Ilmen (lake): recreation, fishing and reviews of tourists. "Living history". Lake with character

One of the largest lakes in Europe, Ilmen, lies in the northwestern lands of our country, not far from the cradle of Russian statehood - the ancient city of Novgorod the Great. The lake is located on the famous route "from the Varangians to the Greeks".

The area of Ilmen is about a thousand square kilometers, and the maximum depth reaches only 10 meters. The lake is shallow, it was even mistaken for the overflow of the rivers flowing into it. Today, this region attracts tourists with the cleanest air, picturesque nature, and, of course, fishing.

How to get there

By train from Moscow to Veliky Novgorod, about eight hours on the way.

By car from Moscow along the M-10 highway (Russia) to the exit to Veliky Novgorod. Approximately eight hours on the road and about five hundred kilometers.

Search for flights to Moscow (nearest airport to Ilmen)

Lake Ilmen was formed about two and a half thousand years ago as a result of a deep fault. This is the only lake in Russia, in which the water level drops up to seven meters.

About fifty rivers flow into Ilmen, the largest of them are Msta, Shelon, Pola, Lovat. The Volkhov River flows out of the lake, on which Veliky Novgorod stands. The banks of the Ilmen are mostly low-lying, in the southwest they are picturesque limestone rocks of a reddish color, called the "Ilmen glint".

The water in the lake is quite cool, and even in summer it rarely rises above twenty degrees.

Despite the yellowish color of Ilmen, which is given to it by organic peat deposits, the water here is very clean. The reservoir freezes around the twentieth of November and opens at the end of April.

It is not known for certain who lived on the shores of this lake in antiquity. There are many different hypotheses, but none has reliable confirmation. Here there are traces of the Ural ethnic groups, and the Finnish ethnic groups who came here later, and traces of the Slavs, and even, although not in significant numbers, some toponyms of Scandinavian-Germanic origin.

There are also disputes about the origin of the name itself - Ilmen. Some researchers argue that the name of the lake is a word of Finnish origin and means “bad weather lake”. Indeed, since ancient times, the lake has been famous for strong storms and storms, in which it is scary to find yourself to this day.

History paragraph

In the Middle Ages, Lake Ilmen (then called Ilmer) lay on the famous route "from the Varangians to the Greeks", which ran from the Baltic Sea to Byzantium. During the Moscow-Novgorod wars, in 1471, in the village of Korostyn, a peace treaty was signed between Moscow and Novgorod, according to which Novgorodians actually recognized the power of Moscow, and the fate of the free Novgorod Republic was a foregone conclusion. During the time of Peter the Great, Ilmen attracted statesmen in connection with the creation of the Vyshnevolotsk water system(connects the Tvertsa River with by the Baltic Sea), which the tsar began to build in 1703 to ensure the supply of goods from Central Russia to St. Petersburg.

The research of Ilmen and Priilmenye was extremely interesting for the outstanding Russian scientist Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov, who initiated the expeditions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in which many famous and outstanding scientists of that time took part.

Fishing on Ilmen

Of course, one of the main entertainments on Ilmen is fishing. Due to the fact that a huge number of rivers flow into the lake, more than forty species of fish are found here. Among them: tench, ruff, smelt, pike, perch, pike perch, asp, catfish, bream, burbot, ide, roach and many others. Previously, even whitefish were found here, which unfortunately disappeared after the construction of the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station. So a variety of places to fishing you can find plenty and, as they say, for every taste. One of the most famous is the village of Vzvad, known since the twelfth century.

You can fish on Ilmen all year round. It is possible to stay with local residents, and here you can rent tackle, boats and everything else a fisherman needs. But you need to follow the safety rules, as the weather on the lake is changeable, and the winds and storms are severe.

For lovers of winter fishing, Lake Ilmen has one interesting feature. If you punch a hole in the ice and bring a match to the hole, the air released from it will burn. This is explained by the fact that bacteria that process peat live at the bottom of Ilmen, as a result of which gas is released.

Be sure to try the delicious lake fish, which you can catch yourself or buy from locals.

Beaches and hotels

In Ilmen pure water, which is conducive to swimming in the warm season. There are good sandy beaches on the lake, however, they are all “wild”. There are well-known beaches near the Peryn Skete, near the villages of Sergovo, Ondvor, Ilmen.

You can stay on Ilmen in hotels and sanatoriums, or you can rent an entire house or stay with local residents.

From the ancient Slavs, Ilmen received the nickname "Slovenian Sea".

Entertainment and attractions of Ilmen

Due to the variability of the weather and the danger of storms, this type of holiday boat trips on Ilmen is practically absent. Lake waves easily overturn small vessels and boats, there is nowhere to hide from them, since there are no islands on the lake, and the distance from one coast to another can be up to fifty kilometers. But there is a popular and safe route to the uninhabited island of Lipno, on which stands the beautiful thirteenth-century church of St. Nicholas nad Lipno, which can only be reached by boat.

It is worth visiting the nearby ancient Russian cities: Veliky Novgorod and Staraya Russa.

Ancient Veliky Novgorod, founded in 859, is located only six kilometers from Lake Ilmen, which makes it very attractive for excursions. Also from the Novgorod berths there is a sightseeing tram along the Volkhov River to the place where the river flows into Ilmen. During the walk, you have the opportunity to enjoy the views of the Lord Veliky Novgorod, St. George's Monastery and Rurik's settlement.

Staraya Russa is located 99 kilometers from Veliky Novgorod, in the basin of Lake Ilmen. When was this founded ancient city it is not known for certain, the first mention in the annals dates back to 1167, but it is known that the settlement at this place was located here earlier. To date, the time of the emergence of Staraya Russa dates back to the end of the tenth - the beginning of the eleventh century. The city has preserved many medieval temples, as well as various architectural monuments and museums. You should definitely visit the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery founded in 1192.

Where to stay: in nature - on Lake Valdai, or in ancient Russian cities -

Of all the Russian folk lakes, Ilmen is perhaps the most epic. Since at least the 12th century, people have listened to the tale of Sadko's adventures in the underwater kingdom - the story of the "rich guest" has survived to this day in the form of an opera, a film, a cartoon, and several written versions for lovers of primary sources. In the Russian version (yes, there is also an old French one), everything starts in Novgorod, on Lake Ilmen:
How Sadko went to Ilmen Lake,
Sat down on a white combustible stone

The king of the sea appeared ...

Lake Ilmen

It turns out that even in ancient times Ilmen was within walking distance of Novgorod, but today many tourists leave the great city without seeing the legendary lake. It is clear that a huge water mirror is somewhere nearby, and yet it remains invisible.

The lake surface is vaguely guessed from the central footbridge, but it is hidden by islands covered with bushes. The edge of Ilmen, sparkling in the sun, is visible from the top of the Kremlin tower Kokuy, but it is difficult to distinguish it from the Volkhov flood or from river oxbows and estuaries. From the walls of the Yuriev Monastery you can see the source of the Volkhov, flowing from Ilmen, but even from there the tricky lake will be barely noticeable in the distance, behind the coastal willows.

To meet with Lake Ilmen, you need to follow the example of Sadko: go south from the city and go to the Ilmen Poozerie (Pazerie) - where ancient villages stretch along the coast, some of which will be older than Novgorod.
Ondvor, Rakomo, Radbelik, Zdrinoga, Samokrazha (that was the name of the village of Ilmen until 1953) - the memory of the ancient inhabitants of these places lives in unusual names: Finns, Slovenes and Balts. The origin of the names is a dense matter, but the same root is clearly heard in the word "Ilmen" as in the name of the hero of the "Kalevala" Ilmarinen, the Finnish god of air, weather and heavenly fire. Finnish ilma - "air, sky, weather" - perfectly expresses the essence of Lake Ilmen: the water here, as it were, fades into the background. There are other versions of the origin of the name of the lake, but this one is perhaps the most poetic.

The sky over Ilmen is vast and bottomless. You can look at it for hours - and not only for the sake of idle pleasure. The Ilmen sky is changing quickly and imperceptibly, like over the sea. For the riot of lake weather, the ancient Finns appointed Ilmarinen responsible, the authors of the epic about Sadko - the Sea King (if the weather on the lake deteriorates, it means that the Sea King was raging). Wild storms have happened here at all times - today, underwater archaeologists are looking at the bottom of Ilmen for the remains of ships that sank during a terrible storm of 1471, when, according to the chroniclers, the waves “like mountains are high and scary, rising and breaking them and all ships are great tear in the middle of that terrible lake.

