Lukomorye - where is it?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Lukomorye is one of the first place names that we recognize in life. It is not found on modern maps, but it is on the maps of the 16th century. Lukomorye is also mentioned in "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" and in Russian folklore.

What does the word "Lukomorye" mean?

The word "lukomorye" sounds mysterious and even fabulous for us, but its etymology is rather prosaic. It comes from the Old Slavonic "luk" and "sea". The word "bow" means bend. Words with the same root with it - "bow", "bend", "bow" (at the saddle). That is, "curved seashore" is translated as a curved coast of the sea, a bay.

Lukomorye near Pushkin

We learn about Lukomorye from the prologue to the first great work of Alexander Pushkin, the poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila". Pushkin describes Lukomorye as a kind of conventionally fabulous place "where Russia smells", where there is an oak tree, memorable to everyone, with a golden chain and a learned cat walking on it.

It is important that the prologue was written already for the second edition of the poem, which was published 8 years after the first edition - in 1828. This can clarify a lot about the origin of the Pushkin Lukomorye.

By this time, Pushkin had already visited southern exile, where, together with the Raevskys, he visited both the Azov Sea and the Crimea. General Raevsky from Gorochevodsk wrote enthusiastically to his daughter Elena: “Here the Dnieper has just crossed its rapids, in the middle of it there are stone islands with a forest, very elevated, the banks are also forest in places; in a word, the views are unusually picturesque, I have seen little on my journey, which I could compare with them."

These landscapes made an indelible impression on a military man. They simply could not help but influence the poet Pushkin.

See also: What is "Lukomorye"

And what about Lukomorye?

However, landscapes are landscapes, but what about Lukomorye? Where did Pushkin get this image, which will go down not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in the subconsciousness of every Russian person?

Source one: Arina Rodionovna

As you know, the plots of several Pushkin's fairy tales were inspired by the poet by his nanny. Literary historian Pushkin scholar Pavel Annenkov wrote that many episodes from Arina Rodionovna's fairy tales are presented by Pushkin in his own way and transferred from work to work. Here is an excerpt from “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, as told by Annenkov: “So, she had a cat:“There is an oak near the seaside, and on that oak there are golden chains, and a cat walks along those chains: it goes up and tells tales, he goes down - he sings songs."

As we can see, the cat walks up and down with Pushkin's nanny, that is, we are dealing with a description of the world tree typical of the Finno-Ugric tradition. The cat here is at the same time the guardian of the border between the worlds, and the mediator between them.

Source of the second: "The Word about Igor's Regiment."

Back in the lyceum years of Pushkin, A. I. Musin-Pushkin published The Lay of Igor's Regiment. The Lay says about Lukomorye:

And the filthy Kobyak from the onion of the sea

from the ironic great pl'kov Polovtsy

like a vortex, vytorzh:

and Kobyak fell in the city of Kiev, in Gridnitsa Svyatoslavli.

In the annals it was reported that the Russians constantly encountered nomads in the southern steppe: "it’s better to stay with them in Luzѣmor as soon as possible."

According to the chronicles, the inhabitants of Lukomorye were the Polovtsians, with whom the Kiev princes were constantly at enmity. Lukomorye was the name of the territory of the Northern Azov region.

This opinion, according to S. A. Pletneva, is confirmed by the fact that “it is possible to trace the Lukomorian Polovtsi by the stone statues (idols) found in the area of the lower Dnieper. They belong to the developed period of Polovtsian sculpture, to the second half of the 12th-early 13th centuries."

Thus, we can say that Lukomorye (which Pushkin glorified) was the bend between the lower course of the Dnieper and the Sea of Azov. Even today, in the toponymy of the Azov region, one can find echoes of this historical memory: the two steppe rivers Bolshoy and Maly Utlyuk. "Utluk" - "Otluk" - "Luka" is translated from Turkic as "pasture, meadow".

What kind of oak tree?

It is also interesting to understand what kind of oak Pushkin described:

“And there I was, and I drank honey;

I saw a green oak by the sea."

Traveling along the Dnieper-Azov steppe during his southern exile, Pushkin could hear from the old-timers the legend about the famous Zaporozhye oak that grew on the island of Khortitsa.

The Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus wrote about him: “Having passed this place, the Russians reach the island of St. Gregory (the island of Khortitsa) and on this island they make their sacrifices, since a huge oak tree grows there. They sacrifice live roosters, stick arrows all around, others bring pieces of bread, meat and what everyone has, as their custom requires."

Already in the 70s of the XIX century, the Zaporozhye local historian Ya. P. Novitsky also mentioned this oak: “Five years ago, the sacred oak withered on the island of Khortytsya. It was branched and of colossal thickness, stood a hundred and fifty fathoms from Ostrov-Khortitskaya colonies.

Read also: Vedic knowledge in the lines of Pushkin, part 1

Where else to look for Lukomorye?

Lukomorye is found not only in chronicles, "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" and Pushkin's poem, but also in Russian folklore. Afanasyev in his work "The Tree of Life" noted that this is how East Slavic mythology called the reserved place on the border of the worlds, where the world tree grows, resting against the underworld and reaching the sky. Karamzin also wrote that the word Lukomorye was used in the meaning of the northern kingdom, where people hibernate for six months, and stay awake for six months.

One way or another, in folklore perception, Lukomorye is a kind of conditional land on the border of the oecumene, most often located in the north.

Lukomorye on maps

Lukomorye could be considered a historical and semi-fabulous anachronism, if not for the Western European maps of the 16th-17th centuries, on which the location of the Lukomorye is precisely determined.

Both on the maps of Mercator (1546), and on the maps of Gondius (1606), as well as on the maps of Massa, Cantelli and Witsen, the territory on the right (eastern) bank of the Ob Bay is called Lukomorye.

European cartographers themselves have not been to these places. Most likely, when drawing up the maps, they relied on the description of this area by travelers, in particular Sigismund Herberstein. He gave it in "Notes on Muscovy": "in the mountains on the other side of the Ob", "From the Lukomorsk mountains flows the river Kossin. Together with this river, another river Kassima originates, and having flowed through Lukomoria, flows into the large river Takhnin."

Nicholas Witsen, who published his Carte Novelle de la Tartarie in the 18th century, had graphic material at his disposal. On his map, the length of the Gulf of Ob corresponds to reality, and therefore "Lucomoria" is the designation of the Gulf of the Kara Sea itself. In Russian historical cartography there was no toponym "Lukomorye", but it is obvious that Western European cartographers recognized Lukomorye as the ancient name of the Ob Bay.