Mountains of the Solovetsky Islands. Solovetsky Archipelago (Solovki)

In 2002, Russian scientists confirmed the possibility of the artificial origin of Sekirnaya Mountain. Although the basis of the elevation is glacial deposits, there is reason to believe that on top it is actually supplemented with embankments of artificial origin.

View of Sekirnaya Mountain. At the top of it stands Orthodox church. There are no other high mountains on Solovki

The most high mountain Solovetsky archipelago - Sekirnaya (its second name is Chudova Gora). The name “Sekirnaya” is associated with the legend of a miracle that happened here: two angels at the foot of the mountain whipped the wife of a Pomor, who was fishing and cutting hay on the Solovetsky Islands, but did not allow the monks to do this. The name supposedly comes from the word “flogged”.

The name of Mount Sekirnaya should have come not from the word “cut”, but from “axe” (medieval battle axe). It turns out that the angels were supposed to kill the Pomor's wife not with axes, but with battle axes.

- You are a supporter of the version of the artificial origin of Sekirnaya Mountain. Why?

The islands of the Solovetsky archipelago are flat, as if ironed by a glacier. High mountains look like artificial formations on them. On Bolshoi Solovetsky Island, Mount Sekirnaya (or Sekirka) is the highest, its height is almost 100 meters. The huge sand and stone mounds of the Solovetsky Mountains were first described by local historians in the 30s of the twentieth century.

But scientists could not explain where such a high mountain could have appeared on the flat islands. It has been suggested that Sekirka was partly created by a glacier and partly a pyramid of boulders, which was built several thousand years ago by the ancient people who inhabited the shores Arctic Ocean and the White Sea.

If the ancient Solovetsky Mountain is a pyramid, where did it get its original Russian name? Why did the monks need such a strange legend about angels?

There are doubts that the name of the mountain was originally Slavic. After all, the word “Nightingales,” although consonant with “nightingales,” has nothing to do with them: nightingales have never been found in the Arctic Circle. The monks used the legend of the angels as “proof” that Solovetsky Island should belong to the monastery, and not to the indigenous inhabitants.

In fact, archaeologists have confirmed that the Solovetsky archipelago belonged to the inhabitants of the White Sea region thousands of years before the arrival of the first monks. The Novgorodians called these White Sea tribes “Chudyu”, and the local peoples, the Nenets, called them “Sikirtya”.

- What does the name of the people “Sikhirtya” mean, what did it have to do with the pyramid mounds?

Mention of the Sikitrya people is found in the Tale of Bygone Years. Translated from ancient language"skhrt" or "skrd" is an artificial embankment of an elongated shape. The word "stack" has the same root. A stack is an artificial mountain made of elongated hay.

But a stack can be made not only of hay, so a version arose that “shrt” is a form of primitive bulk prehistoric dwelling, like a giant stack of grass, moss and branches in which our ancient ancestors lived. The same ancient root stem "skrt" is in the word "hide". After all, the main function of a home is to hide from the cold and wild animals. People who lived in such primitive dwellings were called hermits, and in the north - sikirtya.

The first chronicle information from the Novgorodians about the Donenet cave population of the north (the Nenets came to the territory of the Pechora tundra because of Ural ridge only in the 13th-14th centuries) confirm that the tribes who lived there did not know iron and lived in caves.

But in the flat Pechora tundra there are practically no mountains in which such caves can be found today, and even for cavemen to live in them...

Such “mountains” of the ancient cave people could only be artificial mounds-dwellings - huge stack houses made of peat and moss. Then it is clear why, after a thousand years, practically nothing remained of them - they turned into ordinary small hills among the flat landscape of the tundra. From time to time, archaeologists find traces of Donetsk civilization in the tundra - bronze and stone tools, jewelry.

-Are there any traces of the dwellings of the Sikitrya people left?

Remained: back in the 19th century, Academician Lepekhin wrote: “the entire Samoyed land in the current Mezen district is filled with desolate dwellings of a certain people. They are found in many places, near lakes on the tundra and in forests near rivers, made in the mountains and hills like caves with similar holes beast.

