Qualla: Novgorod Oblast

Novgorod Oblast: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. An eleven-year-old boy named Onfim sat down in Novgorod sometime around 1260, pulled a slab of birch bark off a tree, scratched lines and drawings into it, and dropped it. Eight centuries later archaeologists pulled the bark out of the city's anaerobic mud, where it had sat preserved like everything else made of organic material in old Novgorod. Onfim's homework drawings now hang in the Novgorod State Museum and provide one of the most vivid windows in the world into ordinary medieval European life. Over a thousand birch bark documents have been excavated. They are why we know what 12th-century Novgorodians ate, owed each other, fought about, and named their dogs. The city that produced them ran itself as a republic for three hundred years, until Moscow came calling.

Read more: Novgorod Oblast on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Novgorod Oblast: Where Russia Began

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Дар Ветер, CC BY-SA 3.0. The chronicles say Rurik settled in Novgorod in 862 and founded the dynasty that would rule Russia for seven centuries. His successor Oleg moved the capital to Kiev, but Novgorod kept its independence and grew rich on the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks: Vikings in ...

Read more: Novgorod Oblast on Qualla

Image: Дар Ветер | CC BY-SA 3.0

Novgorod Oblast: The Massacre of 1570

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Лобачев Владимир, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ivan III brought Novgorod into the Grand Duchy of Moscow in the late 15th century, ending the republic. In 1570, Ivan IV, the Terrible, fearing treason from a city that remembered its independence, sent his oprichnina to sack Novgorod. For weeks his men tortured, drowned, and bur...

Read more: Novgorod Oblast on Qualla

Image: Лобачев Владимир | CC BY-SA 3.0

Novgorod Oblast: Occupied, 1941-1944

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndrewSyria, CC BY-SA 1.0. The German Wehrmacht reached Novgorod in August 1941 and occupied it for two and a half years. The city was systematically destroyed. The 12th-century Saint George Monastery was looted; the Saint Sophia Cathedral, founded in 1045, was damaged; the Millennium of Russia monument un...

Read more: Novgorod Oblast on Qualla

Image: AndrewSyria | CC BY-SA 1.0

Novgorod Oblast: Lakes, Birch Bark, and a Quiet Recovery

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Geographically the oblast is a low country shading east into the Valdai Hills, with Lake Ilmen at its center fed by the Msta, Lovat, Pola, Polist, and Shelon rivers, and drained northward by the Volkhov toward Lake Ladoga. Lake Seliger, shared with Tver Oblast, is one of the larg...

Read more: Novgorod Oblast on Qualla

Image: A.Savin | CC BY-SA 3.0