Russian hut: where and how our ancestors built the huts, the device and decor, elements of the hut, videos, riddles and proverbs about the hut and reasonable management household.

"Oh, what a mansion!" - so often we now talk about a spacious new apartment or a summer residence. We speak without thinking about the meaning of this word. After all, mansions are an ancient peasant dwelling, consisting of several buildings. What kind of mansions did the peasants have in their Russian huts? How was the Russian traditional hut arranged?

In this article:

- where were the huts built before?
- attitude to the Russian hut in Russian folk culture,
- the device of the Russian hut,
- decoration and decor of the Russian hut,
- Russian stove and red corner, male and female halves of the Russian house,
- elements of the Russian hut and peasant household (dictionary),
- proverbs and sayings, signs about the Russian hut.

Russian hut

Since I am from the north and grew up in the White Sea, I will show in the article photographs of northern houses. And as an epigraph to my story about the Russian hut, I chose the words of D.S.Likhachev:

“Russian North! It is difficult for me to express in words my admiration, my admiration for this land. When for the first time, as a boy of thirteen, I drove through the Barents and White Seas, along the Northern Dvina, visited the Pomors, in peasant huts, listened to songs and fairy tales, looked at these unusually beautiful people, behaved simply and with dignity, I was completely overwhelmed. It seemed to me that this is the only way to really live: measured and easy, working and getting so much satisfaction from this work ... In the Russian North there is an amazing combination of the present and the past, modernity and history, the watercolor lyricism of water, earth, sky, the formidable power of stone , storms, cold, snow and air "(DS Likhachev. Russian culture. - M., 2000. - S. 409-410).

Where were the huts built before?

A favorite place for the construction of a village and the construction of Russian huts was the bank of a river or lake... At the same time, the peasants were guided by practicality - the proximity to the river and the boat as a means of transportation, but also by aesthetic reasons. From the windows of the hut, standing on a high place, beautiful view to the lake, forests, meadows, fields, as well as to your yard with barns, to a bathhouse near the river.

Northern villages are visible from afar, they were never located in the lowlands, always on the hills, near the forest, near the water on the high bank of the river, became the center of a beautiful picture of the unity of man and nature, fit organically into the surrounding landscape. At the highest place, they usually built a church and a bell tower in the center of the village.

The house was built thoroughly, "for centuries", the place for it was selected high enough, dry, protected from cold winds - on a high hill. They tried to locate villages where there was fertile land, rich meadows, forest, river or lake. The huts were erected in such a way that a good driveway and approach would be provided to them, and the windows were facing “for the summer” - on the sunny side.

In the north, they tried to place the houses on the southern slope of the hill, so that its top would reliably cover the house from violent cold northern winds. The south side will always warm well, and the house will be warm.

If we consider the location of the hut on the site, then they tried to place it closer to its northern part. The house covered the garden part of the plot from the wind.

In terms of the orientation of the Russian hut in the sun (north, south, west, east) there was also a special structure of the village. It was very important that the windows of the residential part of the house were located in the direction of the sun. For better illumination of houses in rows, they were staggered relative to each other. All houses on the streets of the village "looked" in one direction - at the sun, at the river. From the window one could see the sunrises and sunsets, the movement of ships along the river.

A safe place for the construction of a hut was considered a place where cattle lay down to rest. After all, cows were considered by our ancestors as a fertile life-giving force, because the cow was often the breadwinner of the family.

They tried not to build houses in the swamps or near them, these places were considered "cold", and the harvest on them often suffered from frosts. But a river or lake near the house is always good.

Choosing a place to build a house, the men wondered - they used an experiment. Women have never participated in it. They took sheep's wool. She was placed in an earthen pot. And left for the night at the site of the future home. The result was considered positive if the wool became damp in the morning. This means that the house will be rich.

There were other fortune-telling - experiments. For example, in the evening they left chalk overnight at the site of the future house. If the chalk attracted ants, it was considered a good sign. If ants do not live on this earth, then better home do not put here. The result was checked in the morning the next day.

They began to cut down the house in early spring (Great Lent) or in other months of the year on the new moon. If a tree is cut down on the waning moon, then it will quickly rot, which is why there was such a ban. There were also more stringent prescriptions for the day. The forest began to be harvested from the winter Nikola, from December 19. The best time for harvesting a tree, December - January was considered, after the first frost, when excess moisture comes out of the trunk. Dry trees or trees with outgrowths, trees that fell to the north during felling were not cut down for the house. These beliefs related specifically to trees; other materials were not furnished with such norms.

They did not build houses on the site of houses burned by lightning. It was believed that Ilya, the prophet, strikes places of evil spirits with lightning. They also did not build houses where there was a bathhouse before, where someone was injured with an ax or a knife, where human bones were found, where there used to be a bathhouse, or where a road used to pass, where some kind of misfortune happened, for example, a flood.

Attitude to the Russian hut in folk culture

The house in Russia had many names: hut, hut, terem, holupy, mansions, khoromina and temple. Yes, don't be surprised - the temple! Mansions (huts) were equated with a temple, because a temple is also a house, the House of God! And in the hut there was always a saint, a red corner.

The peasants treated the house as a living being. Even the names of parts of the house are similar to the names of parts of the human body and his world! This is a feature of the Russian house - "human", that is anthropomorphic names of parts of the hut:

• The brow of the hut Is her face. The fronton of the hut and the outer opening in the oven could be called a forehead.
• Prichina- from the word "brow", that is, decoration on the forehead of the hut,
• Platbands- from the word "face", "on the face" of the hut.
• Ochelye- from the word "eyes", window. This was the name of a part of the female headdress, the same was the name of the window decoration.
• Forehead- that was the name of the frontal board. There were also "head-pieces" in the construction of the house.
• Heel, foot- that was the name of a part of the doors.

There were also zoomorphic names in the structure of the hut and the courtyard: "bulls", "hens", "horse", "crane" - a well.

The word "hut" comes from the ancient Slavic "istba". A heated dwelling house was called "istboyu, a sinkhole" (and a "cage" is an unheated blockhouse of a dwelling house).

The house and the hut were living models of the world for people. The house was that secret place in which people expressed their ideas about themselves, about the world, built their world and their lives according to the laws of harmony. Home is a part of life and a way to connect and shape your life. Home is a sacred space, an image of the family and homeland, a model of the world and human life, a person's connection with the natural world and with God. A house is a space that a person builds with his own hands, and which is with him from the first to the last days of his life on Earth. Building a house is a repetition of the Creator's work by a person, because a human dwelling, according to the ideas of the people, is a small world, created according to the rules of the “big world”.

By the appearance of the Russian house, it was possible to determine the social status, religion, nationality of its owners. In one village there were no two completely identical houses, because each hut carried an individuality and reflected the inner world of the clan living in it.

For a child, the house is the first model of the external big world, he “feeds” and “raises” the child, the child “absorbs” from the house the laws of life in the big adult world. If a child grew up in a bright, cozy, kind home, in a house in which order reigns, then this is how the child will continue to build his life. If there is chaos in the house, then chaos in the soul and in the life of a person. From childhood, the child mastered the system of ideas about his home - izle and its structure - the mother, the red corner, the female and male parts of the house.

House is traditionally used in Russian as a synonym for the word "homeland". If a person does not have a sense of home, then there is no sense of homeland either! Attachment to home, caring for it was considered a virtue. The house and the Russian hut are the embodiment of a native, safe space. The word "house" was also used in the sense of "family" - and they said "There are four houses on the hill" - this meant that there were four families. Several generations of the clan - grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren - lived in a Russian hut under one roof and kept a common household.

The inner space of the Russian hut has long been associated in folk culture as the space of a woman - she followed it, put things in order and comfort. But the outer space - the courtyard and beyond - was the man's space. My husband's grandfather still recalls such a division of responsibilities that was adopted in the family of our great-grandparents: a woman brought water from a well for the house, for cooking. And the man also carried water from the well, but for cows or horses. It was considered a shame if a woman began to perform male duties or vice versa. Since they lived in large families, there were no problems. If one of the women could not carry water now, then another woman of the family was doing this work.

The male and female half was also strictly observed in the house, but this will be discussed later.

In the Russian North, living quarters and utility rooms were combined under the same roof, so that you can run a household without leaving your home. This is how the northerners' ingenuity in life, living in harsh cold natural conditions, was manifested.

The house was understood in folk culture as the center of the main life values- happiness, prosperity, prosperity of the clan, faith. One of the functions of the hut and the house was a protective function. The carved wooden sun under the roof is a wish of happiness and prosperity to the owners of the house. Image of roses (which do not grow in the north) - a wish happy life... Lions and lionesses in the painting are pagan amulets that scare away evil with their terrible appearance.

Proverbs about the hut

On the roof is a heavy wooden horse - a sign of the sun. There was always a home shrine in the house. S. Yesenin wrote interestingly about the skate: “The horse, both in Greek, Egyptian, Roman and Russian mythology, is a sign of striving. But only one Russian peasant thought to put him on his roof, likening his hut under him to a chariot "(Nekrasova M, A. Folk art of Russia. - M., 1983)

The house was built in a very proportional and harmonious way. In its design - the law of the golden section, the law of natural harmony in proportions. Built without measuring tool and complex calculations - by instinct, as the soul prompted.

Sometimes a family of 10 or even 15-20 people lived in a Russian hut. In it they cooked and ate, slept, weaved, spun, repaired utensils, and did all the household chores.

The myth and truth about the Russian hut. There is an opinion that the Russian huts were dirty, there was unsanitary conditions, illness, poverty and darkness. I also thought so before, so we were taught at school. But this is completely untrue! I asked my grandmother shortly before she left for another world, when she was already over 90 years old (she grew up near Nyandoma and Kargopol in the Russian North in the Arkhangelsk region), how they lived in their village in her childhood - did they really wash and clean the house once in the year and lived in darkness and mud?

She was very surprised and said that the house was always not just clean, but very light and comfortable, beautiful. Her mother (my great-grandmother) embroidered and knitted beautiful valances for the beds of adults and children. Each cot and bassinet was adorned with her valances. And each bed has its own pattern! Imagine what kind of work it is! And what a beauty in the frame of each bed! Her dad (my great-grandfather) carved beautiful ornaments on all household utensils and furniture. She recalled how she was a child under the supervision of her grandmother, along with her sisters and brothers (my great-great-grandmother). They not only played, but also helped adults. Sometimes, in the evening her grandmother would say to the children: "Soon mother and father will come from the field, we need to clean up the house." And oh - yes! Children take brooms, rags, put in complete order, so that there is not a speck in the corner, not a speck of dust, and all things are in their places. When mother and father arrived, the house was always clean. The children understood that adults had come home from work, were tired and needed help. She also remembered how her mother always whitewashed the stove so that the stove was beautiful and the house was cozy. Even on the day of birth, her mother (my great-grandmother) whitewashed the stove, and then went to give birth to the bathhouse. My grandmother recalled how she, as the eldest daughter, helped her.

There was no such thing as clean outside and dirty inside. Tidy up very carefully both outside and inside. My grandmother told me that “what is outward is what you want to appear to people” (outward is the outward appearance of clothes, a house, a closet, etc. - how they look for guests and how we want to present ourselves to people clothing, the appearance of the house, etc.). But “what's inside is who you really are” (inside is the wrong side of embroidery or any other work, the wrong side of clothes that should be clean and without holes or stains, the inside of wardrobes and other invisible to other people, but visible us moments of our life). Very instructive. I always remember her words.

My grandmother recalled that only those who did not work had beggars and dirty huts. They were considered as if they were holy fools, a little sick, they were pitied as people with a soul. Who worked - even if he had 10 children - lived in bright, clean, beautiful huts. Decorated your home with love. They ran a large household and never complained about life. There was always order in the house and in the yard.