In these caves they find ovens and find fragments of iron, copper and clay household items." And as for the stone bulk mountains, like Sekirnaya, these are no longer houses made of peat and moss for living people, but houses of the dead, pyramids made of stones .

Thus, stone mountains on Solovki - nothing more than monuments ancient civilization. Our researchers have a lot of work to do to study the history hidden in the ground.

Anatoly RUKSHA

"Belomorye Courier" 19(166)

Mount Golgotha

Anzer Island is located in the northern part of the Solovetsky Islands archipelago (Yandex maps)

We landed in the west of the island near Cape Kenga and walked around the island on foot for almost 9 kilometers to Kaporskaya Bay, where the same boat was later waiting for us.

Landing at Cape Kenga (Yandex maps) Foundation of the chapel in honor of the image of the Virgin Mary of All Who Sorrow.
Time 19:45

It used to be like this.

Now there are no piers on the island, so you have to go ashore from small boats or boats.
Captain kodola

Worship crosses on the shore

Coastal tundra quickly turns into forest

The road winds next to many lakes

Partially swampy, so boots are a good idea.

After about 2.5 kilometers we approach the Holy Trinity Skete (Yandex maps)

The Holy Trinity Monastery was founded at the beginning of the 17th century. Before this, only fishermen lived on the island and there was a monastery saltworks.

Attempts at restoration or conservation are visible.

official website of the monastery http://stskit.ru

But inside everything is sad...

Until 1683, the monastery did not organizationally belong to the monastery.
“The inhabitants of the monastery (17 people) received a salary for food and church needs. There was not enough money to maintain the monastery, the monks suffered hardships.”

The Znamenskaya Chapel stands directly above a small water canal between lakes with walls reinforced with large stones.

A worship cross on the site of the Eleazar Hermitage and a staircase leading to the chapel. It is argued that it is incorrect, because. it depicts Jesus Christ, which is not typical for northern worship crosses.

Chapel on the site of the first settlement of Eleazar of Anzer.

“Eleazar, captivated by the location, settled near a lake called “Round.” His first task was to erect a wooden cross, made by himself, near which he built a wretched hut.”

After 6 kilometers of the journey we approach Mount Golgotha.
Worship cross in memory of the new martyrs and confessors of Solovetsky.

There is a view of the Golgotha-Crucifixion Monastery, standing on the top of Mount Golgotha

As we climb, we pass by a birch-cross. “After all the crosses were destroyed on Solovki, a birch tree in the shape of a cross grew on Mount Golgotha near the Church of the Crucifixion.”

The Mother of God who appeared: “Name this mountain Golgotha, because over time it will have to suffer a lot and become an innumerable cemetery. On the top of the mountain, build a temple in the name of the Crucifixion of My Son. I will remain in this place forever.”
IN Soviet time a hospital was set up in the temple for the dying camp prisoners, exhausted by torture and overwork...

Even official church websites say that Mount Golgotha is the most high place Solovkov. But it is only 64 meters high. And the highest is Mount Verbokolskaya (height 86 meters). And Sekirnaya Mountain is also higher.

Bolshoi Solovetsky Island is visible in the distance.

We continue our way to Kaporskaya Bay.
On the shore of the Holy Golgotha Lake.

There are wooden roads like this.

Worship cross on the shore of Kaporskaya Bay. (

Many mysteries of Egypt are still not solved. Our northern land also keeps many secrets related to... pyramids

The name of the highest mountain of the Solovetsky archipelago, Sekirnaya (its second name is Chudova Gora), is usually associated with the legend of a miracle that happened here - two angels at its foot whipped the wife of a local Pomor, who was fishing and mowing hay on the Solovetsky Islands. The name supposedly comes from the word “flogged”.

Man-made mountain

You are one of the supporters of the version of the artificial origin of Sekirnaya Mountain, how do you justify this?

