Excavated letters and notes on birch bark, dated by the layer they lie in. Those from the layers of the 1180s to the 1220s show Novgorod's daily business about 1200: debts and tribute in furs and silver, land and tenants, trade with the Baltic, church dues, family quarrels and schoolboy exercises. They give the names and concerns of ordinary Novgorodians that no chronicle records. Dating is to a span of decades, not a year.
About this source
- Title
- Berestyanye gramoty (the birch-bark documents of Novgorod and other towns)
- Author
- Various
- Author's dates
- townspeople, clergy and officials of Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Torzhok, Smolensk and other towns
- Written
- 11th to 15th centuries
- Language
- Old Novgorodian and Old East Slavic
- Covers
- about 1025 to 1500
- Kind
- Letters
The database gives each document a date range from stratigraphy; filter by date to find those around 1200.
Where to read it
Editions
- Drevnerusskie berestyanye gramoty: the online database of birch-bark documents (HSE University and the Institute of Slavic Studies), with images, texts and dating for each document
- A. V. Artsikhovsky, V. L. Yanin, A. A. Zaliznyak and others (eds), Novgorodskie gramoty na bereste, 12 vols (Moscow 1953 to 2015); not free (not freely online)
Translations
- J. Schaeken, Voices on Birchbark: Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Leiden 2019), English translations of selected letters; under copyright (not freely online)