Get into the storm on " scary lake It's scary even today. The depth and dimensions of Ilmen vary greatly depending on the time of year, but even in the hot months one cannot see the other from one coast, there are 35-50 km between them. Stormy lake waves - high, with short intervals - are very insidious, they easily turn the boat over. In general, in order to avoid “breaking” and “tearing”, even before ordinary fishing, you should consult with local residents who can read the weather in the sky.
Novgorodians are still closely connected with their lake - swimming and fishing, boats and yachts, hunting ...
Along the coast, you can see old tarred wooden boats and sophisticated watercraft worthy of James Bond. But there are no more old fishing sailing crews on Ilmen, although these descendants of Novgorod boats came across on the lake as early as the middle of the 20th century.

Old traditions die, old ones die fishing villages the lake itself is dying. True, Ilmen is still far from the sad end - the process has been going on for more than one hundred years and can stretch for as long. The word "ilmen", having forgotten its Finnish roots, has become a household word in Russian - there are many lakes with this name in the country, and these are always shallow, silted, overgrown with reeds reservoirs ...
Once the depth of the Novgorod Ilmen reached 30 meters, now it is barely ten. Sooner or later, the lake basin will completely turn into meadows and swamps, although not during the lifetime of our generation. Nevertheless, due to the processes taking place on the lake, rest on Ilmen has its own characteristics, which should be discussed separately.

lake Ilmen, Staraya Russa

LOCAL FEATURES
The correct stress in the name falls on the first syllable, Ilmen.
Ilmen is an unusual lake, and its features have both pleasant and not very pleasant sides.
Depth and dimensions. Ilmen is the only body of water in Russia whose area can triple (from almost 700 sq. km to more than 2200 sq. km in a strong flood), and the water level difference reaches 7 m. Non-locals should take these seasonal fluctuations into account when planning a vacation on Ilmen.
Purity and temperature of water.
The water in Ilmen has a yellowish or slightly brown color due to impurities of organic matter (peat). At the same time, the water is very clean - it is completely renewed every 1.5-2 months. On the other hand, lake water has two unpleasant features: in places with greater depth, even in summer, it rarely warms up above +20 degrees, and in shallow water, in the heat, the water begins to bloom.

Lake Ilmen, the source of the Volkhov River, Veliky Novgorod

Bathing in Ilmen.
The main beach of Novgorod is located on the banks of the Volkhov, near the walls of the Kremlin. However, in hot weather, it is packed to capacity, and it would seem that relaxing on Ilmen is more pleasant than in the city. However, the lake shores are low, often swampy, overgrown with reeds and indented by channels, so there are few beaches in the usual sense on Ilmen. All places suitable for swimming can be recognized by the quality of dachas and country houses - real estate in the "resort" areas is expensive. A good sandy beach is located near the Peryn Skete, a good one is near the villages of Ondvor and Ilmen, as well as near Sergovo. All of them are wild, i.e. disadvantaged. Their cleanliness depends only on the environmental awareness of vacationers, which still leaves much to be desired. On south coast lake, 30 km from Staraya Russa, there is a popular place Korostyn with a pebble beach.

Insects.
Unlike Baikal, where coastal zone there are never mosquitoes (the wind blows it into the taiga), Ilmen is “famous” for a full range of blood-sucking insects. There are almost no forests around the lake, besides, the swampiness of the coastal strip and the general high humidity affect, so that even the most persistent people like avid fishermen complain about the dominance of mosquitoes, midges, gadflies and horseflies.

Southern shore of Lake Ilmen

Boat trips along Ilmen.
This popular type of tourism on the lake is almost not developed. The chronicle stories about the violent character of Ilmen are in no hurry to turn into legends of the deep antiquity. One of the insidious winds, the southwestern one, even has its own name - "Shelonik", as it blows from the mouth of the Shelon River. Shelonik calls big wave along the entire length of Ilmen - in the middle of the lake, the wave height can reach a meter. For the northwestern coast (actually Ilmensky Poozerie), the greatest danger is from the northern winds - surf waves can reach a completely sea height of two meters.
Once again it is worth mentioning another feature of the Ilmen waves: frequency and short intervals. Together, this makes boat trips along Ilmen very dangerous - waves easily overturn boats and small boats, weather changes are sudden, and in bad weather there is nowhere to hide - there are no islands on Ilmen. Still one popular route still there: travel agencies often offer a boat trip to the uninhabited island of Lipno in the delta of the Msta River, 9 km south of Veliky Novgorod.
Part of the trip passes through Ilmen. Tourists are interested in the church of Nikola-on-Lipne of the XIII century, which stands on the island, and you can’t get here except by water. But this route is well developed, and the short trip is quite safe.

Lake Ilmen

Fishing.
The lake is very rich in fish (pike, perch, pike perch, asp, catfish, bream, burbot, ide, roach, tench, ruff, smelt, in general, more than 40 species of fish - except for whitefish, it ceased to be found here after the construction of the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station), so that there are a lot of places for fishing on Ilmen. One of the most popular is the village of Vzvad on the southern shore of the lake opposite from Novgorod. Even in the annals of the 12th century, Vzvad is mentioned as a place of princely fishing and hunting, and today the Krasny Rybak fish factory operates here, many fishing routes along Ilmen begin from here. Fishing still helps many coastal villages survive - this is how residents not only get food, but also earn cash by renting boats, tackle and providing accommodation to visiting fishermen.
However, due to the above features of the lake, winter fishing seems to be the safest and most comfortable. Ice on Ilmen is established at the end of November, melts at the end of April. By the way, if you are interested in a real local cuisine, and not a cuisine invented for tourists under spreading cranberries, then you should definitely try lake pike perch: in its pure form or as part of the Novgorod fish soup.

Lake Ilmen

STORY
For the most part, the lake is surrounded by a monotonous plain, but there are exceptions. The most famous is the Ilmensky Glint on the southern shore of the lake. Glint - a coastal cliff-ledge almost 15 meters high - stretches for 8 km between the villages of Korostyn and Pustosh. The place is very beautiful, in 1805 academician Nikolai Ozeretskovsky even wrote that "the churchyard of Korostino is not worth the place it occupies, there should be a city or a castle here." Since 2001, the Ilmensky Glint has received the status of a specially protected natural area, not only for its beauty and unusualness for the local flat landscape. This place is of great geological interest - many Devonian marine fossils have been found in a limestone cliff. And botanists and ecologists have found rare plant species and mineral springs here.

But in those distant days when fossils and rare plants no one was interested, Ilmensky clint "lit up" in history Russian state. During the Moscow-Novgorod war, on July 7, 1471, the Novgorod landing force died here: a dashing ship's army on flat-bottomed boats tried to cut the grand ducal detachments, but was destroyed by Danila Kholmsky, the prince of Tver in the Moscow service. 500 people died in the battle, and the prince ordered the noses and ears of a thousand prisoners to be cut off. Three weeks later, it was here, on a high bank above Novgorod's Ilmen, that a deadly peace treaty with Ivan III was signed for the Master of Veliky Novgorod.

lake name
The name of the lake has become an appellative (common noun), which denotes small lakes overgrown with reeds and reeds, usually located in deltas. big rivers(Volga, Ural, etc.) and formed from expanded branches or estuaries. Ilmen (Ilmenskoye Lake) is on Southern Urals near the city of Miass. Ilmen - a river in the Chagodoshchensky district Vologda region, merging with the Ratitsa, flows into the Pes River (not far from the eastern border of the Novgorod region). In the Central Chernozem region, the toponym is common in several areas.
Ilmen lakes - two in Borisoglebsky, one each in Povorinsky, Novokhopersky, Anninsky districts Voronezh region, in Inzhavinsky and Mordovsky districts of the Tambov region. Such an onomastic trace requires special study.
The book legend about Slovena and Rus (The Tale of Slovena and Rus and the City of Slovensk) associates the name of the lake with the name of their sister Ilmera.
Of the scientific etymologies of the name of the lake, the version about the origin of the other Russian is the most popular. Ilmen, Ilmer from Finnish. Ilma-järvi "lake of (un)weather, heavenly lake".

