Peryn- Slavic LocationLocation · Landmark

The Fires on the Promontory

Four kilometers south of Novgorod, a promontory juts into Lake Ilmen where the Volkhov River begins its northward course. On this windswept height, priests of Perun kept eight fires burning in petal-shaped pits arranged around a towering wooden idol. The post stood at the center. The flames radiated outward like the spokes of a wheel. Sedov's excavations in the 1950s uncovered the charred remains of these pits, each blackened deep from sustained burning, night after night, season after season.

The Primary Chronicle records that in 980, when Prince Vladimir of Kiev raised idols to the old gods across his realm, Novgorod received its own image of Perun. The site already bore his name. Whatever stood there before Vladimir's idol, the promontory had belonged to the thunder god long enough for the land itself to remember.

The Idol in the River

Eight years later, Vladimir accepted baptism and ordered the old gods torn down. In Novgorod, Bishop Joachim carried out the work. The Novgorod First Chronicle describes how Perun's idol was dragged from the promontory and thrown into the Volkhov. The current carried it downstream.

On the cleared hilltop, monks raised the Peryn Skete. Stone walls went up where the fire pits had been. The monastery still stands on the promontory today, a thousand years after the last flame went out. But the place kept the old god's name. No amount of consecrated ground could make the people call it anything else.