The device of the Russian hut

The Russian house (hut), like the Universe, was divided into three worlds, three tiers: the bottom one is the basement, underground; the middle one is living quarters; upper under the sky - attic, roof.

Hut as a construction It was a log house made of logs, which were tied together in crowns. In the Russian North, it was customary to build houses without nails, very solid houses. The minimum number of nails was used only for attaching the decor - the pins, towels, platbands. They built houses “as measure and beauty say”.

Roof- the upper part of the hut - gives protection from the outside world and is the border of the inner part of the house with space. No wonder the roof was so beautifully decorated in houses! And in the ornament on the roof, the symbols of the sun were often depicted - solar symbols. We know such expressions: "father's home", "live under one roof." There were customs - if a person was sick and could not leave this world for a long time, then so that his soul could more easily pass into another world, then they removed the skate on the roof. It is interesting that the roof was considered a feminine element of the house - the hut itself and everything in the hut must be “covered” - the roof, buckets, dishes, and barrels.

Upper part of the house (moorings, towel) decorated with solar, that is, solar signs. In some cases, the full sun was depicted on the towel, and only half of the solar signs on the moorings. Thus, the sun was shown at the most important points of its path across the sky - at sunrise, at the zenith and at sunset. In folklore, there is even an expression "three-light sun", reminiscent of these three key points.

Attic was located under the roof and stored items that were not needed at the moment, removed from the house.

The hut was two-storied, the living rooms were located on the "second floor", since it was warmer there. And on the "first floor", that is, on the lower tier, there was basement. He protected living quarters from the cold. The basement was used for storing food and was divided into 2 parts: basement and underground.

Floor made double to preserve heat: below the "black floor", and on top of it - "white floor". The floor boards were laid from the edges to the center of the hut in the direction from the facade to the exit. This mattered in some rites. So, if they entered the house and sat on a bench along the floorboards, it meant that they had come to woo. They never slept or laid a bed along the floorboards, since a deceased person was placed along the floorboards "on the way to the door." That is why they did not sleep with their heads towards the exit. They always slept with their heads in the red corner, to the front wall, on which the icons were located.

The diagonal was important in the structure of the Russian hut. "Red corner - oven". The red corner has always pointed to noon, to the light, to God's side (red side). It has always been associated with wotok (sunrise) and the south. And the stove pointed to the sunset, to the darkness. And it was associated with the west or north. They always prayed for the image in the red corner, i.e. to the east, where the altar in the temples is located.

Door and the entrance to the house, the exit to the outside world is one of the most important elements of the house. She greets everyone who enters the house. In ancient times, there were many beliefs and various protective rituals associated with the door and threshold of the house. Probably not without reason, and now many people hang a horseshoe on the door for good luck. And even earlier, a scythe (garden tool) was laid under the threshold. This reflected people's ideas about the horse as an animal associated with the sun. And also about the metal created by man with the help of fire and which is the material for the protection of life.

Only a closed door keeps life inside the house: "Do not trust everyone, lock the door tightly." That is why people stopped at the doorstep of the house, especially when entering someone else's house, this stop was often accompanied by a short prayer.

At a wedding in some localities, a young wife, entering her husband's house, should not have touched the threshold. That is why it was often carried by hand. And in other areas, the omen was exactly the opposite. The bride, entering the groom's house after the wedding, always lingered on the doorstep. This was a sign of that. That she is now her own kind of husband.

The threshold of the doorway is the border of "our" and "someone else's" space. In folk performances, this was a borderline, and therefore unsafe place: "They do not greet through the threshold", "They do not serve hands through the threshold." You cannot accept gifts through the threshold. Guests are greeted outside the threshold, then admitted in front of them through the threshold.

The door was shorter than human height in height. I had to bend my head and take off my hat at the entrance. But the doorway was wide enough.

Window- another entrance to the house. Window is a very ancient word, it was first mentioned in the annals in the year 11 and is found among all Slavic peoples. In popular beliefs, it was forbidden to spit through the window, throw out garbage, pour something out of the house, since under it "stands the angel of the Lord." "Give it to the window (to the beggar) - give it to God." Windows were considered the eyes of the house. A person looks through the window at the sun, and the sun looks at him through the window (the eyes of the hut). That is why sun signs were often carved on the frames. In the riddles of the Russian people it is said: "The red girl looks out the window" (the sun). Traditionally in Russian culture, windows in the house have always been tried to orientate "for the summer" - that is, to the east and south. Most big windows houses always looked at the street and the river, they were called "red" or "sloping".

The windows in the Russian hut could be of three types:

A) The trailing window is the most ancient type of windows. Its height did not exceed the height of a horizontally laid log. But in width it was one and a half times the height. Such a window was closed from the inside with a latch, "dragged" along special grooves. Therefore, the window was called "dragline". Through the trailing window, only a dim light penetrated into the hut. Such windows were more common on outbuildings... The smoke from the stove was taken out ("dragged out") through the trailing window from the hut. Basements, closets, poveta and barns were also aired through them.

B) Block window - consists of a deck made up of four beams firmly connected to each other.

C) A skewed window is an opening in the wall, reinforced with two side beams. These windows are also called "red" regardless of their location. Initially, such were the central windows in the Russian hut.

It was through the window that the baby had to be passed if the children born in the family died. It was believed that this could save the child and provide him with a long life. In the Russian North, there was also such a belief that a person's soul leaves the house through the window. That is why they put a cup of water on the window so that the soul that left the person could wash and fly away. Also, after the commemoration, a towel was hung on the window so that the soul would go up to the house through it, and then go back down. Sitting by the window, they waited for news. The window seat in the red corner is a place of honor for the most honored guests, including matchmakers.

The windows were high, and therefore the view from the window did not bump into the neighboring buildings, and the view from the window was beautiful.

During construction, a free space (sedimentary groove) was left between the window beam and the log of the house. It was covered with a board, which is well known to all of us and is called platband("On the face of the house" = platband). The platbands were decorated with ornaments to protect the house: circles as symbols of the sun, birds, horses, lions, fish, weasel (an animal that was considered a keeper of livestock - it was believed that if you depict a predator, it would not harm pets), floral ornament, juniper, mountain ash ...

Outside, the windows were closed with shutters. Sometimes in the north, in order to conveniently close the windows, galleries were built along the main facade (they looked like balconies). The owner walks through the gallery and closes the shutters on the windows for the night.

Four sides of the hut facing the four cardinal points. Appearance the hut is turned to the outside world, and the interior decoration - to the family, to the clan, to the person.

The porch of the Russian hut was more often open and spacious. Here were those family events that the whole street of the village could see: they saw off the soldiers, met the matchmakers, met the newlyweds. On the porch we talked, exchanged news, rested, talked about business. Therefore, the porch occupied a prominent place, was high and rose up on pillars or log cabins.

The porch is a “visiting card of the house and its owners”, reflecting their hospitality, prosperity and cordiality. A house was considered uninhabited if its porch was destroyed. The porch was decorated carefully and beautifully, the ornament was used the same as on the elements of the house. It could be a geometric or floral ornament.

What do you think, from what word the word "porch" was formed? From the word "cover", "roof". After all, the porch necessarily had a roof that protected from snow and rain.
Often in the Russian hut there were two porches and two entrances. The first entrance is the front one, there were benches for conversation and relaxation. And the second entrance is "dirty", it served for household needs.

Bake was located near the entrance and occupied about a quarter of the hut space. The stove is one of the sacred centers of the house. "The oven in the house is the same as the altar in the church: bread is baked in it." “Our mother's dear stove”, “A house without a stove is an uninhabited house”. The stove was female and was located in the female half of the house. It is in the oven that the raw, undeveloped is transformed into boiled, "our own", mastered. The stove is located in the corner opposite from the red corner. They slept on it, they used it not only in cooking, but also in healing, in folk medicine, in it little children were washed in winter, children and old people basked on it. In the stove, they always kept the shutter closed if someone left the house (so that the road was happy to come back), during a thunderstorm (since the stove is another entrance to the house, the connection between the house and the outside world).

Matitsa- a bar running across the Russian hut, on which the ceiling is held. This is the border between the front and back of the house. A guest who comes into the house, without the permission of the owners, could not go further than the mother. Sitting under the mother meant wooing the bride. For everything to succeed, it was necessary to hold on to the mother before leaving the house.

The entire space of the hut was divided into female and male. The men worked and rested, received guests on weekdays in the male part of the Russian hut - in the front red corner, away from it to the threshold and sometimes under the beds. The man's workplace was next to the door during the repair. Women and children worked and rested, were awake in the female half of the hut - near the stove. If women received guests, then the guests sat at the doorstep of the stove. Guests could enter the female territory of the hut only at the invitation of the hostess. The representatives of the male half have never entered the female half unless absolutely necessary, and the women - the male. This could be taken as an insult.

Stalls served not only as a place to sit, but also as a place to sleep. A headrest was placed under the head when sleeping on a bench.

The shop at the door was called "konik", it could be the workplace of the owner of the house, and any person who entered the house, a beggar, could spend the night on it.

Above the benches above the windows, shelves were made parallel to the benches. Hats, thread, yarn, spinning wheels, knives, awls and other household items were placed on them.

Adult couples in marriage slept in small rooms, on a bench under the beds, in their separate cages - in their places. Old people slept on the stove or by the stove, children - on the stove.

All utensils and furniture in the Russian northern hut are located along the walls, while the center remains free.

Svetlitsa the room was called - a light house, a gorenka on the second floor of the house, clean, well-groomed, for needlework and clean occupations. There was a wardrobe, a bed, a sofa, a table. But just like in the hut, all objects were placed along the walls. In the gorenka there were chests in which the dowry for the daughters was collected. How many daughters for marriage - so many chests. Here lived girls - brides for marriage.

Dimensions of the Russian hut

In ancient times, the Russian hut did not have internal partitions and was square or rectangular in shape. The average dimensions of the hut were from 4 X 4 meters to 5.5 x 6.5 meters. The middle peasants and wealthy peasants had large huts - 8 x 9 meters, 9 x 10 meters.

The decoration of the Russian hut

In the Russian hut, four corners were distinguished: stove, woman's kut, red corner, back corner (at the entrance under the floors). Each corner had its own traditional purpose. And the whole hut was divided according to the angles into the female and male halves.

Female half of the hut runs from the kiln mouth (kiln outlet) to the front wall of the house.

One of the corners of the female half of the house is the woman's kut. It is also called "baked goods". This place is near the stove, female territory. Here they cooked food, pies, kept utensils, millstones. Sometimes the "female territory" of the house was separated by a partition or screen. In the women's half of the hut, behind the stove, there were cabinets for kitchen utensils and food, shelves for tableware, buckets, cast iron, tubs, oven devices (bread shovel, poker, grab). The “Long Shop”, which ran along the female half of the hut along the side wall of the house, was also female. Here women spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered, and a baby cradle hung here.

Never did men enter the "female territory" and did not touch the utensils that are considered female. And a stranger and a guest could not even look into the woman's kut, it was offensive.

On the other side of the oven was male space, "The male kingdom at home." There was a threshold men's shop, where men did their homework and relaxed after a hard day. There was often a locker under it with tools for men's work. It was considered indecent for a woman to sit on the threshold bench. On a side bench at the back of the hut, they rested during the day.

Russian stove

About a fourth, and sometimes even a third, of the hut was occupied by a Russian stove. She was a symbol of the hearth. In it they not only cooked food, but also prepared fodder for livestock, baked pies and bread, washed, heated the room, slept and dried clothes, shoes or food on it, dried mushrooms and berries in it. And even in winter they could keep chickens in a baking dish. Although the stove is very large, it does not “eat up”, but, on the contrary, expands the living space of the hut, transforming it into a multidimensional one, of different heights.

No wonder there is a saying "to dance from the stove", because everything in a Russian hut begins with the stove. Remember the epic about Ilya Muromets? Bylina tells us that Ilya Muromets “lay on the stove for 30 years and 3 years,” that is, he could not walk. Not on the shelves or on the benches, but on the stove!