Yu. V. Otkupshchikov casts doubt on the Baltic-Finnish version. He notes that appr.-fin. -jarvi in the Russian-speaking environment is always translated in half-calk as -lake (cf. Kovdozero, Vodlozero, etc.). Therefore, such a development of -jarvi, as in the case of the name Ilmer, is not supported by other examples (Seliger is a separate case). In addition, the name ilmen, used for small lakes and found almost throughout the entire Russian Plain, requires a separate explanation. Yu. V. Otkupshchikov notes that it is impossible to explain such a wide distribution of the term ilmen only by Novgorod colonization, especially since it went mainly to the north and east, and the terms ilmen are common mainly in the south, then replaced by the term estuary (of Greek origin). Yu. V. Otkupshchikov offers his own, Slavic etymology - from the word silt with the help of the suffix -men (by analogy with sukhmen, ramen, etc.), thus obtaining the meaning "silty, silty (lake)", which is good also fits the southern term ilmen "small lake".
On the border of Karelia and the Leningrad region there is the Ilmenyoki river.

Lake Ilmen

Physical and geographical characteristics
The area of the lake, depending on the water level, varies from 733 to 2090 km² (with an average level of 982 km²); length about 45 km, width up to 35 km; depth up to 10 m. The shores are mostly low-lying, marshy, in some places - deltaic, with many flat floodplain islands and channels; ridges are stretched along the northwestern coast, alternating with depressions; swampy in the southeast and east.
About 50 rivers flow into Lake Ilmen. The largest of them are: Msta, Pola, Lovat with Polista, Shelon with Mshaga, Veronda, Veryazh, etc. the only river Volkhov, which flows into Lake Ladoga. The main food of the lake is carried out due to the inflow of rivers with spring floods and winter low water. Level fluctuations up to 7.4 m (minimum - in March, maximum - in May). Freeze from November to April.
The lake is rich in fish (bream, smelt, burbot, pike). Before the construction of the Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power station, whitefish were found. The lake water contains a lot of organic substances, so the water has a yellowish color. Ilmen is part of the Vyshnevolotsk water system.

Geological history
Ilmen and Priilmenye are important indicators of geological processes in the North-West of Russia. Back in the Archean era, about 2.5 billion years ago, the rigid foundation of the East European Platform was formed (due to the drift of the continents, this platform began its journey in the southern hemisphere), represented by crystalline rocks (shales, granites, gneisses). In the Priilmenye region, they do not come to the surface anywhere, lying at a depth of 600 to 2000 m and are found in deep wells in the regions of Novgorod, Valdai, Pestovo, the village of Kresttsy and some others. The surface of the crystalline foundation is inhomogeneous. Under the influence of the internal forces of the Earth, the so-called Kresttsovsky fault was formed (the cavities are convenient for gas storage facilities), which ran from the northeast to the southwest in the area of the modern village of Kresttsy. In the Proterozoic era, volcanic rocks erupted along the line of the Kresttsovsky fault: diabases, tuffites and others.

Lake Ilmen

Palaeozoic
At the beginning of the Paleozoic era, when the surface was lowered, the region of the future Lake Ilmen and its basin was flooded by the sea. Then, under the influence of the internal forces of the planet, the surface rose, and the sea receded. Further, the surface of the Priilmenye was repeatedly lowered and flooded by the sea. Sands, silt, shells, skeletons of fish and marine animals settled to the bottom. Over millions of years, these marine deposits have turned into limestones, marls, sandstones. Gradually, the sea became shallow, land areas, islands, sea bays, lagoons (lakes separated from the sea by land areas) appeared.
In the middle of the Paleozoic era, there was a hot and humid climate, which contributed to the development of rich and diverse vegetation in the region. Seams of brown coal were formed from the plant remains of that time. The new advance of the sea contributed to the formation of a limestone layer overlying the coal-bearing strata characteristic of the Nebolchi-Lyubytino-Valdai band.
By the end of the Paleozoic era (about 200 million years ago), the sea finally retreated from the territory of the region. First it happened in the western part of the region, and then in the eastern part. And on the site of the Priilmenskaya lowland for many millions of years there was a hill, and on the site of the modern Valdai Upland - a lowland. The western upland (in the vicinity of the future lake) was severely destroyed by rivers, they completely washed away the surface strata of rocks.

Cenozoic era
Only at the beginning of the Cenozoic era (less than 70 million years ago) did the eastern part of the region rise. Compared with the western regions, it rose by 100-200 m. Rivers began to form on the hill, which worked out deep valleys. Many modern rivers (Msta, Polomet, Kholova and others) flow in the ancient valleys that formed at that time and lead to the pre-glacial Ilmen (this state of it is just beginning to be modeled and studied).
The Priilmenskaya lowland and the Valdai Upland were formed in the Cenozoic era, even before the onset of glaciers.

View of the lake from the village of Korostyn. In the foreground is a German military cemetery

Intraglacial lakes often arose here, now more often represented by kams - randomly located hills with steep slopes and often flat tops, which are also known in the vicinity of Lake Ilmen. Such lakes appeared in cracks and other voids of immobile ice massifs and were limited to ice shores and sometimes ice vaults. They deposited detrital material in sorted form, brought by streams of melt water. After the disappearance of the ice, the prisms, formed from pebbles, sand, and clay, descended to the bottom of the former glacier and took on the characteristic forms of kams. Individual sizes of kams are limited: the height is up to 50-80 m, the width of the sole is up to 0.5-1.0 km. From the above data, it follows that the lakes in which the future kames were formed were small in size. The duration of their existence was short and, apparently, limited to tens or first hundreds of years.

The shape of the kams is predominantly round, but there are also formations with complex outlines. Often kams are grouped in the form of extensive complexes, forming a kind of kame landscape. Kamas are composed of sorted sands, sandy loams, clays, gravel. For them, (horizontal and diagonal) layering is usually noted, often of the ribbon (lake) type. Kamas with a core of ribbon clays are known. There are cases of layering deformation caused by the movements of glacial masses that have taken place. Kams are often covered by a moraine cover formed by boulder loams and sandy loams. Bronnitskaya Gora is sometimes recognized as one of the examples of kams, although the artificial nature of at least part of this huge thirty-meter hill, hundreds of meters in circumference, is not excluded.

Lake Ilmen

Origin of the lake
Ilmen belongs to the third group of lakes of the glaciation periods. These lakes were formed and located at the outer edge of the ice sheets. The generally accepted name for reservoirs of this type is periglacial lakes. Of all the groups of lakes of the glacial epochs, the periglacial lakes are among the most studied. They occupied depressions in the terrain, and the ice edge played the role of a dam that prevented the flow of melt water in accordance with the natural slope of the territory.

The runoff came from areas of the lake remote from the edge of the glacier. Near-glacial lakes did not always appear. A necessary condition for their appearance and existence was the presence of a watershed at some distance from the outer edge of the ice sheet, which is indicated by the rivers flowing into the Ilmen. If ice sheet crossed the watershed, then the lakes could not appear.
The glacier served as one of the shores, and the water body of the lake turned out to be located between the icy one, on the one hand, and the land shores, on the other. These were migratory water bodies. When a glacier advanced, the glacial lakes moved in front of its front, flooding all new land areas. When the ice cover retreated, such lakes migrated after it. Due to the peculiarities of the dynamics of the borders of the near-glacial lakes, their terrestrial shores could be located far beyond the ice massifs. Therefore, the nature of the deposits marking the disappeared near-glacial lakes in their different parts may differ, which is taken into account in the reconstruction of these water bodies. Near-glacial lakes often had significant depths, which depended on the magnitude of the backwater created by the ice sheet and watershed marks, which determined the height of the threshold for the flow of water masses.
During the formation of near-glacial lakes in areas with a smooth relief of the territory, areas with maximum depths could be located in areas adjacent to the glacial edge. The general slope of the bottom was oriented in the same direction. In those cases when such reservoirs covered large tectonic depressions, places with the greatest depths could be far from the ice edge. Accounting for the depths and features of their location is essential for understanding the formation of bottom sediments, the analysis of which ensures the identification of paleolakes. The duration of the existence of near-glacial lakes is commensurate with the duration of individual glaciations. During the period of the Valdai glaciation, the possible duration of the existence of water bodies of this type associated with it (taking into account the continuous change in location and shape due to the dynamics of the ice cover in space) could not exceed 70-65 thousand years or 120-105 thousand years, depending on accepted time of the beginning of glaciation. After the disappearance of the glacial lakes, the following remained in their place:
vast expanses already devoid of very large lakes;
territories saturated with a large number of basins, currently occupied by medium and small lakes;
shallow and deep-water basins of various areas, in which large and largest lakes(Ilmen, Beloe, Vozhe, Lacha, Ladoga, Onega, Pskov-Chudskoe, Vyrtsyarv, etc.).
Geological studies say that in the first post-glacial time, on the site of Lake Ilmen, there was a vast reservoir with depths of up to 30 meters (with backwater in the vicinity of the village of Gruzino near Chudovo), later its basin was 90% filled with river deposits. The breakthrough of the Volkhov and the discharge of the Georgian Lake into Ladoga occurred about 6 thousand years ago.

