary to make appropriate amendments to the list of four Grumanlans who wintered on Svalbard: these are Alexei Ivanov Inkov, Khrisanf Prokopiev Inkov, Fyodor Andreev Verigin, Stepan Stakheev Sharapov ...
The reader has the right to ask the question of how documented is what is told in the story. Now he will get acquainted with the real names, with evidence of the indisputability of the feat itself.
It would seem that the impossible happened - people survived beyond the seventy-seventh parallel on an icy rocky island! ..
It is one thing to be shipwrecked and escape on uninhabited land in a warm climate where fruits, animals, and plants abound. But in the Arctic, with its frosts, polar nights, desert ice lands?! In addition, unlike Robinson Crusoe, who was able to grab a lot of useful things from a wrecked ship, Russian sailors were so unlucky.
When subsequently the Pomors were asked what they had, besides clothes, they answered: “Rugzhetso, horn and that vice ...” In addition, there was gunpowder in the horn for twelve charges, for the same number of bullets, and even “a small cauldron, twelve pounds flour in a sack, a fire and a few tinder, a knife, a bottle of smoking tobacco and a wooden pipe.
The island of Svalbard remains for most Russians a kind of "terra incognita" - unexplored land. Some people even find it difficult to answer the question about the nationality of this territory. Most people only know that Svalbard is located somewhere far to the north, beyond the Arctic Circle, and the Russian Federation has some kind of right to it.
Is it worth comparing this island with the Kuriles? We will clarify this issue below. Despite the location "almost at the North Pole", traveling to Svalbard is quite popular. About when to go to the polar piece of land, where to stay and what to see, we will tell in this article.
Where is the island of Svalbard
Let's start with a small correction. The fact is that the definition of "island" in relation to Svalbard will be incorrect. This is an archipelago. It lies only an hour and a half from the North Pole. That is why a typical landscape is an endless snowy desert, permafrost, polar bears.
Archipelago, with total area sixty-one thousand square kilometers, consists of three big islands, seven small ones and a large number of very small ones. Only the largest one is truly inhabited - Western Svalbard (37,673 km 2). There is the only airport and the capital of the region, the city of Longyearbyen.
In addition to it, there are villages in Western Svalbard: Barentsburg, Ny-Alesund, Grumant and Pyramiden. The last two are now depopulated. On other islands (North-East Land, Edge, Barents, Belom, Kongsoya, Wilhelma, Svenskoya), no more than a dozen people live, and even then only in the summer. The population of the entire archipelago does not exceed three thousand people.
Climate
Spitsbergen Island lies in the Arctic Ocean between 76 and 80 degrees north latitude and 10°-32° east longitude. However, this location does not mean at all that the archipelago is a continuous arctic desert. Thanks to the Svalbard current (an offshoot of the Gulf Stream), the sea near the coast never freezes. The climate in the archipelago is not as severe as in other places at the same latitudes. For example, average temperature air in January here is only 11-15 degrees below zero. In July, the thermometer rises only to +6 °C.
There are two tourist seasons here: from March to May, lovers of winter fun come and those who want to join the harsh polar winter. They ride snowmobiles, admire northern lights. From June to August, the archipelago is visited by a completely different audience. Tourists enjoy kayaking among icebergs, watching polar bears. There are those who consider this archipelago as a transit base on the way to conquering the North Pole.
Nature
Since Barents described that he had seen a huge number of whales in the local waters, many fishing boats rushed to the shores. Soon, Denmark and Great Britain began to make their claims to the islands. In the 60s of the eighteenth century, two scientific expeditions organized by M. Lomonosov visited here.
Despite the fact that the Russians did not build a single village here, some Pomors came here in the summer to fish. When there were critically few animals left on the archipelago, the islands were abandoned for a hundred years. A new surge of interest in Svalbard arose at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when mankind set out to reach the North Pole. The ice-free waters and relatively mild climate of the island were used by Arctic expeditions. Svalbard became the main starting base.