“The stove is like a dear mother to us,” people used to say. Many folk healing practices were associated with the stove. And the signs. For example, you can't spit into the oven. And you couldn't swear when the fire burned in the furnace.

The new oven began to warm up gradually and evenly. The first day began with four logs, and gradually one log was added every day to ignite the entire volume of the furnace and so that it was free of cracks.

At first, in Russian houses there were adobe ovens that were heated in black. That is, the stove then did not have a chimney for exhausting smoke. The smoke was released through a door or through a special hole in the wall. Sometimes people think that only beggars had black huts, but this is not so. Such ovens were also in rich mansions. The black oven gave more heat and kept it longer than the white one. The smoky walls were not afraid of dampness or rot.

Later, they began to build stoves white - that is, they began to make a pipe through which smoke came out.

The stove was always located in one of the corners of the house, which was called the stove, door, small corner. Diagonally from the stove, there was always a red, holy, front, large corner of a Russian house.

Red corner in the Russian hut

The red corner is the central main place in the hut, in a Russian house. It is also called "saint", "godly", "front", "senior", "big". It is illuminated by the sun better than all other corners in the house, everything in the house is oriented towards it.

The lady of God in the red corner was like the altar of an Orthodox church and was interpreted as the presence of God in the house. The table in the red corner is the church throne. Here, in the red corner, they prayed for the image. All meals and the main events in the life of the family were held here at the table: birth, wedding, funeral, farewell to the army.

There were not only images, but also the Bible, prayer books, candles, and sprigs of consecrated willow were brought here on Palm Sunday or birch sprigs on Trinity.

The Red Corner was especially worshiped. Here, during the commemoration, they put an extra device for the soul that had gone into the world.

It was in the Red Corner that the woodchip birds of happiness, traditional for the Russian North, were hung.

Seats at the table in the red corner were rigidly fixed by tradition, and not only during the holidays, but also during regular meals. The meal united clan and family.

• Place in the red corner, in the center of the table, under the icons, was the most honorable. The host, the most distinguished guests, the priest sat here. If a guest, without an invitation from the host, passed and sat down in the red corner, this was considered a gross violation of etiquette.
• The next most important side of the table is to the right of the owner and the places closest to him to the right and left. This is a "men's shop". Here the men of the family were seated in order of seniority along the right wall of the house to its exit. The older a man is, the closer he sits to the owner of the house.
• And on The "lower" end of the table at the "women's bench", women and children sat down along the gable of the house.
• Mistress of the house was placed opposite her husband from the side of the stove on a side bench. So it was more convenient to serve food and arrange dinner.
• During the wedding newlyweds also sat under the icons in the red corner.
• For guests had its own - a guest shop. It is located by the window. There is still such a custom in some areas to seat guests by the window.

This arrangement of family members at the table shows the model of social relations within the Russian family.

Table- great importance was attached to it in the red corner of the house and in the hut as a whole. The table in the hut stood in a permanent place. If the house was sold, then it must be sold together with the table!

Very important: The table is the hand of God. “The table is the same as the throne in the altar, and therefore you need to sit at the table and behave as in the church” (Olonets province). It was not allowed to place foreign objects on the dining table, because this is the place of God himself. It was impossible to knock on the table: "Don't hit the table, the table is God's palm!" There should always be bread on the table - a symbol of prosperity and well-being in the house. They said: "Bread on the table - and the throne on the table!" Bread is a symbol of prosperity, abundance, material well-being. Therefore, he always had to be on the table - God's palm.

A small lyrical digression from the author. Dear readers of this article! You probably think that all this is outdated? Well, what does the bread have to do with it? And you bake yeast-free bread at home with your own hands - it's easy enough! And then you will understand that this is a completely different bread! Unlike the bread from the store. Moreover, the loaf is in shape - a circle, a symbol of movement, growth, development. When I first baked not pies, not muffins, but bread, and my whole house smelled like bread, I realized what a real home is - a house where it smells like ... bread! Where you want to return. Don't you have time for this? I thought so too. Until one of the mothers, whose children I work with and of whom she has ten !!!, taught me how to bake bread. And then I thought: "If a mother of ten children finds time to bake bread for her family, then I definitely have time for that!" Therefore, I understand why bread is the head of everything! You have to feel it with your own hands and your soul! And then the loaf on your table will become a symbol of your home and bring you a lot of joy!

The table was always installed along the floorboards, i.e. the narrow side of the table was directed towards the western wall of the hut. This is very important because the direction "longitudinal - transverse" in Russian culture was given a special meaning. The longitudinal one had a "positive" charge, and the transverse one was "negative". Therefore, they tried to lay all the objects in the house in the longitudinal direction. Also, therefore, it was along the floorboards that they sat down during rituals (matchmaking, as an example) - so that everything went well.

Tablecloth on the table in the Russian tradition, it also had a very deep meaning and makes a single whole with the table. The expression "table and tablecloth" symbolized hospitality and hospitality. Sometimes the tablecloth was called "hospitable" or "self-assembly". Wedding tablecloths were kept as a special heirloom. The table was not always covered with a tablecloth, but on special occasions. But in Karelia, for example, the tablecloth should always be on the table. For a wedding feast, they took a special tablecloth and laid it inside out (from damage). The tablecloth could be spread on the ground during the commemoration, because the tablecloth is a "road", the connection between the cosmic world and the world of man, it is not for nothing that the expression "a tablecloth is a road" has come down to us.

At the dinner table, the family gathered, baptized before meals and read a prayer. They ate decorously, it was impossible to get up while eating. The head of the family, a man, began the meal. He cut food into pieces, cut bread. The woman served everyone at the table, served food. The meal was long, unhurried, long.

On holidays, the red corner was decorated with woven and embroidered towels, flowers, tree branches. Embroidered and woven towels with patterns were hung on the shrine. On Palm Sunday, the red corner was decorated with willow twigs, on Trinity - with birch branches, heather (juniper) - on Maundy Thursday.

Interesting to think about our modern homes:

Question 1. The division into "male" and "female" territory in the house is not accidental. And in our modern apartments there is a “female secret corner” - personal space as a “female kingdom”, do men interfere in it? Do we need it? How and where can you create it?

Question 2... And what is in the red corner of our apartment or summer house - what is the main spiritual center of the house? Let's take a closer look at your home. And if you need to fix something, then we will do it and create a red corner in our house, create it that really unites the family. Sometimes there are tips on the Internet to put a computer in the red corner as in the "energy center of an apartment", to organize your own workplace... I am always amazed at such recommendations. Here, in the red - the main corner - to be what is important in life, what unites the family, what carries true spiritual values, what is the meaning and idea of ​​the life of the family and clan, but not a TV set or an office center! Let's think together what it might be.

Types of Russian huts

Nowadays, many families are interested in Russian history and traditions and build houses as our ancestors did. Sometimes it is believed that there should be only one type of house according to the location of its elements, and only this type of house is "correct" and "historical". In fact, the location of the main elements of the hut (red corner, stove) depends on the region.

By the location of the stove and the red corner, 4 types of Russian hut are distinguished. Each type is specific to a particular locality and climatic conditions. That is, one cannot say directly: the stove has always been strictly here, and the red corner is strictly here. Let's take a closer look at them in the pictures.

The first type is the northern-central Russian hut. The stove is located next to the entrance to the right or left of it in one of the rear corners of the hut. The mouth of the stove is turned to the front wall of the hut (the mouth is the outlet of the Russian stove). Diagonally from the stove is a red corner.

The second type is the Western Russian hut. The stove was also located next to the entrance to the right or left of it. But it was turned by the mouth to the long side wall. That is, the mouth of the furnace was near front door into the house. The red corner was also diagonally from the oven, but food was cooked in a different place in the hut - closer to the door (see figure). A sleeping floor was made at the side of the oven.

The third type is the eastern southern Russian hut. The fourth type is the western southern Russian hut. In the south, the house was placed towards the street not with its facade, but with its long side. Therefore, the location of the stove here was completely different. The stove was placed in the corner farthest from the entrance. Diagonally from the stove (between the door and the front long wall of the hut) there was a red corner. In the eastern southern Russian huts, the mouth of the furnace was turned towards the front door. In the western southern Russian huts, the mouth of the stove was turned to the long wall of the house, facing the street.

In spite of different types huts, they follow the general principle of the structure of the Russian dwelling. Therefore, even being far from home, the traveler could always find his bearings in the hut.

Elements of a Russian hut and a peasant estate: a dictionary

In a peasant estate the farm was large - in each estate there were from 1 to 3 barns for storing grain and valuables. There was also a bathhouse - the building farthest from the residential building. Each thing has its own place. This principle from the proverb was observed always and everywhere. Everything in the house was thought out and arranged reasonably so as not to waste extra energy and time on unnecessary actions or movements. Everything is at hand, everything is convenient. Modern home ergonomics come from our history.

The entrance to the Russian estate was from the side of the street through a strong gate. There was a roof over the gate. And at the gate on the side of the street under the roof there is a shop. Not only villagers could sit on the bench, but also any passer-by. It was at the gate that it was customary to meet and see off guests. And under the roof of the gate you could greet them warmly or say goodbye.

Barn- a free-standing small building for storing grain, flour, supplies.

Bath- a detached building (the building farthest from the residential building) for washing.

Crown- logs of one horizontal row in the frame of the Russian hut.

Windbreaker- carved sun, attached instead of a towel on the pediment of the hut. Wish for a rich harvest, happiness, well-being to the family living in the house.

Threshing floor- a platform for threshing compressed bread.

Cage- a structure in wooden construction, formed by crowns of logs laid on top of each other. The mansion consists of several stands, united by passages and passageways.

Chicken- elements of the roof of a Russian house built without nails. They said so "Chickens and a horse on the roof - it will be quieter in the hut." These are the elements of the roof - the ridge and the chicken. A watercourse was laid on the hens - a log hollowed out in the form of a gutter to drain water from the roof. The image of “chickens” is not accidental. The hen and the rooster were associated in the popular mind with the sun, since this bird announces the rising of the sun. The cry of a rooster, according to popular belief, drove away evil spirits.

Glacier- the great-grandfather of the modern refrigerator - a room with ice for storing food

Matitsa- a massive wooden beam on which the ceiling is laid.

Platband- window decoration (window opening)

Barn-Building for drying sheaves before threshing. The sheaves were laid out on the deck and dried.

Whoop- horse - connects two wings of the house, two roof slopes together. The horse symbolizes the sun moving across the sky. This is required element roof structures built without nails and guarding the house. Okhlupen is also called “shell” from the word “helmet”, which is associated with the protection of the house and means the helmet of an ancient warrior. Perhaps this part of the hut was called "stupid", because when it is put in place, it emits a "bang" sound. Hoops were used to do without nails during construction.

Ochelya - this was the name of the most beautifully decorated part of the Russian female headdress on the forehead (“on the forehead was also called the part of the window decoration - the upper part of the“ decoration of the forehead, forehead ”at home.

Tell- the hayloft, it was possible to enter here directly on a cart or on a sleigh. This room is located directly above the barnyard. Boats, fishing tackle, hunting equipment, footwear, clothing were also stored here. Here nets were dried and repaired, flax was crumpled and other work was done.

Podklet- the lower room under the living quarters. The basement was used for storing food and household needs.

Polati- wooden flooring under the ceiling of the Russian hut. They settled between the wall and the Russian stove. It was possible to sleep on the beds, since the stove kept warm for a long time. If the stove was not heated for heating, then vegetables were stored on the beds at that time.

Police- curly shelves for utensils above the benches in the hut.

Towel- a short vertical board at the junction of two piers, decorated with a sun symbol. Usually the towel followed the pattern of the prism.

Reasons- boards on the wooden roof of the house, nailed to the ends above the pediment (the side of the hut), protecting them from decay. The piers were decorated with carvings. The pattern consists of a geometric ornament. But there is also an ornament with grapes - a symbol of life and procreation.

