Pyrnya shonko ogol.
Olga Lyapaeva's film "The Corner of Old Logs" explores the distinctive culture of ancient Merovia and the pagan and folk-Christian traditions of nature worship among the Nizhny Novgorod Vetlugai.
Who are the Vetlugai?
Did you know that from the 12th to the 15th centuries, for three hundred years (!), the Vetluga Mari Principality existed in the area between the Pizhma and Vetluga rivers in what is now the Nizhny Novgorod region. One of its princes, the Kuguza Kai Khlynovsky, had written peace treaties with Alexander Nevsky and the khans of the Golden Horde. And in the fourteenth century, the Kuguza Osh Pandash united the tribal nobility, won over the Tatars, and, during the Nineteen Years' War, defeated the Galich-Mer Prince Andrei Fyodorovich. In 1372, the Vetluzhskaya Principality became completely independent.
The land of the Vetluzhskaya Principality has its own historical name: Merovia. Merovia is the name of the territory bounded by the Volga, Unzha, and Vetluga rivers. It is an ethnonym. After the development of the Vladimir-Suzdal statehood and the accompanying Christianization of the population, the Finno-Ugric ethnic group of the Merya was partially displaced from the territories of today's Vladimir, Ivanovo, and Yaroslavl regions, some Merya retreated beyond the Volga to the area between the Unzha and Vetluga rivers, called Merovia. There are references to this in legends circulating in Rostov the Great and in the modern Mari territories of the Nizhny Novgorod Region and Mari El, albeit from a rather later period.
Later, in the 16th-18th centuries, the Russification (baptism) of the Meri continued in these territories, and some of them moved further east to Zavetluzhye, where they merged with the related Mari ethnic group. This formed the basis for the formation of the northwestern group of this people in the modern-day Voskresensky, Tonkinsky, Tonshaevsky, and Sharangsky districts of the Nizhny Novgorod Region. In Merovia, there are place names reminiscent of the Meri, such as Maura, Merinovo, and others.
The film was produced with the support of the Committee for Nature Conservation and Nature Management of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Dront Ecological Center, and the television project "For Those Whose Soul Never Sleeps."
Olga Lyapaeva (C)