Lake Ilmen
The historical significance of Priilmenye
Ethnic traces of the initial settlement of the shores of Lake Ilmen and economic use the lakes and its surroundings date back to Nostratic times, which have not yet been properly studied. Old Finnish bindings dominate, which meet more and more archaeological and geno-ethnic objections. It is possible that the Priilmenye region was visited by people during the Mikulin interglacial period (more than 75 thousand years ago) and during periods of temporary retreat of the Valdai glacier (about 35-30 thousand years ago).
At the beginning of the Holocene, the level of Lake Ilmen reached 32 meters or more, so all the banks below this mark (especially in the area of the future Novgorod) were flooded. Then the level dropped by ten meters, but during the period of the climatic optimum it again rose to about 28 meters. Then the pressure of water broke through the barriers between Ilmen-Volkhovskoye Lake and Gruzinskoye Lake, jumpers were overcome in the Pchevzhi area and the lower reaches of the Volkhov (rapids formed there). Already about 5 thousand years ago, the water level allowed for the possibility of settling the Priilmenye, which is what archaeologists note.
Historians V. Ya. Konetsky and E. N. Nosov (now Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences) a quarter of a century ago described the initial settlement of Priilmenye in the Stone Age.
Traces of the Neolithic were found in ten places relatively close to the source of the Volkhov from Lake Ilmen: Kholopy town, Robeika, Rurik's settlement, Kolomtsy, Strelka, Prosty, Rakomo, Vasilyevskoye, Goroshkovo, Yerunovo. In this era, the settlement of the Southern Priilmenye also begins.

The pre-Baltic-Finnish toponymy (generally attributed as "Old Finnish") was probably left by the Ural ethnic groups before the appearance of the Baltic Finns in the North-West. Sometimes it is defined as East Finnish (Mari). This includes hydronyms in -ma, -ksa, -ksha (Kitma, Koloshka, Koloksha), which have broad parallels in other early languages. The question of the attribution of this toponymic stratum is very complicated, and has not been resolved by the Finno-Ugric scholars themselves. The relationship of pre-Baltic-Finnish names to archaeological cultures is unclear, their chronological depth is unclear, etc. Here the Nostratic version has more and more advantages.

The Baltic-Finnish toponymy is associated with the ethnogenesis of the Baltic Finns, from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e., respectively, this stratum is chronologized approximately by this time. This is the most prominent toponymic substrate layer in the Northwest, especially in Obonezhie and Ladoga. In Priilmenye, the identification of the archaic Baltic-Finnish layer is difficult because the toponyms that form it are very strongly transformed by Slavic dialects. Differentiating a generalized Baltic-Finnish stratum into individual dialects is a practically difficult task. In the east of the region under study, the names retain more indications of the language of the ancestors of the Karelians, and to the north and west of the lake. Ilmen - the language of the ancestors of Estonians. The Baltic-Finnish hydronymy includes the names of rivers and lakes in -dro, -er, -der, -vzha, -zha, -os, -us, -ui, -oga, -oy, -la, and so on (the allocation of determinants is indicative ). The question of separating the ancient Baltic-Finnish toponymy and the Karelian toponymy that appeared here from the 17th century is difficult. (mostly "micronames": Chavra Gora, Lambushka, Gabo Grove).

The history of the study of Lake Ilmen
The first settlers laid the foundation for the study and economic development of the lake and its surroundings several thousand years ago. They partly concentrated their knowledge in epic, legends and epics. Ilmer turned out to be a "weathermaker" for the ancestors of the Finns and Ilmen (the god Il) for the Indo-Europeans, including the Slavs. According to the Tale of Slovene and Rus, the lake was originally called Moisko (probably by Nostratic communities), and Sloven and Rus changed the name to Ilmer - after the name of their sister (approximately like Lybid in the annalistic legends about Kiya). The name of Ilmera (Ilmeny) is played up in the epics about Sadko, and more often Ilmen-lake appears as the possession of the sea king.

How Sadko went to Ilmen Lake,
Sat down on a white combustible stone
And he began to play guselki yarovchata.
How then in the lake the water stirred,
The king of the sea appeared
I left Ilmeni from the lake,
He himself said these words:
- Oh, you, Sadko Novgorod!
I don't know how to welcome you
For your joys for the great ones,
For your gentle game:
Al countless gold treasury?
Otherwise, go to Novgorod
And hit the big bet
Lay your wild head
And get rid of other merchants
Red goods stalls
And argue that in Ilmen Lake
There is a fish - golden feathers.

The medieval development of the lake itself and the Priilmenye is reflected in various ways in many works related to the study of the paths “from the Varangians to the Greeks” and “from the Varangians to the Persians”, with various aspects of the life of the surrounding population.

Under Peter I, interest in Ilmen and its basin was associated with the formation of the Vyshnevolotsk water system. The history of the construction of the waterway began on January 12, 1703, then Peter I signed a decree on the construction of a canal between the Tsna and Tvertsa rivers. Construction management was entrusted to the royal steward, Prince MP Gagarin; technical management was carried out by five Dutch masters headed by Adrian Gowter. This was the first road from Moscow to the capital, after its construction in 1712, at the direction of Peter I, the construction of the capital highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg began, which took over part of the passenger and freight traffic of that time. In the summer of 1709, it became clear that the canal was built incorrectly: there was not enough water for the free movement of ships. The development of the project was carried out by design engineer M. I. Serdyukov. On June 26, 1719, Peter I issued a decree on the return to M. I. Serdyukov for the maintenance of the Vyshnevolotsk shipping route. For the purpose of the route, Msta, Ilmen and Volkhov were explored.
M. V. Lomonosov was interested in a comprehensive geographical study of the North-West and the Priilmenskaya lowland. On his initiative, expeditions were organized in 1768-1774 Russian Academy sciences, in which many outstanding scientists took part - S. G. Gmelin, P. S. Pallas, I. P. Falk.
A whole galaxy of scientists of the XVII-XIX centuries. especially studied the southwestern shore of the lake, where the glint is located.

Academician I. G. Leman wrote:
“First of all, it must be said that the layers of limestone look very beautiful due to their completely exceptional location: they lie horizontally relative to each other and look like a wall built by nature.”
He then attributed all these most beautiful outcrops to rocks deposited in the conditions of the sea, which existed in a distant geological era.

In 1779, Academician E. G. Laksman made his journey from St. Petersburg through Soltsy-Korostyn-Staraya Russa. Coastal sediments of the southwestern part of Lake Ilmen, then the Psizha River also prompted Laxman to conclude that "here was the bottom of a great lake or sea bay."
In the 19th century, Academician V. M. Severin left a description of the southwestern shore of the lake, without going into a qualitative description of the deposits that form the coastal wall with the Psizha River and near the village of Pustosh with the Savateika River, which flows into the Ilmen.

Academician N. Ya. Ozeretskovsky, having traveled in 1805 from St. Petersburg to Staraya Russa, also spoke of the wonderful area - Ilmensky Glint near the village of Korostyn as follows: “Korostino’s churchyard is not worth the place it occupies, there should have been a city or a castle "(Review of places from St. Petersburg to Staraya Russa and on the way back, 1808).
In the 40s of the 19th century, a mountain officer, lieutenant colonel G.P. Gelmersen (future academician) came to the lake. He is credited with identifying the formation of the Ilmensky ledge (glint) as Devonian deposits. Gelmersen, examining the Ilmensky glint, first noticed a number of abnormalities in the arrangement of Devonian deposits, which are usually characterized by a strict horizontal. In his published works (Geognostic view of the Valdai flat upland and its northern slope, 1840; On the geognostic composition of European Russia, bounded from the east by Lake Ilmen, and from the west Lake Peipsi, 1841) he noted that “in the geological structure of the clint, one can see fractures, steep uplifts, shifted layers, which at the points of contact, through strong friction, turned into loose breccia” (a product of crushing rocks as a result of tectonic movements). The Ilmensky clint was so unusual in geology that it attracted the attention of the English scientist Roderick I. Murchison in 1849: he left a description and identification of most of the fossils found in the Ilmensky limestones.