It is no secret that the islands of the Solovetsky archipelago are flat, they seem to have been ironed by a glacier, so the high mountains on them look like artificial formations. Highest point on the Bolshoy Solovetsky Island is Mount Sekirnaya (or Sikirnaya, Sikirka) with a height of almost 100 meters. The huge sand and stone mounds of the Solovetsky Mountains were first described by the Solovetsky Society of Local Lore only in the 30s of the twentieth century. But scientists then were unable to convincingly explain where such a high mountain could have appeared on flat islands among plains, swamps and small hills. Even then, scientists assumed that the highest mountain of the Solovetsky archipelago, Sekirnaya, was partly created by a glacier, and partly was a pyramid of boulders, built several thousand years ago by ancient people who inhabited the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the White Sea.

In August 2002, geological and geomorphological studies by Russian scientists confirmed the possibility of the artificial origin of Sikirka. Although the elevation itself (the base of the pyramid) was formed by glacial deposits, there is reason to say that from above it was actually supplemented with embankments of artificial origin.

Look to the root

Ivan Ivanovich, but where then does the original Russian name of the ancient Solovetsky mountain come from, if this ancient pyramid? And why did the monks need such a strange legend about angels?

There are big doubts that the name of the mountain was originally Russian, Slavic. After all, the toponym Solovki itself, despite the consonance of this name with the Russian word “nightingales,” has nothing to do with these birds, which have never been found here, beyond the Arctic Circle. And the legend about angels who allegedly expelled local fishermen from Solovki was used by monks for centuries as indisputable “proof” that Solovetsky Island should belong to the monastery, and not to the indigenous inhabitants. However, archaeological data indicate that the Solovetsky archipelago, thousands of years before the arrival of the first monks, belonged to the inhabitants of the White Sea region and served them as a sanctuary for the performance of ancient religious rites. The Novgorodians called these White Sea tribes of the Protopomorians Chudya, and the local peoples, for example, the Nenets, called them Sikirtya.

How can one prove that Mount Sekirnaya comes from a non-Slavic root and is connected with the Sikirtya or Chud people?

If the name of the mountain Si-kirnaya (Sikirka, Chudova) is of pre-Slavic origin, then on the map of Pomerania you need to look for a toponymic series of consonant mountain names. And we really find it: at the mouth of the Pomeranian river Korotaikha we discover Mount Sikhirtesya (translated from Nenets - mountain of the Sikirtya people). And on west coast Vaygach Island we find the high cape Sikirtesale (translated as Cape Sikirtya). Moreover, archaeological evidence has been found on all these mountains that they served as ancient sanctuaries. Thus, the Solovetsky mountain Sikirka, apparently, is from the same toponymic series - one of the sacred mountains ancient people sikirtya (chudi). By the way, the mentioned sacred mountain at the mouth of the Korotaikha River, Sikhirtesya, just like the Solovetsky Mountain Sekirnaya has a second historical name - Chudova Mountain! It is unlikely that such a toponymic coincidence could be accidental.

A lost civilization is nearby

What does the name of the Sikhirtya people mean? And what did these people have to do with the pyramid mounds?

The answer to this is given by the ancient Indo-European root stems, consisting of the consonant sounds skhrt (skrd, skrt), which, upon comparative semantic analysis, reveal much in common. In fact, skhrt or skrd translated from the ancient proto-language means “an artificial embankment of an elongated shape.” For example, this root is still found today in such a well-known word as rick. So, a haystack literally means an artificially created mountain of hay that has an elongated shape. But the stack can be made not only of hay.

Based on linguistic analysis, a version arose that “shrt” is a form of primitive bulk prehistoric dwelling, like a giant stack of grass, moss and branches in which our ancient ancestors lived. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that the same ancient root basis “skrt” is contained in the word “hide”, which corresponds to the purpose of the structure, because the main function of the dwelling is to hide from the cold or wild animals. The same ancient stem "skrt" is also found in the Latin word "secret", which is equivalent to the word hide. Terms with the same root basis, despite the reduced letter “r”, obviously include the word denoting a primitive dwelling “skete”. People who lived in such primitive dwellings were called hermits, and in the north they were called sikirtya (skhirtya, siirte).

