Stone of Kolvitsa: a new monument of Russian epigraphy on the Kola peninsula

Epigraphic monuments in the Russian North are isolated and underrepresented in the Russian historiography. In 2018, on Lake Kolvitskoye in the southern part of the Kola Peninsula local residents discovered a unique monument - a small boulder with a Cyrillic inscription. On the flat side of the stone, a neat five-line inscription is carved with a metal tool reading “These are Vyatka’s grandchildren who came here from Peresl”. The purpose of the work is to date and interpret the ancient text using epigraphy techniques and to make some assumptions about the aim of the inscription on the stone. The results of the paleographic analysis suggest that the inscription dates back to the first half of the XV century. By nature, this monument can be attributed to a variety of commemorative inscriptions. It testifies to the relocation of a group of people to the shores of the lake from other territories in the Middle Ages. In the Murmansk region there is another epigraphic monument - a rock with inscriptions dating from the XVI-XVIII centuries located on Bolshoy Anikiyev Island on the Rybachy Peninsula, which had been previously studied by specialists. However, this paper presents the first-of-its-kind special study of the ancient inscriptions of Russian Lapland