Svetlitsa- one of the rooms in chorus (see "mansions") on the female half, in the upper part of the building, intended for needlework and other household activities.

Canopy- cold entrance room in the hut, usually the canopy was not heated. And also the entrance room between the separate stands in the mansion. It is always a utility storage room. Household utensils were kept here, there was a shop with buckets and milk boxes, work clothes, rocker arms, sickles, scythes, rakes. Dirty homework was done in the hallway. The doors of all rooms opened into the canopy. Seni - protection from the cold. The front door opened, the cold entered the entrance, but remained in them, not reaching the living quarters.

Apron- sometimes “aprons” decorated with fine carvings were made on houses from the side of the main facade. This is a plank overhang that protects the house from precipitation.

Barn- a room for livestock.

Mansions- large residential wooden house, which consists of separate buildings, united by a passage and passages. galleries. All parts of the chorus were different in height - it turned out to be a very beautiful multi-tiered structure.

Utensils of the Russian hut

Tableware for cooking, it was stored in the oven and by the stove. These are cauldrons, cast iron pots for porridge, soups, clay patches for baking fish, cast iron pans. Beautiful porcelain dishes were kept so that everyone could see them. She was a symbol of wealth in the family. The festive dishes were kept in the upper room, and the plates were displayed in the cupboard. Everyday dishes were kept in overhead cupboards. Dinnerware consisted of a large clay or wood bowl, wooden spoons, birch bark or copper salt shakers, and cups of kvass.

To store bread in the Russian hut, painted boxes, brightly colored, sunny, joyful. The painting of the box made it stand out among other things as a significant and important thing.

Drank tea from samovar.

Sieve was used both for sifting flour, and as a symbol of wealth and fertility, it was likened to the firmament (the riddle "Sieve vito, covered with a sieve", the answer is heaven and earth).

Salt Is not only food, but also a talisman. Therefore, the guests were served bread and salt as a greeting, a symbol of hospitality.

The most common was earthenware - pot. Porridge and cabbage soup were cooked in pots. The cabbage soup in the pot was reprimanded well and became much tastier and more rich. Even now, if we compare the taste of soup and porridge from the Russian oven and from the stove, we will immediately feel the difference in taste! It tastes better from the stove!

For household needs, the house used barrels, tubs, baskets. Fried food in frying pans, as now. The dough was kneaded in wooden troughs and vats. Water was carried in buckets, jugs.

In good owners, immediately after a meal, all dishes were washed clean, wiped off and placed overturned on the shelves.

Domostroy said: "so that everything is always clean and ready for the table or for the suppliers."

To put the dishes in the oven and get them out of the oven, you needed grips... If you have the opportunity to try to put a full pot filled with food in the oven or take it out of the oven, you will understand how physically difficult work it is and how strong women used to be, even without fitness classes :). For them, every movement was exercise and physical education. This is me serious 🙂 - I tried and appreciated how difficult it is to get a large pot of food for a large family with a grip!

To rake in the coals, poker.

In the 19th century, clay pots were replaced by metal ones. They're called cast iron (from the word "cast iron").

Clay and metal were used for frying and baking. pans, patches, braziers, bowls.

Furniture in our understanding of this word in the Russian hut there was almost no. Furniture appeared much later, not so long ago. No wardrobes or dressers. Clothes and shoes and other things were not kept in the hut.

The most valuable things in a peasant house - ceremonial utensils, festive clothes, dowry for daughters, money - were kept in chests... The chests were always with locks. The design of the chest could tell about the prosperity of its owner.

Russian hut decor

To paint the house (before they said "blossom") could be a master of painting. We painted outlandish patterns on a light background. These are symbols of the sun - circles and semicircles, and crosses, and amazing plants and animals. The hut was also decorated with wood carvings. Women weaved and embroidered, knitted and decorated their homes with their handicrafts.

Guess what tool was used to make the carving in the Russian hut? With an ax! And the painting of houses was done by "painters" - that is how the artists were called. They painted the facades of houses - pediments, platbands, porch, moorings. When white stoves appeared, they began to paint in the huts of the guardianship and partitions, lockers.

The decor of the gable of the roof of the northern Russian house is actually an image of space. Sun signs on the quayside and on the towel - the image of the path of the sun - sunrise, sun at its zenith, sunset.

Very interesting the ornament that adorns the quilts. Below the solar sign, on the berths, you can see several trapezoidal protrusions - the legs of waterfowl. For the northerners, the sun rose from the water, and also set in the water, because there were many lakes and rivers around, therefore, waterfowl were depicted - the underwater world. The ornament on the quays represented the seven-layer sky (remember the old expression - “to be in seventh heaven with happiness”?).

In the first row of the ornamentation, there are circles, sometimes connected with trapeziums. These are symbols of heavenly water - rain and snow. Another row of images of triangles is a layer of earth with seeds that will wake up and give a crop. It turns out that the sun rises and moves across a seven-layer sky, one of the layers of which contains moisture reserves, and the other contains plant seeds. At first, the sun does not shine in full force, then it is at its zenith and at the end it rolls down to start its journey across the sky the next morning. One row of the ornament does not repeat the other.

The same symbolic ornament can be found on the architraves of a Russian house and on the decoration of windows in central Russia. But the window decoration has its own peculiarities. On the lower plank of the casing there is an uneven relief of the hut (a plowed field). At the lower ends of the side planks of the clypeus, there are heart-shaped images with a hole in the middle - a symbol of a seed buried in the ground. That is, we see in the ornament a projection of the world with the most important attributes for the farmer - the earth sown with seeds and the sun.

Proverbs and sayings about the Russian hut and housekeeping

• Houses and walls help.
• Every house is kept by the owner. The house is painted by the owner.
• What is it like at home - and so yourself.
• Get some shed, and then cattle!
• Not the master of the house, but the house of the master.
• It is not the owner's house that paints, but the owner - the house.
• At home - not a guest: after sitting, you will not leave.
• A good wife will save the house, and a thin one will shake her sleeve.
• The mistress of the house is like pancakes in honey.
• Woe to the one who lives in disorder in the house.
• If the hut is crooked, the hostess is bad.
• As the builder is, such is the monastery.
• Our hostess has everything at work - and the dogs wash the dishes.
• House lead - do not weave sandals.
• In the house, the owner is more of a bishop
• To start an animal at home is to walk without opening your mouth.
• The house is small, but it does not order to lie down.
• Whatever is born in the field, everything in the house will come in handy.
• Not the owner, who does not know his farm.
• Wealth is not maintained by the place, but by the owner.
• He didn’t manage the house, and he won’t manage the city either.
• The village is rich, so the city is rich.
• The good head feeds a hundred hands.

Dear friends! I wanted to show in this hut not just the history of the Russian house, but also to learn from our ancestors, together with you, housekeeping - intelligent and beautiful, pleasing to the soul and eyes, well, life in harmony with nature and with your conscience. In addition, many points in relation to the home as the home of our ancestors are very important and relevant even now for us living in the 21st century.

The materials for this article were collected and studied by me for a very long time, checked in ethnographic sources. I also used materials from the stories of my grandmother, who shared with me the memories of her early years in the northern village. And only now, during my vacation and my life - being in the countryside in nature, I finally completed this article. And I understood why I couldn't write it for so long: in the bustle of the capital, in an ordinary panel house in the center of Moscow, amid the roar of cars, it was too difficult for me to write about the harmonious world of the Russian house. But here - in nature - I completed this article very quickly and easily, with all my heart.

If you would like to learn more about the Russian home, then below you will find a bibliography on this topic for adults and children.

I hope that this article will help you to tell interestingly about the Russian house during your summer travels to the countryside and to the museums of Russian life, as well as tell you how to treat illustrations to Russian fairy tales with children.

Literature about the Russian hut

For adults

1. Bayburin A.K. Dwelling in the rituals and performances of the Eastern Slavs. - L .: Nauka, 1983 (Institute of Ethnography named after N.N. Miklukho-Maclay)
2. Buzin V.S. Ethnography of Russians. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House of St. Petersburg University, 2007
3. Permilovskaya A.B. Peasant house in the culture of the Russian North. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.
4. Russians. Series "Peoples and Cultures". - Moscow: Nauka, 2005. (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after N.N. Miklukho - Maclay RAS)
5. Sobolev A.A. The wisdom of the ancestors. Russian yard, house, garden. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.
6. Sukhanova M.A. House as a model of the world // House of man. Materials of the interuniversity conference - SPb., 1998.

For children

1. Alexandrova L. Wooden architecture of Russia. - M .: White city, 2004.
2. Zaruchevskaya EB About peasant mansions. Book for children. - M., 2014.

Russian hut: video

Video 1. Children's educational video tour: children's museum of village life

Video 2. A film about the northern Russian hut (Museum of Kirov)

Video 3. How to build a Russian hut: a documentary for adults

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"Development of speech from 0 to 7 years: what is important to know and what to do. Cheat sheet for parents"

The word "hut" (as well as its synonyms "yzba", "istba", "izba", "source", "source") has been used in Russian chronicles since the most ancient times. The connection of this term with the verbs "drown", "drown" is obvious. Indeed, it always denotes a heated building (as opposed to, for example, a stand).

In addition, all three East Slavic peoples - Belarusians, Ukrainians, Russians - retained the term "stove" and again meant a heated building, be it a pantry for winter storage of vegetables (Belarus, Pskov, Northern Ukraine) or a tiny residential hut (Novogorodskaya , Vologda Oblast), but certainly with a stove.

The construction of a house for a peasant was a significant event. At the same time, it was important for him not only to solve a purely practical problem - to provide a roof over his head for himself and his family, but also to organize the living space so that it was filled with the blessings of life, warmth, love and peace. Such a dwelling can be built, according to the peasants, only following the traditions of their ancestors, deviations from the precepts of the fathers could be minimal.

When building a new house, great importance was attached to the choice of a place: the place should be dry, high, light - and at the same time its ritual value was taken into account: it should be happy. A place that was inhabited was considered to be happy, that is, it had passed the test of time, a place where people's lives passed in complete prosperity. Unsuccessful for construction was the place where people were buried before and where the road used to pass or there was a bathhouse.

Special requirements were imposed on building material... The Russians preferred to cut huts from pine, spruce, and larch. These trees with long, even trunks fit well into the frame, tightly adjoining each other, well retained the internal heat, and did not rot for a long time. However, the choice of trees in the forest was regulated by many rules, the violation of which could lead to the transformation of a built house from a house for people into a house against people, bringing misfortune. So, for a felling it was impossible to take "sacred" trees - they can bring death to the house. The ban extended to all old trees. According to legend, they must die in the forest by their own death. It was impossible to use dry trees that were considered dead - from them the household will have "dry". A great misfortune will happen if a "wild" tree falls into the frame, that is, a tree that has grown at a crossroads or on the site of former forest roads. Such a tree can destroy a log house and crush the owners of the house.

The construction of the house was accompanied by many rituals. The beginning of construction was marked by the rite of sacrifice of a chicken and a ram. It was carried out during the laying of the first crown of the hut. Money, wool, grain - symbols of wealth and family warmth, incense - a symbol of the sanctity of the house were laid under the logs of the first crown, the window cushion, the mat. The end of construction was celebrated with a rich treat for all those who participated in the work.