In 1962, the visiting session of the USSR Academy of Sciences decided that the Ilmensky Glint was natural monument and is subject to protection. Throughout the protected coast, various works were prohibited that could lead to its change and destruction. However, the conservation rules unique monument nature is constantly being violated. In the second half of the 20th century, limestone was mined in the channel of the Psizhi River near the village of Buregi. Lime deposits were mercilessly destroyed and taken out for the construction of rural roads. The landscape of Psizhi below Bureg has changed a lot. Quarry workings with traces of extreme mismanagement - such a significant part of the unique geological monument appears before numerous excursions and tourists.
Nowadays, the achievements of many researchers are noticeable in the study of the lake: N. N. Davydova, P. F. Domracheva, D. D. Kvasov, L. A. Kudersky, I. F. Pravdin, D. A. Subetto.
Bacteria living in the lake, when processing rotting algae and peat, produce combustible gas. In winter, fishermen take advantage of this by digging a hole in the lake and setting fire to the escaping gas. On this fire you can boil water, cook fish or just keep warm. Now similar cases are not marked.

Lake Ilmen

JOURNEY AROUND ILMEN-LAKE
Journey around Ilmen Lake
The day is getting longer, we can go further and further, so we continue to travel around the Novgorod lands. This time our tour starts from the southern outskirts of Veliky Novgorod, from the road leading to the Yuryev Monastery. Those who have never been to Novgorod can independently explore the monastery and the Vitoslavlitsa Museum of Wooden Architecture located nearby by turning left at the T-shaped intersection, and again return to this intersection, making a circle, since all roads are one-way on this section.

Homeland of Russian legality
And we will turn right and find ourselves in the territory with historical name Lakeland. This land, like an island, is surrounded on all sides by water: from the west, the Veryazh River, from the east and south - Lake Ilmen, from the north - Yuryevsky Pond and Lake Myachino. The history of Poozerie is as ancient as Veliky Novgorod itself. The first village that we meet on our way is Staroe Rakomo, perhaps the oldest in these parts: it is mentioned in the annals of 1015, when Yaroslav the Wise had a country yard here. It can even be said that this village is the progenitor of official Russian legality. In his residence in 1015, Yaroslav the Wise carried out a very cruel trial against the Novgorodians, who rebelled against the arrogant behavior of his close associates from the squad, who, out of boredom, began to "repair violence against married wives." Having pacified the rebellion, Yaroslav the Wise, in order to avoid such collisions in the future, the very next year gave the people of Novgorod the first 17 articles of Russkaya Pravda, the first set of ancient Russian laws. It was here, between the Yuriev Monastery and the village of Rakomo, that the first Novgorod veche was held in the same year 1015. Now only the ruins of the brick church of the Icon of the Mother of God "The Sign" built in 1860, erected on the site of an older church, remind of the past of the village. Behind the village, on the left, near the road, there is a wooden chapel - stop, there is an active spring. Orthodox pilgrims revere it as the source of Mikhail Klopsky, who supposedly “opened” the water with a staff. Therefore, cars are almost always parked here and a real queue is formed from those who come for clean spring water from both Novgorod and neighboring villages.
Then the road passes through villages with curious names - Neronov Bor, Mountain and Coastal Moryns, Zdrinoga, Redbelik. Almost all villages were associated with two main activities of local residents - fishing and arable farming. The latter is now not held in high esteem, but fishing is a hobby, perhaps, indestructible. On weekends, it can be difficult to find a place to park a car - so many people come to these places, regardless of the time of year. Half-decayed longboats and real Ilmen soims lie on the sandy shore, the design of which has been practically unchanged for many centuries. So, when you see a soyma lying on the shore, know that the legendary merchant Sadko also walked along Ilmen Lake many centuries ago in the same boat. In the village of Kuritsko, standing a little to the side, where there was a wooden Assumption Church built in 1595, transported to the Vitoslavlitsa Museum, a later stone church of the Assumption of the Virgin of 1899 has been preserved and operates. Once in the village there was also a lighthouse, which collapsed in Ilmen in 1922. The fate of this shore is very difficult - for 350 years, according to various estimates, the lake won back in different places Lakeland from 250 to 400 m of land, and since the time of Yaroslav the Wise, maybe a whole kilometer of land has been washed away. So the lake is simultaneously shallowing and advancing.

And we're moving on. At the very end of the village of Sergovo, where there is also a functioning church, there will be a turn to the village of Zaval. Having traveled two kilometers along this road, we will see almost Museum exhibit- wooden tent windmill, according to some sources, built in 1924. Previously, such mills were everywhere, but now, except for the Vitoslavlitsa da Zavala Museum, they are nowhere to be found.
Returning to the road, turn right and drive onto the Novgorod-Shimsk highway. This road was built only in the second half of the 19th century, and earlier, for almost 800 years in a row, people traveled to the west - through Sutoki, Menyushi and Mshaga. Having passed the village of Lesnaya along the highway, with a remodeled silicate church, after five kilometers we turn left - to the village of Golino. It is also old (mentioned in the annals of 1270) and is located at the very mouth of the Shelon River, where there was a historical ford across the river. The semi-abandoned Peter and Paul Church built in 1891 has been preserved here. There are traces of an attempt by local believers to start worship here: they cleared the refectory of debris, closed the doors and windows, and blocked the temple across, since the other part, from the side of the altar, was clearly used as a barn and a chicken coop until very recently.

Lake Ilmen

Italy on Ilmen
There are no sights here, except for the Shelon River, and it's time to return to the main road. In Shimsk, the regional center, there are no objects worthy of attention, in our opinion, either, so at the central intersection we turn left - onto the bridge over the Shelon. From the bridge to the left, in the direction of Staraya Russa. After 11 km, the road forks, and we choose the secondary left road, following the sign for Korostyn. Almost in the center of the village we will see on the right travel palace for the arrival of high authorities, built according to the project of the architect V.P. Stasov in 1826-1828. Next to it are outbuildings made of boulders and local limestone. The first floor of the palace is also made of limestone, and the second is wooden, with the same wooden columns of the Doric order. On boundless expanses On the Internet, you can find a lot of nonsense about this palace - that it was built for Catherine the Great, that Alexander I lived here, but the dates of construction clearly indicate that this is all not true. Now the palace is mothballed and actually abandoned, and its last inhabitant was a local school, for which a new building was built, much uglier than the Stasov creation, but according to a standard design.

Now let's look at the other side of the road - in the direction of Ilmen, where you can see orchards, visibly run wild. These are the most historical gardens, and their history goes back hundreds of years. It is authentically known that the grand ducal gardens were laid out here in 1498 and belonged to the royal family almost until the middle of the 18th century, and then became state-owned. Apple trees, cherries, plums successfully grew in the microclimate under the cover of a high bank. By the way, the fruits from these gardens were taken to St. Petersburg to the imperial table.
Driving a little further down the street, we will see another monument of federal significance - the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was built in 1726 by decree of Empress Catherine I and designed by the Italian architect Gaetano Chiaveri. The reasons for the construction of the church here, on the banks of the Ilmen, far from the capitals, are banal - in honor of the signing of the Korostyn Treaty of 1471, which was the penultimate step towards the conquest of the Novgorod Republic by the Moscow principality. It was the penultimate, and not the last, as they sometimes write, step that was the destruction of the republic, in January 1478, after the siege of Veliky Novgorod by the troops of the Moscow prince. The project of the Italian, of course, was slightly corrected, but the main ideas of one of the authors of the building of the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg have been preserved. The church, having survived during the war, is slowly being destroyed only now, in the status of a federal monument. Opposite is a neat German memorial cemetery, where 1357 German soldiers and officers who died in the Novgorod region during the Great Patriotic War are buried. There is no Soviet military cemetery of this magnitude here.
Here it is worth taking a walk to the lake, because Korostyn is the only place on Ilmen where the coast is high, with sheer cliffs up to 15 m. A very small elevation is called the Ilmen glint and is listed as an official natural monument. Outcrops of limestones, clays and other sediments of the Devonian period are simply a paradise for lovers of paleontology. For hang gliders and paragliders, this is also a paradise, but for other reasons: the ascending air currents near the cliff allow you to hover over the cliff for almost hours. In good weather, from here, from the high bank, you can see the silhouettes of the churches of Poozerie, and with good optics, even the bell tower of the St. George's Monastery.

