Re-reading the Birchbark Letter 141 from Novgorod: Where Did Griška and Kosta Go?

Abstract

The article discusses three abnormal word forms in the text of the birchbark letter No. 141: u Ladopgi, Griški and na Movozeri. The first word was previously considered an anthroponym with unusual phonetics and unclear etymology. The second word was the only example in 11th–14th-century Old Russian of a possessive genitive of an isolated a-declined anthroponym. The limnonym Movozero, in its turn, was not found on any geographical maps. The authors demonstrate that the letter П in the first word is written by mistake (syllable omission before the subsequent položile), which gives the reading u Ladogi ‘in Ladoga [city]’. The syntactic phantom disappears if we assume that Griški is the possessive adjective Griški<ne>, again, with the last syllable omitted by mistake. In the third case, one should divide the text into words differently: namo v ozeri. The first and third corrections allow for a more detailed reconstruction of the text’s pragmatics: the fish merchants Griška and Kosta leave their belongings for storage in Ladoga city and go to Ladoga Lake, sending the letter to their Novgorodian relatives who, in the event of merchants’ death, will be able to receive the property specified in the document. If this reconstruction is correct, we can eliminate the grammatical ambivalence of the final verb vъzmete, which should be interpreted as a form of praes. 2 pl.

DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2026.1.10