The Slavs, like other peoples, "unrolled" the building under construction from the body of a creature sacrificed to the Gods. According to the ancients, without such a "sample" the logs could never have formed into an orderly structure. The "construction sacrifice" seemed to convey its shape to the hut, helped to create something intelligently organized out of the primitive chaos ... "Ideally," the construction victim should be a person. But human sacrifice was resorted to only in rare, truly exceptional cases - for example, when laying a fortress to protect against enemies, when it came to the life or death of the entire tribe. In ordinary construction, they were content with animals, most often a horse or a bull. Archaeologists have excavated and studied in detail more than one thousand Slavic dwellings: at the base of some of them, the skulls of these animals were found. Horse skulls are especially often found. So the "skates" on the roofs of Russian huts are by no means "for beauty." In the old days, a tail from a bast was also attached to the back of the ridge, after which the hut was already completely like a horse. The house itself was represented by a "body", the four corners - by four "legs". Scientists write that instead of a wooden ridge, a real horse skull was once strengthened. Buried skulls are found both under the huts of the 10th century, and under those built five centuries after baptism - in the 14th-15th centuries. For half a millennium, they have only been put in a shallower hole. As a rule, this hole was located at the holy (red) angle - just under the icons! - either under the threshold, so that evil could not enter the house.

Another favorite sacrificial animal when laying a house was a rooster (chicken). Suffice it to recall the "cockerels" as decoration of roofs, as well as the widespread belief that evil spirits should disappear when the rooster crows. Placed in the base of the hut and the skull of a bull. And yet, the ancient belief that a house is being built "on someone's head" was ineradicable. For this reason, they tried to leave at least something, even the edge of the roof, unfinished, deceiving fate.

Roofing scheme:
1 - gutter,
2 - stupid,
3 - stamik,
4 - slag,
5 - flint,
6 - princely slega ("knes"),
7 - indiscriminate slag,
8 - male,
9 - fell,
10 - mooring,
11 - chicken
12 - pass,
13 - bull,
14 - oppression.

General view of the hut

What kind of house did our great-great-grandfather, who lived a thousand years ago, build for himself and his family?

This, first of all, depended on where he lived, to which tribe he belonged. Indeed, even now, having visited the villages in the north and south of European Russia, one cannot fail to notice the difference in the type of dwellings: in the north it is a wooden log hut, in the south it is a hut-hut.

Not a single product of folk culture was invented overnight in the form in which ethnographic science found it: folk thought worked for centuries, creating harmony and beauty. Of course, this also applies to the home. Historians write that the difference between the two main types of traditional house can be traced during the excavation of settlements in which people lived even before our era.

Tradition was largely determined by climatic conditions and the availability of suitable building materials. In the north, at all times, moist soil prevailed and there was a lot of timber, in the south, in the forest-steppe zone, the soil was drier, but there was not always enough forest, so they had to turn to other building materials. Therefore, in the south, until very late time (up to the XIV-XV centuries), a massive folk dwelling was a 0.5-1 m half-dugout, dug into the ground. And in the rainy north, on the contrary, a ground house with a floor, often even somewhat raised above the ground, appeared very early.

Scientists write that the ancient Slavic semi-dugout "got out" from the ground into the light of God for many centuries, gradually turning into a ground hut of the Slavic south.

In the north, with its damp climate and an abundance of first-class forest, the semi-underground dwelling turned into an above-ground (hut) much faster. Despite the fact that the traditions of housing construction among the northern Slavic tribes (Krivichi and Ilmen Slovenes) cannot be traced as far back in time as their southern neighbors, scientists with good reason believe that log huts were erected here in the II millennium BC era, that is, long before these places entered the sphere of influence of the early Slavs. And at the end of the 1st millennium AD, a stable type of log house had already developed here, while semi-dugouts prevailed for a long time in the south. Well, each dwelling was best suited for its territory.

For example, this is how the "average" residential hut of the 9th-11th centuries from the city of Ladoga (now Staraya Ladoga on the Volkhov River) looked like. Usually it was a square in plan (that is, when viewed from above) building with a side of 4-5 m.Sometimes a log house was erected directly on the site of the future house, sometimes it was first assembled on the side - in the forest, and then, dismantled, transported to the construction site and folded already "clean". Scientists were told about this by notches - "numbers", in order, applied to the logs, starting from the bottom.

The builders took care not to confuse them during transportation: the log house required a careful fitting of the crowns.

In order for the logs to adhere more tightly to each other, a longitudinal depression was made in one of them, into which the convex side of the other entered. The ancient craftsmen made a depression in the lower log and made sure that the logs turned up on the side that looked to the north of the living tree. On this side, the annual layers are denser and finer. And the grooves between the logs were caulked with marsh moss, which, by the way, has the ability to kill bacteria, and often coated with clay. But the custom to sheathe a log house with planks is historically relatively new for Russia. For the first time he was captured on miniatures of a 16th century manuscript.

The floor in the hut was sometimes made earthen, but more often - wooden, raised above the ground on beams-logs, cut into the lower crown. In this case, a hole was arranged in the floor into a shallow underground cellar.

Wealthy people usually built their houses in two dwellings, often with a superstructure at the top, which gave the house from the outside the appearance of a three-tiered one.

A kind of entrance hall was often attached to the hut - a canopy about 2 m wide. Sometimes, however, the canopy was greatly expanded and a stable for cattle was arranged in them. We used the canopy in a different way. In the vast, tidy hallway, they kept property, made something in bad weather, and in the summer they could, for example, put guests to sleep there. Archaeologists call such a dwelling "two-chamber", meaning that it has two rooms.

According to written sources, since the 10th century, unheated annexes to the huts - cages - have spread. They communicated again through the passage. The crate served as a summer bedroom, a year-round storage room, and in winter - a kind of "refrigerator".

The ordinary roof of Russian houses was made of wood, planks, shingles or shingles. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was customary to cover the roof with birch bark from dampness; this gave her a variegation; and sometimes earth and sod were placed on the roof to protect it from fire. The roofs were pitched on two sides with gables on the other two sides. Sometimes all the departments of the house, that is, the basement, the middle tier and the attic, were under one slope, but more often the attic, while others had their own special roofs. Wealthy persons had intricate roofs, for example, barrels in the form of barrels, and Japanese in the form of a cloak. On the outskirts, the roof was bordered with slotted ridges, scars, policemen, or handrails with chiseled balusters. Sometimes, along the entire outskirts, teremki were made - depressions with semicircular or heart-shaped lines. Such recesses were mainly made in towers or attics and were sometimes so small and frequent that they formed the border of the roof, and sometimes so large that on each side there were only a couple or three of them, and windows were inserted in the middle of them.

If the semi-dugouts, filled with soil along the roof, were, as a rule, devoid of windows, then in the Ladoga huts there are already windows. True, they are still very far from modern ones, with bindings, vents and clear glass. Window glass appeared in Russia in the X-XI centuries, but even later it was very expensive and was used mostly in princely palaces and churches. IN simple huts arranged the so-called drag (from "drag" in the sense of pushing and pulling) windows for the passage of smoke.

Two adjacent logs were cut to the middle, and a rectangular frame with a wooden shutter that went horizontally was inserted into the hole. It was possible to look out of such a window - but that was all. They were called so - "enlighteners" ... If necessary, they pulled the skin on them; in general, these holes in the huts of the poor were small to keep warm, and when they were closed, it was almost dark in the hut in the middle of the day. In wealthy houses, windows were made large and small; the former were called red, the latter were oblong and narrow in shape.

Not a small controversy among scientists was caused by an additional crown of logs, encircling Ladoga huts at some distance from the main one. Let's not forget that from ancient houses to our times, it is well preserved if one or two lower crowns and the disordered fragments of a collapsed roof and floorboards: figure it out, archaeologist, where is that. Therefore, at times a variety of assumptions are made about the constructive purpose of the found parts. What purpose this additional outer crown served - no unified point of view has yet been worked out. Some researchers believe that it bordered the mound (a low insulating embankment along the outer walls of the hut), preventing it from spreading. Other scholars think that the ancient huts were not encircled by heaps - the wall was like a two-layer one, a kind of gallery surrounded the residential blockhouse, which served both as a heat insulator and a utility pantry. Judging by the archaeological data, a toilet was often located at the very rear, dead-end end of the gallery. Understandably, the desire of our ancestors, who lived in a harsh climate with frosty winters, to use the warmth of the hut to heat the lavatory and at the same time to prevent a bad smell in the home. The toilet in Russia was called "back". This word first occurs in documents from the beginning of the 16th century.

Like the semi-dugouts of the southern Slavs, the ancient huts of the northern Slavic tribes remained in use for many centuries. Already at that ancient time, folk talent developed a type of dwelling that very successfully met local conditions, and life, almost until recently, did not give people a reason to move away from the familiar, convenient and traditionally sanctified samples.

The inner space of the hut

In the peasant houses, as a rule, there were one or two, less often three dwellings, connected by a passage. The most typical for Russia was the house, which consisted of a warm, stove-heated room and a vestibule. They were used for household needs and as a kind of vestibule between the cold of the street and the warmth of the hut.

In the houses of wealthy peasants, in addition to the room itself heated by a Russian stove, there was another, summer, ceremonial room - an upper room, which was also used in everyday life in large families. In this case, the room was heated with a Dutch oven.

The interior of the hut was distinguished by its simplicity and appropriate placement of the items included in it. The main space of the hut was occupied by an oven, which in most of the territory of Russia was located at the entrance, to the right or left of the doors.

Only in the southern, central black earth zone of European Russia was the furnace located in the corner farthest from the entrance. The table was always in the corner, diagonally from the stove. Above him was a shrine with icons. Stationary benches ran along the walls, shelves cut into the walls above them. In the back of the hut, from the stove to the side wall, a wooden flooring was arranged under the ceiling. In the southern Russian regions, behind the side wall of the furnace, there could be a wooden flooring for sleeping - a floor, a bridge. All this motionless furnishings of the hut were built together with the house and was called a mansion outfit.

The stove played a major role in the internal space of the Russian dwelling throughout all stages of its existence. No wonder the room where the Russian stove stood was called "a hut, a furnace". The Russian stove belongs to the type of ovens in which the fire is made inside the stove, and not on an open area on top. The smoke comes out through the mouth - the hole in which the fuel is put, or through a specially designed chimney. Russian stove in peasant hut had the shape of a cube: its usual length is 1.8-2 m, width 1.6-1.8 m, height 1.7 m. The upper part of the furnace is flat, comfortable for lying. The furnace is relatively large in size: 1.2-1.4 m high, up to 1.5 m wide, with a vaulted ceiling and a flat bottom - a hearth. The mouth, usually rectangular in shape or with a semicircular upper part, was closed by a shutter cut out in the shape of the mouth with an iron shield with a handle. In front of the mouth there was a small platform - a pole, on which household utensils were placed in order to push them into the oven with a grab. Russian stoves always stood on a guardhouse, which was a frame of three or four crowns of round logs or blocks, a log roll was made on top of it, which was smeared with a thick layer of clay, this served as the bottom of the stove. Russian stoves had one or four stove columns. The stoves differed in the design of the chimney. The oldest type of Russian oven was a stove without a chimney, called a poultry or black oven. The smoke came out through the mouth and during the heating it hung from the ceiling in a thick layer, which caused the upper crowns of the logs in the hut to be covered with black resinous soot. To settle the soot, polavochniki served - shelves located along the perimeter of the hut above the windows, they separated the sooty top from the clean bottom. To get smoke out of the room, they opened a door and a small hole in the ceiling or in the back wall of the hut - a chimney. After the firebox, this hole was closed with a wooden shield in the southern lips. the hole was plugged with rags.

Another type of Russian stove - semi-white or semi-chicken - is a transitional form from a black stove to a white stove with a pipe. Semi-white stoves do not have a brick chimney, but a branch pipe is arranged above the pole, and a small round hole is made above it in the ceiling, which opens into a wooden chimney. During the furnace, an iron round pipe is inserted between the branch pipe and the hole in the ceiling, somewhat wider than the samovar pipe. After heating the furnace, the pipe is removed and the hole is closed.

The white Russian stove assumes a chimney for smoke outlet. A branch pipe is laid above the brick six, collecting the smoke that comes out of the mouth of the furnace. From the branch pipe, the smoke enters the burnt brick hog horizontally laid out in the attic, and from there into the vertical chimney.