fishermen on the winter lake

City born of salt
Returning to the road, we will continue our way towards the village of Buregi. Having entered it, in front of the bridge near the Psizha River, we turn left, onto a village street, which will lead us to the ruins of two churches - the Resurrection Cathedral (XVIII century), with a bell tower, unlike the cathedral, which is a federal monument, and the earlier St. Nicholas Church (1736) . Sometimes this complex is called the Buregsky Monastery, although the monastery has never been here, only the center of the graveyard, but unverified information is spreading through the sites without any control. The cathedral stands on a high beautiful coast Psizha River, on the site of the old settlement. The banks and floodplain of the river are old developments of the local reddish Devonian limestone, abundant in shells, which is why it is called shell rock in everyday life. It was from this limestone that a lot of churches were built in Veliky Novgorod in the 13th-15th centuries (Peter and Paul in Kozhevniki, Peter and Paul in Slavna, Paraskeva Pyatnitsa at the Market, etc.). Not far from the cathedral is a source revered by local residents.
Returning to the road and crossing the Psizha River, after 4 km we turn right, following the sign for Gostezh, to see the restored Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior built in 1788. Here, in Leokhnovo, in 1556, the local saint Anthony of Leokhnovsky, who lived in a cave, founded a monastery, like many others, closed at the beginning of the reign of Catherine the Great.
Returning to the track, we, without stopping anywhere, drive into Staraya Russa, a city that, in ancient times, competes with Veliky Novgorod. Not only the churches and cathedrals described in the guidebooks - the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral of the 12th century, the Church of the Great Martyr Mina of the 14th century, the St. Water tower, a fire station, a school building, merchant and ordinary residential buildings with sheds in the yard - all this wonderfully conveys the atmosphere of the old city, talking about its past and, alas, modern diseases. Therefore, in order to feel the city, you need to walk around it, look into the yards, sit on a bench, drink local water.
The main feature of Staraya Russa is, of course, salt springs. It was salt that played the main role in the formation and development of Staraya Russa. Already in the XI century it was quite a compact and rich city. Surprisingly, as a result of many years of excavations, archaeologists have not found a single fragment of bast shoes or felt boots in the layers of the 12th-13th centuries - only the remains of leather boots! And in the layers of the XII century, cowrie shells and pieces of real Chinese silk were found. One can imagine the price of a silk scarf on Novgorod land in those days!
Due to salt mining, all nearby chic oak forests were cut down and reduced to nothing - it was necessary to heat the saltworks with good charcoal. Special laws and decrees were issued, but even these tricks did not help, despite the periodic monopolization of salt mining. The largest industrial mining enterprise was organized by a well-known hydraulic engineer in Russia in the 18th century, who designed the Taitsky water conduit in Tsarskoye Selo and the Mytishchi water conduit in Moscow, F. V. Bauer. Instead of tsrens (riveted from metal strips of baking sheets for evaporating salt), familiar to Rushans (this is the name of the inhabitants of Staraya Russa), Bauer began to use special cooling towers. By new technology, which does not require firewood, up to 17 kg of salt was obtained from one cubic meter of water. In the 19th century, on the basis of local salt springs began to develop the old Russian resort. To increase the attendance of the resort, in 1878, on the initiative of the St. Petersburg merchant Vargunin, a private narrow-gauge railway was built. Railway Novgorod - Shimsk - Staraya Russa, along which we made this ride. Later converted to the usual width, the "piece of iron" operated until the Great Patriotic War during which it was destroyed and never rebuilt.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND PHOTO
Team Nomads
Text "Tales of Slovene and Rus and the city of Slovensk"
Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. T. II. S. 128.
Otkupshchikov Yu. V. Indo-European suffix *-men-/*-mōn- in Slavic toponymy // Otkupshchikov Yu. V. From the history of Indo-European word formation. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, 2005. S. 243-261.
History of the Pleistocene lakes of the East European Plain / Ed.: V.I. ed. Firma, 1998. - 403 p. — ISBN 5-02-024848-7
Kudersky L. A. Limnogenesis in the era of global ice sheets.
Atlas of the oceans. Terms, concepts, reference tables. - M .: GUNK MO USSR, 1980. - P. 140-147.
Priilmenye - the origins of Slovensk-Novgorod: places, languages, ethnic groups ...
Bylinskiy EN Influence of the lowering of the levels of the Ilmenskoe and Ladoga lakes on the development of the longitudinal profiles of the tributaries of the lake. Ilmen and Volkhov. - Vestnik Mosk. un-ta, ser. Biol., soil science, geol., geogr. - 1959. - No. 3.
Geology of the Cenozoic of the north of the European part of the USSR: Sat. articles / Ed. A. I. Popova, V. S. Enokyan. - M .: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1966. - 262 p.
Rukoyatkin A. A. Structural and geomorphological analysis using aerial photography materials in identifying local structures: (On the example of the North-West of the Russian Plain): Abstract of the thesis. dis. … cand. gegr. Sciences. - L., 1973. - 24 p.
Subetto D. A., Davydova N. N. Paleolimnology of Lake Ilmen // Protection and rational use of water resources of Lake Ladoga and other large lakes: Tr./ Intern. sympos. By Lake Ladoga, 4th. - SPb., 2003. - S. 260-264.
http://strana.ru/
Wikipedia website
www.regionavt.ru

18.1 m Length 45 km Width 35 km Square 982 km² Volume 12 km³ Greatest depth 10 m Average depth 3-4 m Square watershed 67,200 km² Inflowing rivers Msta , Paula , Lovat , Shelon flowing river Volkhov Ilmen at Wikimedia Commons

Name

Of the scientific etymologies of the name of the lake, the most popular version is about the origin other Russian Ilmen, Ilmer from fin. Ilma-järvi "lake of (un)weather, heavenly lake".

Physical and geographical characteristics

The area of the lake, depending on the water level, varies from 733 to 2090 km² (with an average level of 982 km²); length about 45 km, width up to 35 km; depth up to 10 m. The shores are mostly low-lying, swampy, in some places - deltaic, with many flat floodplain islands and channels; ridges are stretched along the northwestern coast, alternating with depressions; swampy in the southeast and east.

About 50 rivers flow into Lake Ilmen. The largest of them: Msta , Paula , Lovat With Polisto , Shelon With Mshagoy , Veronda , Veryazh and others. The only river flows out of Lake Ilmen Volkhov falling into Ladoga lake. The main food of the lake is carried out due to the inflow of rivers with spring floods and winter low water. Level fluctuations up to 7.4 m (minimum - in March, maximum - in May). Freeze from November to April.

Geological history

Ilmen and Priilmenye are important indicators of geological processes in the North-West of Russia. Also in archean era about 2.5 billion years ago, a rigid foundation formed East European Platform(due to the drift of the continents, this platform began its journey in the southern hemisphere), represented by crystalline rocks ( shales , granites , gneisses). In the Priilmenye region, they do not come to the surface anywhere, lying at a depth of 600 to 2000 m and are found in deep wells in the regions of Novgorod, Valdai , Pestovo, village sacrums and some others. The surface of the crystalline foundation is inhomogeneous. Under the influence of the internal forces of the Earth, the so-called Kresttsovsky fault was formed (the cavities are convenient for gas storage facilities), which ran from the northeast to the southwest in the area of the modern village of Kresttsy. In the Proterozoic era, volcanic rocks erupted along the line of the Kresttsovsky fault: diabases, tufits and others.

Palaeozoic

At the beginning of the Paleozoic era, when the surface was lowered, the region of the future Lake Ilmen and its basin was flooded by the sea. Then, under the influence of the internal forces of the planet, the surface rose, and the sea receded. Further, the surface of the Priilmenye was repeatedly lowered and flooded by the sea. Sands, silt, shells, skeletons of fish and marine animals settled to the bottom. Over millions of years, these marine deposits have turned into limestones, marls, sandstones. Gradually, the sea became shallow, land areas, islands, sea bays, lagoons (lakes separated from the sea by land areas) appeared.

In the middle of the Paleozoic era, there was a hot and humid climate, which contributed to the development of rich and diverse vegetation in the region. Seams of brown coal were formed from the plant remains of that time. The new advance of the sea contributed to the formation of a layer of limestone lying on top of the coal-bearing strata characteristic of the Nebolchi - Lyubytino - Valdai strip.

