What a 7-year-old boy from Novgorod wrote and painted on birch bark in the 13th century

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

If modern 7-year-old children are almost completely immersed in the world of gadgets, so that the need for writing is minimal, in the XIII century, naturally, the problems were of a completely different kind. At that time, there was still no paper on the territory of Russia, and all records were made on birch bark. A find in the Novgorod area made it possible to find out what the children of that time lived like.

In the 13th century, paper as we know it today - with sizing in bulk - existed only in Asia and in Spain, where it was brought by the Moors. On the territory of Russia, birch bark was widely used - the most accessible material and one of the most convenient for writing. Birch bark letters are the most valuable material that allows you to learn the life of medieval people and trace the history of the East Slavic languages.

Birch bark letters were discovered in the region of Veliky Novgorod at the Nerevsky excavation site almost 70 years ago. Even before that, some fragments of documents written in ink on birch bark were found, but the finds in 1951 of 9 such scrolls at once (later more than a thousand of them will be found) were different. Instead of fragile ink, the inscriptions on these documents were scrawled and therefore preserved much better.

As many as 12 letters found in Veliky Novgorod were created by a boy named Onfim, who was apparently 6-7 years old. He not only wrote on birch bark, but also painted (the drawings were not numbered and were included in the total number of letters). Experts have found that they were all created around 1234-1268. and they all survived together because, most likely, the young man simply lost them all in a crowd.

So what did the 7-year-old boy Onfim write about? Like today's children, at this age he learned to read and write, and therefore the bulk of his records are educational records. However, if modern children at this age just go to school or finish the first grade, the confidence with which Onfim wrote his notes allows experts to judge that writing was already familiar to him. He writes out the alphabet three times completely, and then writes syllables from it.

In addition to the alphabet, Onfim learns to write different types of letters. With the words "Bow from Onfim to Danila," the guy apparently trained the writing of a traditional polite letter (experts believe that my second pupil will be Danila, learning to read and write together with Onfim). And with the recording of the phrase "G (opozd) and help your slave Onfim" the boy could practice either his signature in a letter or a prayer.

In addition to training business correspondence, sort of like composing a letter on how to "collect debts from Dmitry", Onfim also copied out some fragments from the Psalter and drew simple drawings. Here are horses galloping with warriors in armor, their cloaks are developing, arrows are flying, the enemy is struck in the very heart. Here is a fabulous beast on four legs, but since the beast turned out to be not very realistic, Onfim signed the picture - "I am a beast."

In general, it seems that studying writing at school in the 13th century was sometimes as tiring as it was for children in the 21st century - and little Onfim imagined himself now a warrior, now a powerful beast, somewhere in the thick of things, and not at a table rewriting for the umpteenth time the Psalter.

From the moment of the Nerevsky excavation, archaeological work on the search for letters does not stop until today. The results strongly depend on which layer is dug: sometimes there are several hundred finds a year, and sometimes none at all. People find some documents by chance, as, for example, happened with diploma number 463 - it was found by a student in the village of Pankovka in a heap of land, which was brought for the improvement of the local park. Or as it was with a small fragment of a birch bark document (No. 612), which one of the residents of Novgorod found in his flower pot.

To date, birch bark letters have been found on the territory of nine Russian cities, but the largest number, of course, in the region of Veliky Novgorod - 1113 letters and one birch bark letter-icon. Read more about when the letter appeared in Russia, in the article about is it true that writing appeared in Russia with the adoption of Christianity.