Burial Hills and Mounds of Old Ladoga
The burial monuments of Old Ladoga make complex motley ethnic mosaics. They circle the territory of the ancient city like a ring. The remains of the burial hills of the VIII-X centuries overlook across the fortress. This is Urochische Plakun.
On a top boundary of a village, behind the church of St. John the Baptist there is urochische Sopki. The biggest mound of this place is called the grave of Oleg the Oracular. A bit far away some smaller mounds circle the giant five-meter hill. Another burial hills group is located on the south border of Ladoga in urochische Pobedische.
The ancient burial hills are the source of information about the past
The research of the ancient burial hills allows learning a lot about life of our predecessors. The tribes and nations have their own unique burial customs, obsequies, and things that were put into a grave together with a dead (so-called “burial harness”). All of this tells about the religious believes, customs, social traditions of society in a certain time period.
The method of formation divides burial hills into ground, mound and so-called zhalnichny (specific only at Northwest) ones.
- Ground burial (burials without a mound or entombment fields) are the complex of the burials placed into the grave holes that are not marked with any preserved constructions on the surface. The ground burials were widespread in Leningrad region as well as in some other regions of Eastern Europe in the first half of the I millenary A. C. approximately before the V-VI centuries.
- Mound burial hills are common for Priladozhie. These are the graveyards consisting from burial hills covered with the earthen mounds usually hemispheric. They are usually 0,5-1,2 meters high. The burial hills more than two and half meters high are very rare. Sometimes such graves are surrounded with a circle of boulders or circled with a shallow ditch.
The ancient Russian burial hills of the X-XIII centuries form big burial hills groups (from several dozens to thousands of mounds). They are situated on the elevated sites among the fields, usually not for away from the modern villages. The local citizens call such burial hills the graves as they were named in Ancient Russia (the word “kurgan” is Turkic having a relatively late origin).
- The so-called long burial hills were widespread in the forest area of Eastern Europe. Theses are the bank-like hills 20-30 meters long and 7-15 meters wide with the bluff sides and flat top. The long kurgans are situated by the groups together with the low globate banks on the elevated sites remote from the modern settlements, usually deep inside the forests or less often at the low overflow lands of the rivers and lakes.
- Tuffets are the big up to 9-12 meters high steep-flanked mounds sometimes almost conic. They stand in the beautiful places: watersheds, upper terraces of the banks, on the swing rounds of the rivers. The chains consisting of two-three up to twenty tufftets are well seen from a distance. The tuffets as the graveyards are very common for Old Ladoga.
- Zhalniks (originated from the ancient Russian word “zhaleti” are the original burial monuments of Novgorod land. These are the low hills surrounded by the prominent stones fleeced with moss. N. Repnikov who made a full report about these burials in 1930 wrote: “Zhalniki are the ancient graveyards consisting of the ground graves, propped with the stones on top in the shape of a circle or a rectangle…In most of the cases zhalniki are situated remotely from the settlements on the natural hills and are covered with the grown out trees. ..The trees grown out from these hills are considered to be sacred. It’s forbidden to cut them...”
A superstitious reverence of zhalniki is a complicated mix of the heathen and Christian traditions in the customs and legends. This fact evidences that theses graveyards are referred to the direct ancestors of the modern Russian people turn them into the ancient Russian monuments.
An ancient population of Eastern Europe practiced different manners of funeral. Before the establishment of Christianity there were:
- the incineration of the deads (cremation);
- the burial of the non-cremated remains.
The cremation is recognizable on the finds of grounded and roasted bones. The archeologists define two types of cremations:
-“on site”, when the bones are found among the coals and ash of the burial fire, the fire-place covered by the mound of the burial hill;
-“aside” when the remains were picked from the death-pile and transferred to the place of the funeral where the burial hill was mounded. The roasted bones were put into an urn, hole or another vessel. In these cases there is no traces of the death-pile under the burial hills.
The orientation of the burial meant a lot for a funeral. The Ugro-finnish tribes laid a dead body head to north or to south, the Slaves instead headed it to west (face to the east). A dead body always looks to the direction where according to his countrymen an afterworld is situated.
