One of the most interesting sources of history for the medieval polity of Rus’ (roughly Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus today) are birch-bark letters. As the name implies, these documents were carved into tree bark over the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Over 1200 such documents have been found so far, with about 90% coming from the city of Novgorod.

Unlike chronicles or hagiographies,[1] these documents reflect daily life in Rus’, dealing with topics like business, trade, law, and personal matters. While many are written in Old Slavic, the main spoken language of cities like Novgorod, several include other languages, like German, Latin, and Greek. They are small and biodegradable, so we likely only have a miniscule fraction of the volume of letters that must have existed at some point in the past.

Rus’, like any other medieval place, had slaves. The first birch-bark letters found in Novgorod in the 1950s lay on and around a district called Kholop’ia ulitsa or “Slave Street,” likely due to the presence of a slave market alongside other commercial activities. While slaves themselves sometimes appear in birch-bark letters, there is also evidence that enslaved people were used as messengers to carry letters from senders to recipients.

Due to the fragmentary nature of birch-bark letters, we often only have incomplete bits of sentences. When possible, scholars hypothesize about missing letters and words, but these remain, at best, possible reconstructions. Despite their limitations, the birch-bark letters are an intimate look into the daily lives of ordinary people, including slaves, in the Middle Ages.

[1] A “holy writing” or biographical sketch of the life of a saintly person.

Letter 1 – From Nežila to Semka

Letter 2 – From Polchok[o/a]

Letter 3 – From Zhiznomir to Mikula

Letter 4 – From Tugosha, Voiuta, and Kuz’ma

Discussion Questions

  1. What are the benefits or the drawbacks of using sources like the birch-bark letters to understand the past?
  2. What can these four sources tell us about slavery in medieval Novgorod? Is this a complete picture? If not, what kinds of information are missing?
  3. Whose perspective are most of these letters from? Whose perspective are we missing? How might having that additional information change how we understand this history?

Related Primary Sources

Related Secondary Sources

  • Jos Schaeken, Voices on Birchbark: Everyday Communication in Medieval Russia (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

Themes

Labor, Law, Trade, Women