May 24 – Kizhi, Russia. This morning started out with a talk about current Russian politics and the economy. It's always interesting to see how the people perceive their events as it relates to what is presented to us by the US media. My conclusion is that they are no more accurate and unbiased that they are about politics and events in the USA.
After the presentation the captain invited us to the bridge in small groups. It was nice to see the operations center for the ship. The Helgi was built in the 1980s and carried only Russians for years. Viking acquired it in the late 1990s and refitted it to suit other European, American and Australian/New Zealand travelers. Many of the controls are old style but it has the latest in electronic navigational equipment, RADAR and GPS. Nothing much was happening so there was no real activity to observe.
This afternoon we are stopping at Kizhi Island. To get there we kept going north on the Seksna River to the White Lake. After crossing the lake we were in the Volga-Baltic Canal. After dropping down through 5 locks we entered Lake Onega. It's the second largest lake in Europe and the 18th largest by area in the world. The lake has almost 1650 islands and were heading to one of them, Kizhi.
Kizhi has a collection of 89 wooden structures that date from the 15th to the 20th centuries. The most spectacular one is the Transfiguration Church. It has 22 domes is entirely made of wood and has absolutely no nails. It's all pegged or mortised. It's an amazing structure built in 1714. It doesn't seem quite real but yet, there it is. The main logs are Scotch pine, the planks are spruce and the domes are of aspen shingles.
The iconic scene of Kizhi is the Kizhi Pogost. It's a walled area that holds three structures. The oldest is the Church of the Intercession built in 1694. It's a heated church and can have services all year long. It's a small church but still manages to sport 9 domes. In 1714 the 22-dome Transfiguration Church was completed and soon after that they built the bell tower. This set of buildings is all that most people would recognize about the island and for good reason, they are beautiful and majestic. Unfortunately we did not see them in sunshine where the aspen tiles covering the domes would gleam like they were made of silver. But it wasn't raining and the light, although not bright enough to provide much contrast for detail was certainly ok. All the structures in the pogost are original to Kizhi.
Since those large spectacular buildings were already here it was decided that the island would become a museum for old wooden structures. The have churches, bell towers, homes, barns, a sauna, a windmill and other wooden structures moved here from all over Russia.
The Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus from Murom Monastery is the oldest remaining wooden church in Russia (second half of the 14th century). It's small and has only one dome but the design and execution of the structure are elegant and very pleasing to the eye. It is believed to have been built by the monk Lazarus around 1300. It was the first structure of what was to become the Murom Monastery. It developed a reputation for curing the sick and the church became popular with pilgrims. It's only about 10 feet tall, so physical stature has nothing to do with it.
The house of peasant Oshevnev from 1876 was open and there were docents in the rooms to explain their purpose and ladies to demonstrate some of the crafts. Contrary to what most non-Europeans believe, peasants were not necessarily poor and downtrodden. Some peasants were moderately wealthy, but they worked with their hands and were usually not very well advanced in formal education. Oschevnev was exactly that. His house is quite large and very well furnished. He was a farmer and owned livestock.
We went immediately upstairs as the downstairs was for livestock. We entered a large room with a brick and plaster fireplace, kitchen stove and oven combination. The firebox is at the bottom and on the side I was sitting it had several places to put things to either cook or heat them. The largest of these would have been used like an oven. It was above the fire box but the heat had to come up through side slots. It looks like a small fire could have been built on the floor of this space for light cooking, heating water or grilling because it had a rack with six inch long legs setting on one side that could have been moved over some coals for grilling. Some spaces were a long way from the firebox and had no direct vent from it. These would have been used for keeping things warm as I'm sure the brick transfers a good deal of heat.
About a third of the room was on one side of a board that ran across the room lengthwise about 6.5 feet off the floor. Our guide told us that if other farmers or visitors came to the house they could come into this room but only as far as this board unless invited further. The space he would have been in had a bench by the fireplace wall so he would be warm and have a place to sit. He could even have eaten a meal and spent the night without leaving that space, just a way to maintain some privacy while still being hospitable in what can be a very inhospitable climate. The house is elongated on one side of the gable. This area serves as storage and workspace. The owners wagon and team would have been kept there.
From the farmhouse we walked across the island, not as daunting as it sounds because the island is only about 200 yards wide at this point, to the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus and then down the path a little further to get to the old windmill.
Our time was almost us so we walked back to the pier around the other side of the Transfiguration Church and out of the historic area. On the way to the pier there are vendors, of course. They didn't have anything I wanted to buy so it was an easy trip.
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