In the old days, stoves were often made of clay, in the thickness of which stones were often added, which allowed the stove to heat up more and keep it warm longer. In the northern Russian provinces, cobblestones were driven into the clay in layers, alternating layers of clay and stones.

The location of the stove in the hut was strictly regulated. In most of European Russia and Siberia, the stove was located near the entrance, to the right or left of the doors. The mouth of the furnace, depending on the terrain, could be turned to the front front wall at home or to the side. In the southern Russian provinces, the stove was usually located in the far right or left corner of the hut with the mouth turned towards the side wall or the front door. There are many ideas, beliefs, rituals, and magic tricks associated with the stove. In the traditional mind, the stove was an integral part of the home; if the house did not have a stove, it was considered uninhabited. According to popular beliefs, under the stove or behind it lives a brownie, the patron saint of the hearth, kind and helpful in some situations, wayward and even dangerous in others. In the system of behavior, where such an opposition as "ours" and "strangers" is essential, the attitude of the hosts to a guest or a stranger changed if he happened to sit on their stove; both the person who dined with the host's family at the same table, and the one who sat on the stove, was already perceived as "one of our own." Turning to the stove took place during all rituals, the main idea of ​​which was the transition to a new state, quality, status.

The stove was the second most important "center of holiness" in the house - after the red, God's corner - and maybe even the first.

Part of the hut from the mouth to opposite wall, the space in which all women's work related to cooking was done was called the stove corner. Here, near the window, opposite the mouth of the furnace, in every house there were hand-millstones, so the corner is also called a millstone. In the stove corner there was a ship's bench or counter with shelves inside, which was used as kitchen table... There were observers on the walls - shelves for tableware, cupboards. Above, at the level of polavochnikov, there was a stove bar, on which kitchen utensils were placed and various household utensils were laid.

The stove corner was considered a dirty place, unlike the rest of the clean space of the hut. Therefore, the peasants always tried to separate it from the rest of the room with a curtain made of variegated chintz, colored homespun or a wooden bulkhead. The stove corner, closed by a plank partition, formed a small room called "closet" or "lodge".
It was an exclusively female space in the hut: here women cooked food, rested after work. During the holidays, when many guests came to the house, a second table for women was set up near the stove, where they feasted separately from the men sitting at the table in the red corner. Men even of their own family could not enter the female half without special need. The appearance of a stranger there was generally considered unacceptable.

The traditional immovable furnishings of the dwelling were kept for the longest time near the stove in the women's corner.

The red corner, like the stove, was an important landmark in the interior space of the hut.

In most of European Russia, in the Urals, in Siberia, the red corner was the space between the side and front walls in the depths of the hut, bounded by an angle that is located diagonally from the stove.

In the southern Russian regions of European Russia, the red corner is the space enclosed between a wall with a door in the canopy and a side wall. The stove was in the back of the hut, diagonally from the red corner. In a traditional dwelling almost throughout the entire territory of Russia, with the exception of the southern Russian provinces, the red corner is well lit, since both of its walls had windows. The main decoration of the red corner is a shrine with icons and an icon lamp, therefore it is also called a "saint". As a rule, everywhere in Russia, in addition to the goddess, there is a table in the red corner, only in a number of places in the Pskov and Velikie Luki provinces. it is placed in the wall between the windows - opposite the corner of the stove. In the red corner, next to the table, there are two benches, and on top, above the goddess, there are two shelves of a half-shop; hence the West-South Russian name for the corner "day" (the place where the elements of the dwelling decoration meet, join).

All significant events in family life were noted in the red corner. Here, both everyday meals and festive feasts were held at the table, many calendar rituals took place. In the wedding ceremony, the matchmaking of the bride, her ransom from her bridesmaids and her brother were performed in the red corner; from the red corner of her father's house they took her to the church for the wedding, brought her to the groom's house and also led her to the red corner. During harvest, the first and last were set in the red corner. Preservation of the first and last ears of the harvest, endowed, according to folk legends, magic power, promised prosperity to the family, home, and the entire household. In the red corner, daily prayers were performed, from which any important business began. It is the most honorable place in the house. According to traditional etiquette, a person who came to the hut could go there only at the special invitation of the owners. They tried to keep the red corner clean and elegantly decorated. The very name "red" means "beautiful", "good", "light". He was removed with embroidered towels, popular prints, postcards. The most beautiful household utensils were placed on the shelves near the red corner, the most valuable papers and items were kept. Everywhere among Russians, the custom was widespread when laying a house to put money under the lower crown in all corners, and a larger coin was placed under the red corner.

Some authors associate the religious understanding of the red corner exclusively with Christianity. In their opinion, the only sacred center of the house in pagan times was the oven. They even interpret God's corner and stove as Christian and pagan centers. These scholars see in their mutual disposition a kind of illustration of the Russian dual faith, they simply replaced the more ancient ones in God's corner - pagan ones, and at first undoubtedly coexisted with them there.

As for the stove ... let's think seriously, could the "kind" and "honest" Empress the Stove, in whose presence they did not dare say a swear word, under which, according to the concepts of the ancients, the soul of the hut - Brownie - lived - could she personify " darkness "? No way. It is much more likely that the stove was placed in the northern corner as an insurmountable obstacle to the forces of death and evil seeking to break into housing.

The relatively small space of the hut, about 20-25 square meters, was organized in such a way that a rather large family of seven to eight people was accommodated in it with more or less convenience. This was achieved due to the fact that each family member knew his place in the common space. Men usually worked, rested during the day in the male half of the hut, which included a front corner with icons and a bench near the entrance. During the day, women and children were in the women's quarters near the stove. Sleeping places have also been allocated. Old people slept on the floor near doors, on the stove or on the stove, on the golbets; children and single youth - under the shelves or on the shelves. In the warm season, adult married couples spent the night in the cages, hallways, in the cold - on a bench under the beds or on a platform near the stove.

Each family member knew his place at the table. The owner of the house sat under the icons during the family meal. His eldest son was located on the right hand of his father, the second son - on the left, the third - next to his older brother. Children under marriageable age were seated on a bench running from the front corner along the facade. The women ate while sitting on side benches or stools. It was not supposed to break the once established order in the house unless absolutely necessary. The person who violated them could be severely punished.

On weekdays, the hut looked rather modest. There was nothing superfluous in it: the table stood without a tablecloth, the walls were without decorations. Everyday utensils were arranged in the stove corner and on the shelves.

On a festive day, the hut was transformed: the table was moved to the middle, covered with a tablecloth, festive utensils, which had previously been stored in crates, were put on the shelves.

The interior of the room differed from the interior of the hut by the presence of a Dutch woman instead of a Russian stove, or by the absence of a stove at all. The rest of the mansion attire, with the exception of the beds and the sleeping platform, repeated the motionless attire of the hut. The peculiarity of the room was that it was always ready to receive guests.

Benches were made under the windows of the hut, which did not belong to furniture, but formed part of the extension of the building and were fixed to the walls immovably: the board was cut into the wall of the hut with one end, and props were made on the other: legs, grandmothers, and pillars. In old huts, benches were decorated with a "edge" - a board nailed to the edge of the bench, hanging from it like a frill. Such shops were called "pubescent" or "with a canopy", "with a gazebo". In a traditional Russian dwelling, shops ran round the walls, starting from the entrance, and served for sitting, sleeping, and storing various household items. Each shop in the hut had its own name, associated either with the landmarks of the internal space, or with the ideas that had developed in traditional culture about the association of a man or woman's activities with a certain place in the house (men's, women's shops). Various items were stored under the benches, which, if necessary, were easy to get - axes, tools, shoes, etc. In traditional rituals and in the sphere of traditional norms of behavior, the shop acts as a place where not everyone is allowed to sit. So when entering a house, especially for strangers, it was customary to stand at the threshold until the owners invited them to go and sit down. The same applies to matchmakers: they went to the table and sat on the bench only by invitation. In the funeral rituals, the deceased was placed on a bench, but not on any one, but on the one located along the floorboards.

Long shop - a shop that differed from others in its length. Depending on the local tradition of distributing objects in the space of the house, the long shop could have a different place in the hut. In the Northern Russian and Central Russian provinces, in the Volga region, it stretched from the bunk to the red corner, along the side wall of the house. In the South Great Russian provinces, it went from the red corner along the wall of the facade. From the point of view of the spatial division of the house, a long shop, like a stove corner, was traditionally considered a women's place, where at the appropriate time they were engaged in certain women's work, such as spinning, knitting, embroidery, and sewing. The dead were placed on a long bench, always located along the floorboards. Therefore, in some provinces of Russia matchmakers never sat on this bench. Otherwise, their business could go wrong.

Short Shop - A shop that runs along the front wall of the house that faces the street. During the family meal, men were sitting on it.

The shop, located near the stove, was called kutnaya. Buckets of water, pots, cast iron were placed on it, freshly baked bread was laid.
The threshold shop ran along the wall where the door is located. It was used by women instead of a kitchen table and differed from other shops in the house by the absence of a border around the edge.
A ship bench is a bench that runs from the stove along the wall or door partition to the front wall of the house. The surface level of this bench is higher than that of other benches in the house. The front bench has swing or sliding doors or is closed with a curtain. Inside there are shelves for dishes, buckets, iron pots, pots.

The men's shop was called Konik. It was short and wide. In most parts of Russia, it was in the form of a box with a hinged flat lid or a box with sliding doors. The konik got its name, probably, thanks to the horse head carved out of wood, which adorned its side. Konik was located in a residential part of a peasant house, near the door. It was considered a "men's" shop, as it was a men's workplace. Here they were engaged in small crafts: weaved sandals, baskets, repaired harnesses, knitted fishing nets, etc. Under the bunk there were also the tools necessary for this work.

A seat on a bench was considered more prestigious than on a bench; the guest could judge the attitude of the owners towards him, depending on where he was seated - on a bench or on a bench.

Furniture and decoration

A necessary element of home decoration was a table serving for daily and festive meals. The table was one of the most ancient types of movable furniture, although the earliest tables were adobe and fixed. Such a table with adobe benches near it were found in the Pronsk dwellings of the 11th-13th centuries (Ryazan province) and in the Kiev dugout of the 12th century. The four legs of the table from the dugout in Kiev are racks dug into the ground. In a traditional Russian dwelling, the movable table always had a permanent place, it stood in the most honorable place - in the red corner, in which the icons were located. In North Russian houses, the table was always located along the floorboards, that is, with the narrower side to the front wall of the hut. In some places, for example, in the Upper Volga region, the table was set only for the duration of the meal, after eating it was placed sideways on the shelf under the icons. This was done so that there was more space in the hut.

In the forest zone of Russia, carpentry tables had a peculiar shape: a massive underframe, that is, the frame connecting the table legs, was taken by boards, the legs were made short and thick, the large tabletop was always removable and protruded behind the underframe in order to make it more comfortable to sit. A cabinet with double doors for dining utensils and bread needed for the day was made in the underframe.

In traditional culture, in ritual practice, in the sphere of norms of behavior, etc., great importance was attached to the table. This is evidenced by its clear spatial fixation in the red corner. Any promotion of it from there can only be associated with a ritual or crisis situation. The exclusive role of the table was expressed in almost all rituals, one of the elements of which was the meal. It manifested itself with particular vividness in the wedding ceremony, in which almost every stage ended with a feast. The table was interpreted in the popular mind as "God's palm" giving daily bread, therefore, knocking on the table at which they eat was considered a sin. At normal, non-table time, only bread, usually wrapped in a tablecloth, and a salt shaker could be on the table.