It is curious that the first chronicles of the Novgorodians about the Donetsk cave population of the north (the Nenets came to the territory of the Pechora tundra from behind the Ural ridge only in the 13th-14th centuries) indicate that the tribes living there did not know iron and lived in caves. By the way, the Novgorodians themselves on this northern people fishermen and hunters of wild deer and sea animals (apparently, the ancestors of the current Mezen and Kanin Pomors) were brought out by representatives of other Finno-Ugric tribes of Ugra and Samoyed who have disappeared today. The name Pechora suggests that they really were cave people.

My home is my pyramid

But in the flat Pechora tundra there are practically no mountains in which such caves can be found today, and even for cavemen to live in them...

You are right: such “mountains” of the ancient cave people could only have been artificial mounds-dwellings - huge stack houses made of peat and moss. In this case, it is clear why, after a thousand years, practically nothing remained of such dwellings and the “caves” dug in them - they turned into ordinary, not very large hills among the flat landscape of the tundra. But surely there are preserved in the land of these hills archaeological artifacts. And from time to time, archaeologists find traces of Donetsk civilization in the tundra - bronze and stone tools, jewelry.

What is the Novgorod chronicle and what exactly does it write about the Sikirtya people, who lived in such bulk houses-stacks?

This description can be found in the Tale of Bygone Years, in its Laurentian list, where there is a story by the Novgorod boyar Gyurata Rogovich, whose youth went to Ugra and Samoyad in the 11th century. I will quote him almost verbatim: “The Yugra tribe told my youth about a miracle, which they themselves heard about only three years ago: near the sea bays there are huge mountains, almost reaching the sky. In these mountains you can hear screams and talking, “and they cut the mountain wanting to be cut out.” ". And in that mountain there is a small window cut through for negotiations. They do not understand the language and explain with gestures that they need iron. And they pay those who give them a knife or ax with skins."

Are there really no traces of the dwellings of these cave people left?

Traces, of course, remained: back in the century before last, Academician I.I. Lepyokhin wrote: “The entire Samoyed land in the current Mezen district is filled with desolate dwellings of a certain people. They are found in many places, near lakes on the tundra and in forests near rivers, made in the mountains and hills like caves with openings like animals. In these caves they find stoves and they find fragments of iron, copper and clay household items."

And as for the stone bulk mountains, like Sekirnaya (the large Solovetsky Island), Sikirtesale (on the western coast of Vaigach Island), Mount Sikhirtesya (at the mouth of the Korotaikha River) - these are no longer the same residential buildings made of peat and moss intended for living people, and the houses of the dead, pyramids made of stones.

Thus, these stone mountains “stacks” are monuments to the ancient civilization of the early pro-topomorians, who thousands of years ago mastered the expanses of the ancient Arctic long before the current indigenous inhabitants of the North arrived here. And our researchers still have a lot of work to do to study this history hidden in the earth.

Back in 2002, Russian scientists confirmed the possibility of the artificial origin of Sekirnaya Mountain - the one located on the Solovetsky archipelago.

Although the elevation is based on glacial deposits, there is every reason to believe that on top it is actually supplemented with embankments of artificial origin, that is, all this is the work of human hands.

About hills and mounds

It's no secret that on the numerous islands and islets of the Solovetsky archipelago there are hills and mountains of completely different heights. So, Sekirnaya Mountain is perhaps the highest mountain on the entire Bolshoi Solovetsky Island. This mountain also has another, more euphonious name - Chudova Gora.

Let us return to the more established name – Sekirnaya. So, it was named in memory of the angels. The essence of the myth is that once upon a time angels descended from heaven and flogged the wife of a fisherman, the wife of a Pomor. According to legend, the Monks Savvaty and Herman lived and lived near this apparently still nameless mountain.

In the summer, fishermen and their wives came to the foot. The husbands, as expected, fished, while the wives mowed the grass and ran the household. Why the Pomors disliked the Monks Savvaty and Herman, history is silent. But a conflict broke out between them and the fishermen. I repeat that this happened in ancient times and, as often happens in the myths of any people, heavenly forces intervened in the situation - in our case, angels in the form of blond youths.