“Funeral inventory” signifies the things laid into a grave together with a dead body allows age-dating of the burial and according to a set of pendants, bracelets, necklaces, rings, fibulas and other things define a female jewelers featuring a certain ethnic group. The Slaves are featured by the light temporal rings from silver, for Ugro-Finnish tribes an excess of bronze roaring pendants in the shape of birds or animals is characteristic, miniature bronze spoons and etc. The Scandinavian women were wearing a pair of massive oval brooches (fibula) with a relief depiction in animalistic style.
The ethnic description of the burials should be done very carefully because quite often things typical for different tribes are found in the same burial due to the complicated inter tribe relations.
What did Zorian Dolenga-Hodakovsky find in Polaya tuffet?
In 1820 a Polish archeologist and ethnographer Zorian Dolenga-Hodakovsky dug out in urochizche Sopky the so-called Polaya (Hollow) tuffet. Some researchers think that a chronographer Nestor in the XII century defined exactly this tuffet as a grave of Oleg the Oracular.
The Hollow tuffet is well seen from a distance. Its height is more than 5 meters; the diameter of its base is more than 30 meters. Even today great boulders are seen around the tuffet. Hodakovsky found similar boulders inside the tuffet, beyond the burial. The boulders shaped a right placing with its two beams converging from north to the base of the tuffet, a certain kind of a big (40 meters long) triangular topped by a huge earthen mound.
Hodakovsky found remains of cremation and a spearhead with the spread barbs. Such spears were well known in the VIII-IX centuries in the Baltic countries, Finland, Scandinavia. He didn’t manage to uncover the entire placing.
The sizes of Hollow tuffet are really prince-like. A poorness of the burial is similar to the big “king” burial hills of Upsala in Sweden. The stone “beams” of the placing are the features of the Scandinavian obsequies although stone constructions over the burials are common for the Baltic countries and for the tuffets in Lovati. The Slaves could take them from their neighbors. It is impossible to say with certainty was it Oleg the Oracular who was buried in this tuffet or not.
The research of S. Orlov in urochosche Sopky
S. N. Orlov has explored one of the tuffets situated near the grave of Oleg the Oracular. The burial construction was almost destroyed. In the foundation of the mound an archeologist found two cremations with piles and big agglomerate of boulders. One burial was undoubtedly female. The beads the same as in the tuffets of the IX-X centuries and the Baltic trapezium pendants were found there. The second cremation did not contain any objects. The tuffet covered as well burnt animal bones and a horse braincase.
The cult of fire and a complicated custom of female burial remind of Finnish and Chudskoy traditions.
The tuffet No. 140 in urochische Pobedische
N. E. Brandenburg has dug out a tuffet No. 140 in urochische Pobedische. The mound 4,2 meters high was constructed layer by layer as soon as a new burial appear on the principle of a family vault.
The burnt bones and a bronze bell among them, presumably Slavic was found in the upper, latest burial. Although small ringing bells-pendants used to be the favorite jewelry of the eastern Finnish tribes, in the X century the Slaves started wearing them…
Lower Brandenburg discovered a burial different from the Slavic because there were flooring made of big boulders and an urn with the remains of cremation and melted beads. A clay vessel was covered with a stone tile. All these characteristics feature Normannic tradition.
A complicated construction of big stones laid in two-three tiers was found lower. A stone box made of tiles laid inside of it. A big pot with an urn containing the remains of a cremation of a small girl kept inside the box. Such complicated constructions are well known in the burial hills of Scandinavia, Lithuania and of western Slaves…So, it’s difficult to say what language did the parents of the buried girl speak.
The main, lower burial differs from the previous. A stone crown, overlapping a half of the mound foundation surrounds it. There are a triangular stone placing, a fire-place with a hip of coals and the remains of cremation inside of the crown. A dead (most probably a man) was buried with a rich composed belt embellished with bronze plaques. A riding horse was buried together with the man (the bones of the horse preserved). A paw of a bear laid on the death-pile that used to be an amulet connecting the dead with a “master of forest”.
The bear paws, piles with cremations in the burial hills are well known in Priladozhie. The ancient Prussians and some other Baltic and Finnish tribes burnt horses together with their dead masters. The stone crown around the mound is common for the Baltic burials.