In the sphere of traditional norms of behavior, the table has always been a place where people unite: the person who was invited to dine at the master's table was perceived as "one of our own."
The table was covered with a tablecloth. In a peasant hut, tablecloths were made from homespun fabric, both simple plain weave, and made using the technique of abusive and multi-thread weaving. Tablecloths used every day were sewn from two motley panels, usually with a checkered pattern (the most varied colors) or just a rough canvas. Such a tablecloth was used to cover the table during dinner, and after a meal, either they removed or covered the bread left on the table with it. Festive tablecloths were distinguished by the best quality of the fabric, such additional details as lace stitching between two panels, tassels, lace or fringe along the perimeter, as well as a pattern on the fabric.

In Russian life, the following types of benches were distinguished: saddle, portable and attached. Bench - a bench with a reclining back ("overhang") served for sitting and sleeping. If it was necessary to arrange a sleeping place, the backrest along the top, along the circular grooves made in the upper parts of the side limiters of the bench, was thrown to the other side of the bench, and the latter was moved to the bench, so that a kind of bed was formed, bounded in front by a "overhang". The backrest of the saddle bench was often decorated with through carvings, which significantly reduced its weight. Benches of this type were used mainly in urban and monastic life.

Portable bench - a bench with four legs or two blank boards, as needed, was attached to the table, used for sitting. If there was not enough space for sleeping, the bench could be moved and placed along the bench to increase the space for an extra bed. Portable benches were one of the oldest forms of furniture among the Russians.
Side bench - a bench with two legs, located only at one end of the seat, the other end of such a bench was placed on a bench. Often this type of bench was made from a single piece of wood in such a way that the legs were two roots of the tree, chopped off at a certain length.

In the old days, a bench or a bench attached to the wall served as a bed, to which another bench was attached. On these lavas, a bed was laid, which consisted of three parts: a down jacket or feather beds, a headboard and pillows. A headboard or headrest is a headrest on which a pillow was placed. It is a wooden sloping plane on small blocks, in the back there could be a solid or lattice back, in the corners - carved or chiseled posts. There were two headboards - the lower one was called paper and was placed under the upper one, and a pillow was placed on the upper one. The bed was covered with a sheet of linen or silk fabric, and the top was covered with a blanket that went under the pillow. The beds were made more smartly on holidays or at weddings, more simply on ordinary days. In general, however, the beds were the property of only wealthy people, and even those of them were more for show in their decoration, and the owners themselves were more willing to sleep on a simple animal skin. For people of an average condition, felt was the usual bed, and the poor villagers slept on the stoves, putting their own clothes under their heads, or on bare benches.

The dishes were placed in the suppliers: these were pillars with numerous shelves between them. On the lower shelves, wider, they stored massive dishes, on the upper shelves, narrower, they put small dishes.

For storage of separately used dishes, a dishware served: a wooden shelf or an open shelf cabinet. The vessel could have the shape of a closed frame or be open at the top; often its side walls were decorated with carvings or had curly shapes (for example, oval). A rail could be nailed over one or two shelves of the dish on the outside to stabilize the dishes and for setting the plates on the edge. As a rule, the dishware was located above the ship's shop, near the hostess's hand. It has long been a necessary detail in the immovable decoration of the hut.

The main decoration of the houses was made up of icons. The icons were placed on a shelf or open cabinet called a goddess. It was made of wood, often decorated with carvings and paintings. The Lady of God was quite often two-tier: new icons were placed in the lower tier, old, faded ones in the upper tier. It was always located in the red corner of the hut. In addition to icons, objects consecrated in the church were kept on the shrine: holy water, pussy willow, Easter egg, sometimes the Gospel. Important documents were put there: bills, IOUs, payment notebooks, memorials. There was also a wing for sweeping icons. A curtain was often hung on the goddess, covering the icons, or the goddess. This kind of shelf or cabinet was common in all Russian huts, since, in the opinion of the peasants, the icons should have stood, and not hung in the corner of the hut.

Bozhnik was a narrow, long cloth of homespun canvas, decorated along one side and at the ends with embroidery, woven ornament, ribbons, lace. The goddess was hung out so as to cover the icons from above and from the sides, but did not cover the faces.

The decoration of the red corner in the form of a bird, measuring 10-25 cm, was called a dove. It is suspended from the ceiling in front of the images on a string or rope. Golubkov was made of wood (pine, birch), sometimes painted in red, blue, white, green color... The tail and wings of such doves were made of splinters in the form of fans. Birds were also common, the body of which was made of straw, and the head, wings and tail were made of paper. The appearance of the image of a dove as a decoration of the red corner is associated with the Christian tradition, where the dove symbolizes the Holy Spirit.

The red corner was also decorated with a knuckle, a rectangular piece of fabric sewn from two pieces of white thin canvas or chintz. The size of the cuff can be different, usually 70 cm long, 150 cm wide. White knuckles were decorated along the lower edge with embroidery, woven patterns, ribbons, and lace. The nakutnik was attached to the corner under the images. At the same time, a goddess or icons were girded with a goddess on top.

The Old Believers considered it necessary to close the faces of the icons from prying eyes, so they were hung with the Good News. It consists of two sewn panels of white canvas, decorated with geometric or stylized floral embroidery in several rows with red cotton threads, red cotton stripes between the rows of embroidery, flounces along the bottom edge or lace. The canvas field, free from embroidery stripes, was filled with asterisks made with red threads. The message was hung in front of the icons, fixed on the wall or shrine with the help of cloth loops. She was pulled apart only during prayer.

For the festive decoration of the hut, a towel was used - a panel of white fabric of home or less often factory production, trimmed with embroidery, woven color patterns, ribbons, stripes of colored chintz, lace, sequins, braid, braid, fringe. It was usually decorated at the ends. The cloth of the towel was rarely decorated. The nature and quantity of decorations, their location, color, material - all this was determined by local tradition, as well as the purpose of the towel. They were hung on the walls, icons for major holidays such as Easter, Nativity of Christ, Pentecost (the day of the Holy Trinity), for the patronal holidays of the village, i.e. holidays in honor of the patron saint of the village, to the cherished days - holidays celebrating important events in the village. In addition, towels were hung out during weddings, at a christening dinner, on the day of a meal on the occasion of a son's return from military service or the arrival of a long-awaited family. Towels were hung on the walls that make up the red corner of the hut and in the red corner. They were put on wooden nails - "hooks", "matches", driven into the walls. According to custom, towels were a necessary part of a girl's dowry. It was customary to show them to her husband's relatives on the second day of the wedding feast. The young woman hung towels in the hut on top of her mother-in-law's towels so that everyone could admire her work. The number of towels, the quality of the linen, the skill of embroidery - all this made it possible to appreciate the diligence, accuracy, and taste of a young woman. The towel generally played a large role in the ritual life of the Russian countryside. It was an important attribute of wedding, native, funeral and memorial rituals. Very often it was an object of veneration, an object of special importance, without which the ritual of any ceremony would not be complete.

On the wedding day, the towel was used by the bride as a veil. Thrown over her head, it was supposed to protect her from the evil eye, damage at the most crucial moment of her life. The towel was used in the ceremony of "joining the young" before the crown: the hands of the bride and groom were tied with it "for ever and ever, for long years." A towel was presented to the midwife who took delivery, the godfather and godfather who baptized the baby. The towel was present in the "baba's porridge" ritual, which took place after the birth of the child. However, the towel played a special role in the funeral and memorial rituals. According to the beliefs of Russian peasants, a towel hung on the window on the day of the death of a person was his soul for forty days. The slightest movement of the fabric was seen as a sign of her presence in the house. In the forties, the towel was shaken outside the village, thereby sending the soul from "our world" to the "other world."

All these actions with a towel were widespread in the Russian countryside. They were based on the ancient mythological ideas of the Slavs. The towel acted in them as a talisman, a sign of belonging to a certain family and clan collective, was interpreted as an object that embodied the souls of the ancestors of "parents" who closely watched the life of the living.

This symbolism of the towel excluded its use for wiping hands, face, floor. For this purpose, they used a handkerchief, wiping, scraper, etc.

Many small wooden objects have disappeared without a trace over a thousand years, rotted, crumbled into dust. But not all. Something has been found by archaeologists, something may suggest the study of the cultural heritage of related and neighboring peoples. A certain light is shed also by the later specimens recorded by ethnographers ... In a word, one can talk endlessly about the interior decoration of the Russian hut.

Utensil

It was difficult to imagine a peasant house without numerous utensils that had accumulated for decades, if not centuries, and literally filled the space. In the Russian countryside, utensils were called "everything movable in the house, dwelling," according to V. I. Dahl. In fact, utensils are the totality of objects that a person needs in his everyday life. Utensils are utensils for preparing, preparing and storing food, serving it on the table; various containers for storing household items, clothes; items for personal hygiene and home hygiene; items for kindling a fire, storing and consuming tobacco, and for cosmetics.

In the Russian countryside, mainly wooden pottery was used. Metal, glass, porcelain were less common. Wooden utensils according to the manufacturing technique could be hollowed out, bolted, cooper's, carpentry, turning. Utensils made of birch bark, woven from twigs, straw, pine roots were also in great use. Some of the necessary wooden items for the household were made by the efforts of the male half of the family. Most of the items were purchased at fairs, marketplaces, especially cooper and lathe utensils, the manufacture of which required special knowledge and tools.

Pottery was mainly used for cooking in an oven and serving it on the table, sometimes for pickling and pickling vegetables.

The metal utensils of the traditional type were mainly copper, pewter, or silver. Her presence in the house was a vivid testimony to the prosperity of the family, its frugality, and respect for family traditions. Such utensils were sold only at the most critical moments in family life.

The utensils that filled the house were made, purchased, and stored by Russian peasants, naturally proceeding from their purely practical use. However, in separate, from the point of view of the peasant, important moments of life, almost every of its objects turned from a utilitarian thing into a symbolic one. At one of the moments of the wedding ceremony, the dowry chest turned from a container for storing clothes into a symbol of the prosperity of the family, the diligence of the bride. The spoon, turned upward with the notch of the scoop, meant that it would be used at the memorial meal. An extra spoon on the table foreshadowed the arrival of guests, etc. Some utensils had a very high semiotic status, others a lower one.

Bodnya, a household item, was a wooden container for storing clothes and small household items. In the Russian countryside, two types of bodnies were known. The first type was a long hollowed-out wooden deck, the side walls of which were made of solid planks. A hole with a lid on leather hinges was at the top of the deck. Bodnya of the second type is a dugout or cooper's tub with a lid, 60-100 cm high, with a bottom diameter of 54-80 cm. Bodnya were usually locked and kept in cages. From the second half of the XIX century. began to be replaced by chests.

To store bulky household supplies in the stands, barrels, tubs, baskets of various sizes and volumes were used. In the old days, barrels were the most common container for both liquids and loose bodies, for example: grain, flour, flax, fish, dried meat, lean and various small goods.

Tubs were used to store pickles, ferments, urinates, kvass, water for future use, flour and cereals. As a rule, the tubs were made by cooperage, i.e. were made of wooden planks - rivets tied with hoops. they were made in the form of a truncated cone or cylinder. they could have three legs, which were a continuation of the rivets. The necessary accessory for the tub was a circle and a lid. The products placed in the tub were pressed in a circle, oppression was placed on top. This was done so that pickles and soaks were always in the brine, and did not float to the surface. The lid kept the food from dust. The mug and lid had small handles.

A basket was called an open cylindrical container made of bast, the bottom is flat, made of wooden planks or bark. It was done with or without a spoon handle. The dimensions of the basket were determined by the purpose and were named accordingly: "filling", "bridge", "buttocks", "mycelium", etc. If the basket was intended for storing bulk products, then it was closed with a flat lid that was put on top.

For many centuries, the main kitchen vessel in Russia was a pot - a cooking utensil in the form of an earthenware vessel with a wide open top, having a low rim, and a round body gradually tapering towards the bottom. The pots could be different sizes: from a small pot for 200-300 g of porridge to a huge pot that can hold up to 2-3 buckets of water. The shape of the pot did not change during its entire existence and was well adapted for cooking in a Russian oven. They were rarely ornamented; narrow concentric circles or a chain of shallow dimples, triangles squeezed out around the rim or on the shoulders of the vessel served as their decoration. In a peasant house there were about a dozen or more pots of various sizes. They treasured the pots, tried to handle them carefully. If it cracked, it was braided with birch bark and used to store food.