By the end of the Paleozoic era (about 200 million years ago), the sea finally retreated from the territory of the region. First it happened in the western part of the region, and then in the eastern part. And on the site of the Priilmenskaya lowland for many millions of years there was a hill, and on the site of the modern Valdai Upland - a lowland. The western upland (in the vicinity of the future lake) was severely destroyed by rivers, they completely washed away the surface strata of rocks.

Cenozoic era

Only at the beginning of the Cenozoic era (less than 70 million years ago) did the eastern part of the region rise. Compared to the western regions, it rose by 100-200 m. Rivers began to form on the hill, which developed deep valleys. Many modern rivers (Msta, Polomet, Kholova and others) flow in the ancient valleys that formed at that time and lead to the pre-glacial Ilmen (this state of it is just beginning to be modeled and studied).

The Priilmenskaya lowland and the Valdai Upland were formed in the Cenozoic era, even before the onset of glaciers.

The lowland that appeared in the west of the region was composed mainly of loose, variegated sandy-clayey rocks and marls. The elevated plateau in the east consisted of hard limestones and dense clays. To the west, towards the lowland, even before the Pleistocene, the plateau was cut off by a ledge. In places, this ledge (Valdai) is also expressed in the modern relief. For millions of years, it separates the Valdai Upland (with post-glacial sediments) from the Priilmenskaya Lowland. Ancient Paleozoic deposits lie relatively shallow and often come to the surface along the banks of rivers and lakes.

Lake Ilmen, which received the rivers of the Cenozoic times, sometimes reached a depth of tens of meters and was ten times larger in area than the current one.

One of the main events of the last million years (Pleistocene) is the advance of glaciers on the East European Plain. The most important for the Novgorod region was the last, so-called Valdai glaciation 70 - 15 thousand years ago. The glacier left a thick layer of moraine deposits: loam, sand and sandy loam. The material of the moraine is highly mixed and contains many boulders of crystalline rocks brought by ice from the north.

The relief of the region is characterized by moraine deposits in the form of hills. Large moraine hills have relative heights 50 - 60 m, medium - 10 - 30 m, small - 5 -10 m. Sometimes, among the hilly moraine relief, there are relatively flat areas composed of boulder loam. These are moraine plains. They predominate on the Priilmenskaya lowland in the vicinity of Lake Ilmen.

Ilmensky Kamy

During the Pleistocene, the Priilmenskaya lowland experienced a number of significant changes.

The shape of the kams is predominantly round, but there are also formations with complex outlines. Often kams are grouped in the form of extensive complexes, forming a kind of kame landscape. Kamas are composed of sorted sands, sandy loams, clays, gravel. For them, (horizontal and diagonal) layering is usually noted, often of the ribbon (lake) type. Kamas with a core of ribbon clays are known. There are cases of layering deformation caused by the movements of glacial masses that have taken place. Kams are often covered by a moraine cover formed by boulder loams and sandy loams. One of the examples of kam is sometimes recognized Bronnitskaya mountain, although the artificial nature of at least part of this huge thirty-meter hill, hundreds of meters in circumference, is not excluded.

Origin

Ilmen belongs to the third group of lakes of the glaciation periods. These lakes were formed and located at the outer edge of the ice sheets. The generally accepted name for reservoirs of this type is glacial lakes. Of all the groups of lakes of the glacial epochs, the periglacial lakes are among the most studied. They occupied depressions in the terrain, and the ice edge played the role of a dam that prevented the flow of melt water in accordance with the natural slope of the territory.

The largest lakes in Europe

Lake	Square surfaces water, km²	Volume, km³	Location- position (a country)
Ladoga	17700	908	Russia
Onega	9720	285	Russia
Venern	5550	180	Sweden
Chudsko- Pskov	3550	25,2	Russia Estonia
Vättern	1900	72	Sweden
saima	1800	36	Finland
White	1290	5,2	Russia
Vygozero	1140	7,1	Russia
Mälaren	1140	10,0	Sweden
Päijanne	1065	...	Finland
Ilmen	1200	12,0	Russia
Inari	1000	28,0	Finland

The runoff came from areas of the lake remote from the edge of the glacier. Near-glacial lakes did not always appear. A necessary condition for their appearance and existence was the presence of a watershed at some distance from the outer edge of the ice sheet, which is indicated by the rivers flowing into the Ilmen. If the ice sheet crossed the watershed, then the lakes could not appear. The glacier served as one of the shores, and the water body of the lake turned out to be located between the icy one, on the one hand, and the land shores, on the other. These were migratory water bodies. When a glacier advanced, the glacial lakes moved in front of its front, flooding all new land areas. When the ice cover retreated, such lakes migrated after it. Due to the peculiarities of the dynamics of the borders of the near-glacial lakes, their terrestrial shores could be located far beyond the ice massifs. Therefore, the nature of the deposits marking the disappeared near-glacial lakes in their different parts may differ, which is taken into account in the reconstruction of these water bodies. Near-glacial lakes often had significant depths, which depended on the magnitude of the backwater created by the ice sheet and watershed marks, which determined the height of the threshold for the flow of water masses. During the formation of near-glacial lakes in areas with a smooth relief of the territory, areas with maximum depths could be located in areas adjacent to the glacial edge. The general slope of the bottom was oriented in the same direction. In those cases when such reservoirs covered large tectonic depressions, places with the greatest depths could be far from the ice edge. Accounting for the depths and features of their location is essential for understanding the formation of bottom sediments, the analysis of which ensures the identification of paleolakes. The duration of the existence of near-glacial lakes is commensurate with the duration of individual glaciations. During the period of the Valdai glaciation, the possible duration of the existence of water bodies of this type associated with it (taking into account the continuous change in location and shape due to the dynamics of the ice cover in space) could not exceed 70-65 thousand years or 120-105 thousand years, depending on accepted time of the beginning of glaciation. After the disappearance of the glacial lakes, the following remained in their place:

vast expanses already devoid of very large lakes;
territories saturated with a large number of basins, currently occupied by medium and small lakes;
shallow and deep-water basins of various areas, in which large and largest lakes were formed (Ilmen, Beloe, Vozhe, Lacha, Ladoga, Onega, Pskov-Chudskoe, Vyrtsyarv, etc.).

Geological studies say that in the first post-glacial time, on the site of Lake Ilmen, there was a vast reservoir with depths of up to 30 meters (with backwater in the vicinity of the village of Gruzino near Chudovo), later its basin was 90% filled with river deposits. The breakthrough of the Volkhov and the discharge of the Georgian Lake into Ladoga occurred about 6 thousand years ago.

Our days

Now Ilmen is a “dying” reservoir, disappearing under the influence of centuries-old processes of silting and drifting of its bed with river sediments.

The historical significance of Priilmenye

Ethnic traces of the initial settlement of the shores of Lake Ilmen and the economic use of the lake and its environs date back to Nostratic times, which have not yet been properly studied. Old Finnish bindings dominate, which meet more and more archaeological and geno-ethnic objections. It is possible that the Priilmenye region was visited by people during the Mikulin interglacial period (more than 75 thousand years ago) and during periods of temporary retreat of the Valdai glacier (about 35 - 30 thousand years ago).

At the beginning of the Holocene, the level of Lake Ilmen reached 32 meters or more, so all the banks below this mark (especially in the area of the future Novgorod) were flooded. Then the level dropped by a dozen meters, but during the period of the climatic optimum it again rose to about 28 meters. Then the pressure of water broke through the barriers between Ilmen-Volkhovskoye Lake and Gruzinskoye Lake, jumpers were overcome in the Pchevzhi area and the lower reaches of the Volkhov (rapids formed there). Already about 5 thousand years ago, the water level allowed for the possibility of settling the Priilmenye, which is what archaeologists note.

Traces of the Neolithic were found in ten places relatively close to the source of the Volkhov from Lake Ilmen: Kholopy town, Robeika, Rurik settlement, Kolomtsy, Strelka, Prosty, Rakomo, Vasilyevsky, Goroshkovo , Yerunovo. In this era, the settlement of the Southern Priilmenye also begins.

The pre-Baltic-Finnish toponymy (generally attributed as "Old Finnish") was probably left by the Ural ethnic groups before the appearance of the Baltic Finns in the North-West. Sometimes it is defined as East Finnish (Mari). This includes hydronyms in -ma, -ksa, -ksha (Kitma, Koloshka, Koloksha), which have wide parallels in other early languages. The question of the attribution of this toponymic stratum is very complicated, and has not been resolved by the Finno-Ugric scholars themselves. The relationship of pre-Baltic-Finnish names to archaeological cultures is unclear, their chronological depth is unclear, etc. Here the Nostratic version has more and more advantages.

