Rurik’s hillfort

The hill on the right bank of the Volkhov River near the Lake Ilmen has attracted people since ancient times. Here was a Slavic settlement in the 7th — 8th centuries. In 850-900 we can see here the fortified shipwaves of the Vikings, the stronghold, which would be connected with the legend about Rurik’s arriving in 862.

Historians associate the settlement with the history of the route «from the Varangians to the Greeks». May be it was town named Holgard of the Scandinavian sagas. The name «Rurik’s hillfort» was produced later, in the 19th century in the local Novgorodian literature. However, the prince Rurik could well have been in Ladoga and Holmgard.

At the end of the 10th century the role of the settlement was decreasing — the center of local life is moving to the north, to the place of modern Detinets. A new urban center, Novgorod, appeared here. At the beginning of the 11th century Prince Yaroslav Vladimirovich (the future Yaroslav the Wise) moves his residence to the bank of the river Volhov opposite Detinets — to the so-called Yaroslav’s courtyard. Thus, the prince moved closer to the center of Novgorod, and the Rurik’s hillfort falls into decay. However, already at the end of the 11th century the Novgorod princes again prefer to live on the Rurik’s hillfort, and after Novgorod gained independence in 1136, the settlement became the residence of local princes, who were invited to reign.

The last time the settlement was the residence of the princes in difficult days for Novgorod. Grand Prince Ivan III stood here in 1477—1478 with the troops during the annexation of Novgorod and the liquidation of the independence of the Novgorod Republic. In 1569 Ivan the Terrible during the famous «Novgorod execution» stood here too.

The Rurik’s hillfort is one of the symbolic places of Russian history, which can be directly connected with the first steps of the ancient Russian statehood and the first Russian princes. Today, nothing has survived on the settlement from those times, except for traces of medieval ramparts and a landscape distorted by time (in 1804 the territory was destroyed by the Sivers Canal, which was laid right along the ancient fortress).

More fotos

Tags: castles and fortresses, before 13 century, The struggle for the Baltic until the 13th century, By the Vikings' Route