The latter took and flogged one of the fishermen's wives with rods, and ordered them to reel in the fishing rods as best they could. And that, they say, this island with a mountain in addition belongs to the monks for prayers... It was not possible to argue with the angels, so the fishermen left this island and henceforth began to treat the monks with respect.

Ancient people tried

This is where questions arise related to the name of this mountain. Judging by the legend, the name “Sekirnaya” supposedly comes not from the word “sect”, but from “axe” - the name of a medieval battle ax. It turns out that the angels were supposed to kill the Pomor's wife not with axes, but with battle axes. It’s somehow tough, especially for angels.

It is known that the islands of the Solovetsky archipelago are flat, as if ironed by a glacier. The high mountains look strange on them, as if they were artificial formations. On Bolshoi Solovetsky Island, Mount Sekirnaya (or Sekirka) is the highest, its height is almost one hundred meters. Where does she get to this kind of plateau?

Let us note that the huge sand and stone mounds of the Solovetsky Mountains were first described by local historians in the 30s of the last century. But scientists then could not explain where such a high mountain could have appeared on the flat islands. It has been suggested that Sekirka was partly created by a glacier and partly a pyramid of boulders, which was built several thousand years ago by ancient people who inhabited the shores of the Arctic Ocean and the White Sea.

Nightingales do not sing on Solovki

Of course, the question arises: if the ancient Solovetsky Mountain is a pyramid, where did it get its original Russian name? And why did the monks need such a strange legend about angels? In fact, there are doubts that the name of the mountain was originally Slavic. After all, the word “Nightingales,” although consonant with “nightingales,” has nothing to do with them - nightingales have never been found in the Arctic Circle.

Well, the monks used the legend of the angels as proof that Solovetsky Island should belong to the monastery, and not to the indigenous inhabitants. In addition, archaeologists have confirmed that the Solovetsky archipelago belonged to the inhabitants of the White Sea region thousands of years before the arrival of the first monks. The Novgorodians called these White Sea tribes “Chudya”, and the established local Nenets called them “Sikirtya”.

Moss stack

Mention of the Sikitrya people is found in the Tale of Bygone Years. Translated from the ancient language, “skhrt” or “skrd” is an artificial embankment of an elongated shape. The word “stack” has the same root. A stack is an artificial hay stack of elongated shape. But a stack can be made not only of hay, so a version arose that “shrt” is a form of primitive bulk prehistoric dwelling, like a giant stack of grass, moss and branches in which our ancient ancestors lived.

The same ancient root stem “skrt” is in the word “hide”. After all, the main function of a home is to hide from the cold and wild animals. People who lived in such primitive dwellings were called hermits, and in the North - sikirtya.

The first chronicle information from the Novgorodians about the Donenets cave population of the north (the Nenets came to the territory of the Pechora tundra from behind the Ural Range only in the 13th–14th centuries) confirms that the tribes who lived there did not know iron and lived in caves.

Cave people

But the question reasonably arises that in the flat Pechora tundra there are practically no mountains in which such caves can be found today, and even for cavemen to live in them. Perhaps such “mountains” of the ancient cave people could only be artificial mounds-dwellings - huge stack houses made of peat and moss.

Only then does it become clear why, after a thousand years, practically nothing remained of them - they turned into ordinary small hills among the flat tundra landscape. By the way, archaeologists periodically find traces of Donetsk civilization in the tundra - bronze and stone tools, jewelry.

It is worth saying that traces of the dwellings of the Sikitrya people also remained. Back in the 19th century, Academician Lepekhin wrote: “the entire Samoyed land in the current Mezen district is filled with desolate dwellings of a certain people. They are found in many places, near lakes on the tundra and in forests near rivers, they are made in the mountains and hills like caves with openings similar to animals. In these caves, stoves are found and fragments of iron, copper and clay household items are found.”

As for the stone bulk mountains, like Sekirnaya, these are no longer houses made of peat and moss for living people, but houses of the dead - pyramids made of stones. Thus, the stone mountains on Solovki are nothing more than monuments of ancient civilization. Our researchers have a lot of work to do to study the history hidden in the ground.