V. L. Vasiliev in the Priilmenye a reservoir was identified "Old European" hydronymy(according to terminology H. Krae). The researcher refers to this layer such names of rivers as Vavol, Vishera, Volkhov, Marevka, Oltechko, Omititsa, Udina, Paula (also Polist, Polona), Seremukha etc. Given hydronymic the layer belongs to the II millennium BC. e. and connects with the tribes Fatyanovo archaeological culture. The latter, in turn, are identified by researchers as Western Indo-Europeans, representatives of the not yet disintegrated Balto-Slavic-Germanic community (in the case of Priilmenye - proto- Balts).

Actually, the ancient Baltic toponymy, which has direct reflections in the Baltic ethno-linguistic area, etymologized on the basis of the Lithuanian, Latvian, Prussian languages, is indicated in a significant amount in the Ilmen and Volkhov regions. In this territory, it is almost not studied, it was considered partially. This group may include the names of lakes Dolzhino and Shlino, the Osma river, streams Vorolyanka, Stabenka, Burga and others.

Old Norse (North Germanic) toponymy is associated with the Scandinavians (according to the annals - “ Varangians"). According to some versions, they appeared in Priilmenye almost simultaneously with the Slavs or a little later - at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. There are many archaeological antiquities of the Scandinavians here, there are traces of the Scandinavian language in the ancient Novgorod anthroponymicon, however, there are either very few names of the Old Norse type in Priilmenye (the village of Buregi, the river Veryazh and some others), or they are unrecognizably distorted by Russian leveling influence. Be that as it may, toponyms will partly allow clarifying the debatable questions about the contribution of the Scandinavians to the creation of the statehood of Upper Rus', about the likelihood of Scandinavian rural colonization of the region under study.

Archaic Slavic toponymy is represented by a significant layer of names of the Priilmenye, dating from about the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. until the 14th century The names that make it up are attributed according to various features, among which are elements of word-formation: -yn, -yn, -yn (the village of Korostyn, the village of Volyn), -itsa, -ichi, -ya (the rivers Dobritsa, Borovichi, Yarynya) and so on; suffix-inflectional method of formation (Schadro, Glino, Luko oz., Luka r.), archaic composites (Kholmatuzha, Zhylotug), formations from pre-Christian names, ancient nicknames using “iot” suffixation (villages Vidogoshch, Mirogoshcha, Rashucha), formations from ancient, obsolete or extinct appellatives (village Demyansk, v. Vodose, lake Peretno, brook Eglino), archaic phonetic transformations (village Prikhon, brook Iglino).

Properly Russian ("background") polyethnic toponymy refers to the XIII-XIV centuries, when the language of the Great Russian people was formed. Archaic models of derivation are becoming a thing of the past (for example, “iot” suffixing, two-basic personal names are disappearing), but the models of modern types are gaining productivity; general typology changes settlements and their names (for example, villages with names in -ovo, -evo, -ino appear en masse), the share of Christian personal names in toponymy increases sharply, and so on.

The further history of the Ilmenye, partly reflected in the work of V. Ya. Konetsky and E. N. Nosov, requires taking into account the data of Ptolemy and other information about the ancient and early medieval development of the Novgorod land.

Further historical significance (starting from the ice age) is associated with the events in Veliky Novgorod and Novgorod land up to the present.

The history of the study of Lake Ilmen

The first settlers laid the foundation for the study and economic development of the lake and its surroundings several thousand years ago. They partly concentrated their knowledge in epic, legends and epics. Ilmer turned out to be a "weathermaker" for the ancestors of the Finns and Ilmen (the god Il) for the Indo-Europeans, including the Slavs. According to the Tale of Slovene and Rus, the lake was originally called Moisko (probably by Nostratic communities), and Sloven and Rus changed the name to Ilmer - after the name of their sister (approximately like Lybid in the chronicle legends about Kiya). The name of Ilmera (Ilmeny) is played up in the epics about Sadko, and more often Ilmen-lake appears as the possession of the sea king.

How Sadko went to Ilmen Lake,
Sat down on a white combustible stone
And he began to play guselki yarovchata.
How then in the lake the water stirred,
The king of the sea appeared
I left Ilmeni from the lake,
He himself said these words:
- Oh, you, Sadko Novgorod!
I don't know how to welcome you
For your joys for the great ones,
For your gentle game:
Al countless gold treasury?
Otherwise, go to Novgorod
And hit the big bet
Lay your wild head
And get rid of other merchants
Red goods stalls
And argue that in Ilmen Lake
There is a fish - gold feathers.

A whole galaxy of scientists of the XVII-XIX centuries. especially studied the southwestern shore of the lake, where the glint is located.

“First of all, it must be said that the layers of limestone look very beautiful due to their completely exceptional location: they lie horizontally relative to each other and look like a wall built by nature.”

He then attributed all these most beautiful outcrops to rocks deposited in the conditions of the sea, which existed in a distant geological era.

Nowadays, the achievements of many researchers are noticeable in the study of the lake: N. N. Davydova, P. F. Domracheva, D. D. Kvasov, L. A. Kudersky, I. F. Pravdin, D. A. Subetto.

Bacteria living in the lake, when processing rotting algae and peat, produce combustible gas. In winter, fishermen take advantage of this by digging a hole in the lake and setting fire to the escaping gas. On this fire you can boil water, cook fish or just keep warm. Currently, there are no such cases.

Notes

Text "Tales of Slovene and Rus and the city of Slovensk"
Fasmer M. Etymological dictionary of the Russian language. T. II. S. 128.
Otkupshchikov Yu. V. Indo-European suffix *-men-/*-mōn- in Slavic place names // Otkupshchikov Yu. V. From the history of Indo-European word formation. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg State University, 2005. S. 243-261.
Geography of the Novgorod region
History of the Pleistocene lakes of the East European Plain / Ed.: V. I. Khomutova (responsible editor) and others - St. Petersburg. : Science: St. Petersburg. ed. Firma, 1998. - 403 p. - ISBN 5-02-024848-7
Kudersky L. A. Limnogenesis during the epochs of global ice sheets.
Atlas of the oceans. Terms, concepts, reference tables. - M .: GUNK MO USSR, 1980. - P. 140-147.
Priilmenye - the origins of Slovensk-Novgorod: places, languages, ethnic groups ...
Bylinskiy E. N. The effect of lowering the levels of the Ilmenskoe and Ladoga lakes on the development of the longitudinal profiles of the tributaries of the lake. Ilmen and Volkhov. - Vestnik Mosk. un-ta, ser. Biol., soil science, geol., geogr. - 1959. - No. 3.
Geology of the Cenozoic of the north of the European part of the USSR: Sat. articles / Ed. A. I. Popova, V. S. Enokyan. - M .: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1966. - 262 p.
Rukoyatkin A. A. Structural and geomorphological analysis using aerial photography materials to identify local structures: (On the example of the North-West of the Russian Plain): Abstract of the thesis. dis. … cand. gegr. Sciences. - L., 1973. - 24 p.
Subetto D. A. Lacustrine sedimentogenesis in the North of the European part of Russia in the late Pleistocene and Holocene: Abstract of the thesis. dis. … Dr. geol. Sciences. - St. Petersburg. , 2003. - 38 p.
Subetto D. A., Davydova N. N. Paleolimnology of Lake Ilmen // Protection and rational use of water resources of Lake Ladoga and other large lakes: Proceedings / Intern. sympos. on Lake Ladoga, 4th. - St. Petersburg. , 2003. - S. 260-264.
Map (medium depths)
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron
Mukhortova N. L. Development of the Priilmensky lake landscape in the Holocene
Konetsky V. Ya., Nosov E.N. Mysteries of the Novgorod region. - L. : Lenizdat, 1985. - 120 p.
Pylaev V. A. Starorussky Krai: Nature and population / Ed. ed. D. O. Svyatsky. - Novgorod: Novgorod. state typ., 1929. - 129 p.
Ageeva R. A. Hydronymy of the Russian North-West as a source of cultural and historical information / Ed. ed. N. I. Tolstoy. - 2nd ed., Rev. - M .: URSS, 2004. - 252 p. - ISBN 5-354-00862-X
V. L. Vasiliev Ethnolinguistic map of Priilmenye according to toponymy