Considering the finds the burial in the tuffet No. 140 can be referred to the VIII century. By that time the population of Ladoga was well mixed and the local culture comprised traditions of the different tribes.
A tuffet with a horse burial in urochische Plakun
S. N. Orlov has excavated this tuffet. The mound was destroyed. A skeleton of the horse preserved in a rich decorated bridle with 39 silver plaques. It is a Lithuanian type of a bridle. The fragments of Byzantine or Kievan amphora were found near the tuffet remains. A legend about Oleg the Oracular unconsciously occurs!
A burial of a Varangian in urochische Plakun
In 1971-1973 the archeologists from Leningrad V. Nazarenko and E. Nosov excavated a big tuffet in urichiscge Plakun on the lower berm across the Ground Town. A cremation burial was found at the foundation of the mound. It was age-dated to the VIII-IX centuries according to the objects discovered.
A burial on the Normannic custom was placed later in the upper part of the hill. A dead was not burnt his put in a bark that was put on the tuffet top. The skeletons of the two horses were discovered near the stem of the bark. Everything testifies that a Normannic man was buried in the tuffet very much destroyed by the holes. The objects from Ladoga burial are specifically Varangian: lanceolate arrows, a bone cut dragonhead. The horse hooves are calked because the ancient Scandinavians believed that in an afterworld rider would have to surmount the rocky expanses and endless glaciers of the North.
To the north from urochische Plakun
To the North from urochische Plakun down the bank of Volhov 13 flat burial hills are situated. They have been excavating since 1949 till 1968. The cremations in the barks were found in most of them. It’s a characteristic Swedish Vikings custom known on the burials of the IX-X centuries.
A researcher of Old Ladoga G.Korzuhina referred three female burials found in the lower tuffets to the beginning of the IX century. A Friesian jug and luxurious silver beads were found. The male burials contained armory including bowed spearheads according to Nomannic tradition to harm the arms of a “killed” in order to transfer a dead warrior to the afterworld.
Korzuhina dug out in 1968 in one of the burial hills a cremation in a wooden cell. It is undoubtedly similar with the rich troop burials in Swedish Birke at the end of the IX and X centuries.
The flotilla of the deads
The 7 meters high tuffet towers on the terrace of Plakun stretching right near the water on the right bank down the Volhov from the south to the north passing Novgorod and Ladoga. A bark with a Normannic rider was buried on top of the tuffet. He was laying with his head turned to the north and his feet to the south following the movement direction of the burial bark. A bit far away behind him the burial hills with cremated warriors and the fragments of barks linked like a chain.
«A flotilla of the deads” was most probably left in Ladoga by the Vikings. Female Scandinavian burials testify that the Normanns had populated Ladoga widely if they had an opportunity to bring there their families. According to G. Korzuhina the Scandinavians merged into the population of Ladoga in the beginning of the IX century.
The ground burial with cremations
A burial opened in 1940 to the south from Ground Town is perhaps referred to the time earlier than XV-X centuries. It is situated in the present kitchen gardens of the local citizens, right behind the boulders and bastions of the XV-XVIII centuries.
S. Orlov laid there an exploratory trench. It ran over the small holes filled with the remains of cremations. The burials turned to be covered with an occupation layer of the settlement of the IX-X centuries. The Ugro-Finnish tribes could have left such a ground burial there.
Literature:
- Brandenburg N. E. “The burial hills of southern Priladozhie”// The materials on archeology of Russia, edition No. 18 St. Petersburg, 1895
- Brandenburg N. E. Old Ladoga St. Petersburg, 1896
Bulkin V. A. Ovsyannikov O. V. Down the Neva and Volhov Leningrad, “Isskustvio”, 1981
- Korzuhina G. F. About the time of appearance of the fortified settlement in Ladoga//Sovetskaya arheologia, 1961, No. 3 p. 77
- Lebedev G. S. The archeological monuments of Leningrad region. Leningrad. lenizdat, 1977.
- Platonova N. I. A mediaeval burial at Ground Town of Old Ladoga//Present day and archeology: The international readings dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Old Ladoga archeological expedition. St. Petersburg. 1997. P. 67-70.
author:
E.Korobova
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