Onega petroglyphs
Interesting facts
- In 1935 four pieces of rock carrying carvings were cut from Cape Peri Nos and shipped to the Hermitage; explosives used in the work destroyed some figures.
- The largest slab taken to the Hermitage, crowded with symbolic signs on two faces, is displayed there under the name 'Roof of the World'.
- The carvings entered science in 1848, when Konstantin Grewingk of the Academy of Sciences' Mineralogical Museum recorded about 80 figures on Besov Nos and Peri Nos.
- The first scholarly article on the Besov Nos and Peri Nos images appeared in 1850, written by Pyotr Shved, a teacher at the Petrozavodsk gymnasium.
- In 1934 the Moscow archaeologist Alexander Bryusov led an expedition to document the Onega rock carvings systematically.
- Discoveries keep adding to the count: around 800 figures in 18 groups were known in 1973, against more than 1,100 in about two dozen groups today.
- Some figures lie as much as 2.5 metres above the present water level of the lake.
Why it is worth it
On the low rocky headlands of Lake Onega's eastern shore, just above the waterline, thousands of figures were pecked into the rock some five to six thousand years ago: swans with long necks, elk, fish, boats, people, and strange beings that are half human and half animal. These are the Onega petroglyphs, among the richest collections of prehistoric rock art in Fennoscandia and, since 2021, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Petroglyphs of Lake Onega and the White Sea".
The carvings are spread over about 20 km of shoreline in the Pudozhsky District of Karelia, in some two dozen groups on the capes of Besov Nos, Peri Nos, Kladovets, Gagazhy and Karetsky Nos, on the island of Guri and on the Kochkovnavolok peninsula. Together they number more than a thousand figures and signs, most of them dated to the fourth and third millennia BC. The figures were struck into gently sloping rock to a depth of only a few millimetres, close to the water's edge, and some reach four metres in length. Birds, above all swans, dominate, alongside forest animals, humans and boats; circles and crescent shapes are often read as images of the sun and the moon.
The most celebrated group lies on the cape of Besov Nos, the "Demon's Nose". Its centrepiece is a trio of enigmatic figures: a human-like "demon" more than two metres long, a fish taken for a catfish or burbot, and an otter or lizard. According to local tradition, monks of the nearby Murom Monastery cut a Christian cross over the demon, probably in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, to neutralise its power. The carvings have been studied since the nineteenth century and remain a site of ongoing archaeological expeditions from Karelia and Scandinavia.
Getting there
Besov Nos lies on the eastern shore of Lake Onega, about 90 km from Petrozavodsk across the lake and about 30 km in a straight line from the town of Pudozh. A forest track of about 15 km connects the cape with the village of Karshevo. The nearest airport is Petrozavodsk Airport (PES), about 100 km away across the lake; by road the route runs around the lake through Pudozh.
On these lists
61.67300, 36.02900per Wikidata