Faith · Art · Ethnography

The Annunciation in Holy Week, the fasting rules and the rare Kyriopascha

This year the Annunciation coincides with Holy Week and falls on one of the most demanding days of the Lenten liturgical year. Such a coincidence is rare, but not unheard of. What is truly exceptional is another matter: when the Annunciation falls exactly on Easter Day, it is called Kyriopascha,

Art · Ethnography · Humour

The sixteenth-century Flemish painting "The Legend of the Baker of Eeklo" tells a diverting folk tale about the inhabitants of the town of Eeklo, dissatisfied with their faces or their wits, who turned to the local baker for correction

But for the correction to be made, the unsuccessful head first had to be severed from the body, washed, dusted with flour and basted with egg yolks, and then slid into the oven on a baker's peel. In the meantime, a cabbage head was set in place of

Ethnography · Humour

One fool can throw a stone into the water that ten wise men cannot fish out

Russian proverb

Faith · Art · Ethnography

A Lithuanian Girl with a Willow Branch on Palm Sunday

By the Polish-Lithuanian artist Kanuty Rusiecki, 1840s. A reminder that Palm Sunday, the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem, falls this year on 5 April, and Holy Easter on 12 April. Two weeks of Great Lent remain.

NB! · Archive · Mores · Ethnography

Peasants of Saint Petersburg Governorate in a Two-Wheeled Cart in the 1860s

Peasants of Saint Petersburg Governorate in a two-wheeled cart in the 1860s. One of the oldest photographs of the Russian countryside, unfortunately by an unknown author

Books · Ethnography

An Old Woman Went Off to Sell Her Milk, and the Village Was Far from the Market

An old woman went off to sell her milk, The village was far from the market. The old woman grew tired and, her business done, Lay down to doze by the very roadside. A merry puppy came up to the old woman, Seized her by the skirt and tore her

Archive · Faith · Books · Ethnography

Semeyskie Old Believers in Transbaikalia in memoirs recorded by Sergey Maksimov

The treasury did not help our grandfathers. An official brought them to the place. They began to ask him: where are we to live? – he pointed to the mountains... They began to press him: what are we to live on? The official said: “Why, when you start felling timber, the

Books · Ethnography

He drank his fill of misfortunes, and grew drunk on tears

Russian proverb

A huge wooden panel with a geometric pattern of slats in a tall atrium, with a lone person walking below.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Ethnography

Birch wood panel “Mother Earth” by Sámi artist Outi Pieski in the atrium of the government building in Oslo

The 51-metre panel "Mother Earth", made of birch wood and installed in the atrium of the new government building in Oslo. The panel's creator is the Finnish-born, renowned Sámi artist Outi Pieski

Archive · Books · Museums · Ethnography

Ryazan Kosobryukhie in an 1898 Photograph and Dal and Sakharov on the Nickname

There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies". What on earth are these slanting-bellies? Saltykov-Shchedrin writes of the slanting-bellies in "

Archive · Books · Ethnography

A Nenets Girl with a Book

Konstantin Dorokhov, 1938

Archive · Observations · Mores · Education · Ethnography

Shrovetide celebrations at a kindergarten in Malakhovka

Children with plastic bags on their heads play at being snowballs. This put me in mind of Shrovetide at my own kindergarten, and the chief impression it left: a strange bewilderment that nobody could properly explain what sort of holiday it was, or why someone had to be burned. I