Novgorod Museum-Reserve Acquires Birch-Bark Manuscript Found in an Old Believer Settlement on the Yenisei

The Novgorod Museum-Reserve has received a manuscript on birch bark, found in an Old Believer settlement on the Yenisei. The twentieth-century manuscript contains excerpts from the “Ladder of Divine Ascent” of John Climacus.

In Siberian villages, letters and books continued to be produced on birch bark right up to the twentieth century, although elsewhere in Russia the tradition had long since passed into history.

The museum's collection already holds hundreds of medieval birch-bark letters, as well as a unique thirteenth-century birch-bark book