Svalbard Island: who owns it?
When powerful deposits of coal were found on the archipelago, interest in the islands lost beyond the Arctic Circle escalated again. But in 1920, the question of the state ownership of the lands was finally decided by the world. In Paris, the so-called Svalbard Treaty was signed, according to which the archipelago retreated under the sovereignty of Norway. However, according to this agreement, all parties to the agreement (Great Britain, USA, France, Japan, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands and later the USSR) retained the right to develop minerals.
Do I need a visa to visit the archipelago?
Theoretically no. After all, it doesn’t matter whose island Svalbard is, citizens of all of the above signatory countries can freely visit the archipelago. However, in practice, getting to Svalbard straight from Russia is not so easy. Only in season, charter flights occasionally go there, and plane seats are reserved for polar explorers or civil servants. Therefore, tourists are forced to fly via Oslo (by SAS and Norwegian Airlines). And this requires a multiple entry Schengen visa to enter Norway. You can also visit the archipelago during a luxury cruise on the ocean liner Captain Khlebnikov.
Tourism
The Norwegian authorities very quickly reoriented the economy of the archipelago in the face of a decrease in the number of whales and polar bears and falling coal prices. Now the main bet on ecotourism. The direction is new. So far, only 2,000 tourists visit the cold islands every year. Do not contribute to the development of this industry and prices. Everything is expensive here: from a hotel room (the simplest economy option will cost a hundred dollars a night) to food. However, this does not stop wealthy tourists. Ascent to the glaciers, sea rafting, skiing dog sledding, collecting fossils (there are a lot of them on the archipelago) - all this is included in the mandatory program.
The islands are a duty-free trade zone. Thanks to her, the population of the archipelago lives more prosperously than the Norwegians on the continent. The island of Svalbard is protected from labor migrants. Work at many mines has been stopped and they have been converted into museums. Only Russian miners do not stop coal production. Although this production is unprofitable and is subsidized by the state.
money scandal
In 1993, the Moscow Court minted a commemorative coin "The Island of Svalbard". It featured a polar bear and a map of the archipelago. Since the money had the inscription "Russian Federation", Norway perceived this as an encroachment on its territory. The diplomatic scandal was settled only when the money was withdrawn from circulation. Those left in hand are in high demand.
The merit of the highest, state importance belongs to a few, but hardy Pomors. Mastering the North, they made it Russian. This is our story today.
What kind of ethnonym is this?
As usual, you should start with etymology. "Pomors" is an ethnonym, that is, the naming of the inhabitants of a certain area, which is correlated with one or another toponym. Other examples are Muscovite, Tula.
In the case of Pomors, there is no need to puzzle over where the name came from. Most likely from the name West Bank White Sea, where there is a so-called. Pomeranian shores. It is known that most of the Pomors are Orthodox, and the language is Russian with an original dialect and a characteristic pronunciation of the letter "o".
Pomors began to be called Russian population settled near the White Sea.
Slavic colonization of the north
Historians state that the name "pomor" arose no later than the 12th century. During the XIV-XV centuries. it spread south and east from the western coast of the White Sea. Then the "no man's" lands of Pomorie were taken under guardianship by the Novgorod Veche Republic. The Slovenes of Ilmen (their capital, as you know, was Novgorod the Great) called these lands Zavolochie, or Dvina land. In the "Tale of Bygone Years" there are references to the pre-Russian population of Zavolochye: "Perm, Merya, Murom, Mordvins, Pechera, Yam, Ugra." From the names of the tribes it follows that they are of Finno-Ugric origin.
It is believed that the Slavic colonization of the North began in the 9th-11th centuries. The rationale for this was: northern edge turned out to be rich in furs, sea animals, fish and birds. Archaeological finds and place names record traces of the habitation of both the Slavs and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
The anthropological type of Pomors is dominated by Slavic, but there are also Finno-Ugric features. Somewhat later, immigrants from the Vladimir-Rostov-Suzdal lands, and even later the Vikings, mostly Norwegians, made their contribution to the formation of the Pomor community.
