Kizhi

Kizhi

Last night we were aware of several bumps and strange noises and found that we had passed through six locks during the night. The waterway we have travelled through since leaving Moscow has been very varied, some rivers, some canals and many lakes, some of the lake have been so large that we can’t see land any where around the boat.

After lunch we arrived at Kizhi an island on Lake Onega which contains a number of old wooden churches and buildings, many of which were dismantled and reassembled on the island, however the two big churches were built on the island which is an UNESCO World Heritage site. Kizhi island is about 7 km long and 0.5 km wide. It is surrounded by about 5,000 other islands, most of which are very small.

The Kizhi Pogost, as it is known in Russian, is the area inside the perimeter wall or fence and includes two large wooden churches and a bell-tower. The entire island of Kizhi is a museum with many historically significant and beautiful wooden and log structures including windmills, chapels, boat- and fish-houses, saunas, barns and granaries, and homes.

The most impressive building is the 22-domed Transfiguration Church built in 1714, the massive Transfiguration Church, known as the "summer church" is about 37m tall, making it one of the tallest log structures in the world. The smaller, ten-domed Intercession Church, known as the "winter church" because is could be heated, was built in 1764. The third structure inside the Pogost is the belltower which was built in 1874. The belltower is also constructed with walls of horizontally-fitted logs, though they are covered by exterior wooden planks and cannot be seen. All structures are made of scribe-fitted horizontal logs, with interlocking corner joinery, either round notch or dovetail, cut by axes. The pine trees used for wall construction were brought to Kizhi from the mainland, quite a feat for the 18th century.

A museum of Russian wooden architecture was created in Kizhi by Soviet authorities in 1960. Wooden structures were transported to Kizhi from various parts of the Regiion, notably the 16th century St. Lazarus church from the Muromsky Monastery, which is one of the oldest wooden churches in Russia. Another reconstructed church was built in the 13^th Century and is the oldest wooden church in Russia.

Another old building was a double story peasant home, the bottom story the animal barn and upstairs the living area, workshop and dairy storage room. The workshop contained a boat, fishing nets, horse drawn sleighs and the ramp from outside allowed horses to drags the sleighs up to the second floor. From the house it was a short walk to the sauna on the lake edge but with -30C temperatures in winter; it would have been a chilly run back to the house.

On our way back to the boat we walked up a hill to the cemetery, which contained graves many from the 1800s, some with pictures of the grave’s occupants on the metal crosses.

Shortly after the boat sailed we were invited to the sun deck for mulled wine before dinner, the wine was heated in a samovar and as the day had been chilly it was a pleasant way to warm up.