Pomors were formed on a Slavic basis, but also include other ethno-cultural elements.
What and how they traded
By the 16th century we can definitely say that the Pomors were formed as an ethnographic entity. The Pomors were engaged in a specific hunting and hunting economy. Winter hunting began in February and continued until the end of March. In the gathering places of industrialists, special fishing huts were built for one or two boats (7-15 people).
In the 17th century Pomors were tightly integrated into the system of the All-Russian internal market as a marine fishing and animal trade region. Pomors developed barter trade and did business not only with Russians, but also with Norwegians. In exchange for the gifts of the north, they received much-needed bread.
Contacts with the natives took place without any particular conflicts: there was more than enough space for fishing, and there were few reasons for enmity. Slavic coast-dwellers organically interspersed in the area of settlement of various tribes, guarded the North.
The northerners got a lot of fish and furs “for export”, and this was how they lived in difficult natural and climatic conditions.
How the North was mastered and not only it
After the victory of Ivan III over the Novgorodians on the river. Shelon (July 1471) Pomeranian lands became part of the Muscovite state. During the period of centralization of the Russian state, the processes of colonization of the North received new, additional impulses. Gradually, the task of developing these lands acquires national importance.
In the XVII-XVIII centuries. the passionary activity of the Pomors reaches its highest peak. By this time, the Pomors had everything necessary for long trips to the Arctic Ocean. Northerners are exploring new territories. Among them are Northern Siberia, Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard.
The later famous sea routes. "The move to the German end" went along the banks of the Kola and Scandinavian peninsulas. "Mangazeya passage" - from the mouth of the Taz River in northwestern Siberia, and the "Yenisei passage" - to the mouth of the river. Yenisei. "Novozemelny move" - to the islands of Novaya Zemlya, and "Grumland move" to the Svalbard archipelago. The opening of these routes allowed the Pomors not only to establish trade in sable and arctic fox furs, but also to expand the borders of the Russian state.
By the middle of the XVIII century. Pomors helped Russia to master the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. Since 1803, people from Pomorie mastered West Coast North America, which, at that time, was not inhabited by the Anglo-Saxons and other Europeans. In 1812, the Pomeranian merchant Ivan Kuskov founded Fort Ross, which became the first European settlement in Northern California (80 km from modern San Francisco).
Pomors made a significant contribution to the expansion of the territory and borders of the Russian Empire.
Ethnos or sub-ethnos?
Foreigners who visited Pomorie gave the following characteristics to the locals: reserved, hospitable, trusting, hardworking, laconic. Staying away from the main area of residence of Russians formed distinctive features among the Pomors. They manifested themselves in everyday life, in arts and crafts, and in the dialect.
But to say that the Pomors are not Russians, but an independent ethnic group, is still probably impossible. Over the centuries of their difficult activity, the Pomors acquired special features, but remained part of the Russian ethnos.
During the All-Russian census of 2002, 6571 people called themselves Pomors. Among them was the then governor of the Arkhangelsk region - Anatoly Efremov. According to the 2010 census, 3113 people were identified as Pomors. The reduction is caused by the loss of Pomor identity by a significant part of the population of the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk regions.
Although even now there are activists who advocate the recognition of the Pomors as a separate people, but their number is small. At the same time, the very word "pomor" became the brand of the Arkhangelsk region. The inhabitants of the Russian North take care of him with special warmth. Without it, in the North, as you know, one cannot survive.
Literature:
Lomakin V. A series of lectures “Pomorye and Pomors: history and modernity. 2009.
Mikhaleva A.V. Ethnocultural dimension of regional positioning Arkhangelsk region// Bulletin of the Perm University. Series: Political science. 2013. No. 4.