The pot is a household item, utilitarian, in the ritual life of the Russian people it acquired additional ritual functions. Scientists believe that this is one of the most ritualized household items. In the beliefs of the people, the pot was interpreted as a living anthropomorphic creature that has a throat, a handle, a nose, and a shard. It is customary to divide pots into pots that carry a feminine principle, and pots with a masculine essence embedded in them. so, in the southern provinces of European Russia, the hostess, buying a pot, tried to determine its gender and gender: is it a pot or a potty. It was believed that cooked food in a pot would be tastier than in a pot.

It is also interesting to note that in the popular consciousness a parallel is clearly drawn between the fate of the pot and the fate of a person. The pot has found itself a fairly widespread use in funeral rituals. So, in most of the territory of European Russia, the custom was widespread to break pots when taking out the dead from the house. This custom was perceived as a statement of the departure of a person from life, home, village. In the Olonets lips. this idea was expressed in a slightly different way. After the funeral, a pot filled with hot coals in the house of the deceased was placed upside down on the grave, while the coals crumbled and went out. In addition, the deceased was washed with water taken from a new pot two hours after death. After being consumed, it was carried away from home and buried in the ground or thrown into the water. It was believed that the last life force of a person is concentrated in a pot of water, which is drained during washing the deceased. If such a pot is left in the house, then the deceased will return from the other world and frighten the people living in the hut.

The pot was also used as an attribute of some ceremonial activities at weddings. So, according to custom, "wedding men", led by a friend and svashki, in the morning came to beat the pots to the room where the wedding night of the young people took place, while they had not yet left. Beating pots was perceived as a demonstration of a turning point in the fate of a girl and a guy who became a woman and a man.

In the beliefs of the Russian people, the pot often acts as a talisman. In Vyatka province, for example, to protect chickens from hawks and crows, an old pot was hung upside down on the fence. This was done necessarily on Maundy Thursday before sunrise, when the witchcraft was especially strong. The pot in this case, as it were, absorbed them into itself, received additional magical power.

To serve food on the table, such table utensils as a dish were used. It was usually round or oval, shallow, on a low base, with wide edges. IN peasant life mainly wooden dishes were distributed. Dishes for the holidays were decorated with paintings. They depicted plant shoots, small geometric figures, fantastic animals and birds, fish and skates. The dish was used both in everyday and festive use. On weekdays, the dish was served with fish, meat, porridge, cabbage, cucumbers and other "thick" dishes, eaten after stew or cabbage soup. On holidays, in addition to meat and fish, pancakes, pies, buns, cheesecakes, gingerbread cookies, nuts, sweets and other sweets were served on the platter. In addition, there was a custom to present guests with a glass of wine, mead, brew, vodka or beer on a platter. horses of a festive meal was indicated by the removal of an empty dish, covered with another or with a cloth.

Dishes were used during folk ritual actions, fortune-telling, and magic procedures. In maternity rituals, a dish with water was used during the rite of magical cleansing of a woman in labor and a midwife, which was performed on the third day after childbirth. The woman in labor "silvered the grandmother", that is. she threw silver coins into the water poured by the midwife, and the midwife washed her face, chest and hands. In the wedding ceremony, the dish was used for the general display of ritual objects and the presentation of gifts. The dish was also used in some rituals of the annual cycle. For example, in the Kursk province. on the day of Basil of Caesarea, January 1 (January 14), according to custom, a fried pig was laid on the dish - a symbol of the wealth of the house, expected in the new year. The head of the family raised the dish with the pig to the icons three times, and all the rest prayed to St. Vasily about the numerous offspring of livestock. The dish was also an attribute of Christmas-time fortune-telling of the girls, who were called "under the dish". In the Russian village there was a ban on its use on some days. folk calendar... It was impossible to serve a dish with food on the table on the day of the Beheading of John the Baptist on August 29 (September 11), since, according to Christian legend, on this day the severed head of Solomey was presented to her mother Herodias on a platter. At the end of the 18th and 19th centuries. a dish was also called a bowl, plate, bowl, saucer.

A bowl was used for drinking and eating. A wooden bowl is a hemispherical vessel on a small pallet, sometimes with handles or rings instead of handles, without a lid. Often an inscription was made along the edge of the bowl. Either along the crown or over the entire surface, the bowl was decorated with painting, including plant and zoomorphic ornaments (bowls with Severodvinsk painting are widely known). Bowls of various sizes were made depending on their use. Large bowls, weighing up to 800 g or more, were used along with bracelets, bros and ladles during holidays and eves for drinking beer and mash, when many guests gathered. In monasteries, large bowls were used to serve kvass on the table. Small bowls, hollowed out of clay, were used in peasant life during dinner - for serving cabbage soup, stew, fish soup, etc. on the table. During lunch, food was served on the table in a common bowl; separate dishes were used only during the holidays. They began to eat at a sign from the owner; they did not talk while eating. The guests who entered the house were treated to the same that they ate themselves, and from the same dishes.

The chalice was used in various rituals, especially in the rites of the life cycle. It was also used in calendar rituals. Signs and beliefs were associated with the cup: at the end of the festive dinner, it was customary to drink the cup to the bottom to the health of the owner and hostess, who did not do this was considered an enemy. Draining the bowl, they wished the owner: "Good luck, victory, health, and so that no more blood remains in his enemies than in this bowl." The bowl is also mentioned in conspiracies.

A mug was used to drink various drinks. A mug is a cylindrical dish of various sizes with a handle. Clay and wood-carved mugs were decorated with painting, and wooden ones - with carvings, the surface of some mugs was covered with birch bark weaving. They were used in everyday and festive use, they were also the subject of ritual actions.

A glass was used to drink intoxicated drinks. It is a small circular vessel with a leg and a flat bottom, sometimes there could be a handle and a lid. Charkas were usually painted or decorated with carvings. This vessel was used as an individual dish for drinking mash, beer, hop honey, and later - wine and vodka on holidays, since drinking was allowed only on holidays and such drinks were a festive treat for guests. Drinking was taken for the health of other people, not for oneself. Bringing a glass of wine to the guest, the host expected a return glass from him.

Charku was most often used in a wedding ceremony. A cup with wine was offered to the newlyweds by the priest after the wedding. They took turns taking three sips of the glass. After finishing the wine, the husband threw the glass under his feet and trampled on it at the same time as his wife, saying: "Let those who will sow discord and dislike between us be trampled under our feet." It was believed that who of the spouses would step on her first would dominate the family. The owner brought the first glass of vodka at the wedding feast to the sorcerer, who was invited to the wedding as an honored guest in order to save the young from spoilage. The sorcerer himself asked for the second glass, and only after that he began to protect the newlyweds from evil forces.

Before forks appeared, the only food tool was spoons. They were mostly made of wood. The spoons were decorated with paintings or carvings. Various signs associated with spoons were observed. It was impossible to put the spoon so that it rests with the handle on the table, and with the other end on the plate, since on the spoon, like over a bridge, unclean forces can penetrate into the bowl. It was not allowed to knock on the table with spoons, since this makes the "evil one happy" and "evil men" (creatures who personify poverty and misfortune) are calling to dinner. it was considered a sin to remove the spoons from the table in the spell, on the eve of the church fasts, so the spoons remained on the table until morning. You cannot put an extra spoon, otherwise there will be an extra mouth or evil spirits will sit down at the table. As a gift, it was necessary to bring a spoon for housewarming, along with a loaf of bread, salt and money. The spoon was widely used in ritual activities.

The traditional utensils for the Russian feast were valleys, ladles, brothers, brackets. Endows were not considered valuable items that needed to be displayed in the best place in the house, as, for example, was done with a brother or ladles.

A poker, a grab, a frying pan, a bread shovel, a pomelo are objects associated with the hearth and the stove.

The poker is a short, thick iron rod with a curved end, which was used to stir the coals in the oven and to sweep away the heat. With the help of a grab, pots and cast iron were moved in the oven, they could also be removed or installed in the oven. It is a metal bow mounted on a long wooden handle. Before planting the loaves in the oven under the oven, they were cleared of coal and ash, sweeping it with a broom. A pomelo is a long wooden handle, to the end of which pine, juniper branches, straw, a washcloth or a rag were tied. With the help of a bread shovel, breads and pies were planted in the oven, and they were also taken out of there. All these utensils participated in various ritual actions.

Thus, the Russian hut, with its special, well organized space, a motionless outfit, movable furniture, decoration and utensils, was a single whole, constituting the whole world for the peasant.

The secrets of the Russian hut and its mysteries, little wisdom and traditions, the basic rules in the construction of a Russian hut, signs, facts and the history of the emergence of the "hut on chicken legs" - everything is very brief.

It is generally accepted that the most environmentally friendly and human-friendly houses can only be built from wood. Wood is the oldest building material presented to us by the most perfect laboratory on Earth - Nature.

In the premises of a wooden structure, air humidity is always optimal for human life. The unique structure of the wood mass, consisting of capillaries, absorbs excess moisture from the air, and in case of excessive dryness, gives it to the room.

Log houses have natural energy, create a special microclimate in the hut, and provide natural ventilation. From wooden walls emanates homeliness and peace, they protect in summer from heat, and in winter from frost. Wood retains heat well. Even in bitter frost, the walls of the log house are warm inside.

Anyone who has ever visited a real Russian hut will never forget its enchanting benevolent spirit: subtle notes of wood resin, the aroma of freshly baked bread from a Russian oven, the spice of medicinal herbs. Due to its properties, wood neutralizes heavy odors by ozonizing the air.

And it is not without reason that interest in wood construction arises again and grows with incredible speed, gaining more and more popularity.

So, little wisdom, secrets and secrets of the Russian hut!

The name of the Russian house "hut" comes from the Old Russian "istba", which means "house, bathhouse" or "source" from the "Tale of Bygone Years ...". The ancient Russian name for a wooden dwelling is rooted in the Proto-Slavic "jьstъba" and is considered to be borrowed from the Germanic "stuba". In ancient German, "stuba" meant "warm room, bath".

When building a new hut, our ancestors followed the rules developed over the centuries, because the construction of a new house is a significant event in the life of a peasant family and all traditions were observed to the smallest detail. One of the main precepts of the ancestors was the choice of a place for the future hut. A new hut should not be built on a place where there used to be a cemetery, a road or a bathhouse. But at the same time, it was desirable that the place for the new house was already habitable, where people lived in complete well-being, in a bright and dry place.

The main tool in the construction of all Russian wooden structures was an ax. Hence they say not to build, but to cut down the house. The saw began to be used at the end of the 18th century, and in some places from the middle of the 19th century.

Initially (up to the 10th century) the hut was a log structure, partly (up to a third) sinking into the ground. That is, a recess was dug out and above it was completed in 3-4 rows of thick logs. Thus, the hut itself was a semi-dugout.

Initially, there was no door, it was replaced by a small entrance opening, about 0.9 meters by 1 meter, covered by a pair of log halves tied together and a canopy.

The main requirement for the building material was customary - the log house was either cut from pine, spruce or larch. The trunk of coniferous trees was tall, slender, amenable to processing with an ax and at the same time was strong, walls made of pine, spruce or larch kept warm well in the house in winter and did not heat up in summer, in the heat, keeping pleasant coolness. At the same time, the choice of a tree in the forest was governed by several rules. For example, it was impossible to cut down sick, old and dry trees that were considered dead and could, according to legends, bring illness into the house. It was impossible to cut down the trees that grew on the road and along the roads. Such trees were considered "violent" and in a frame such logs, according to legend, can fall out of the walls and crush the owners of the house.

The construction of the house was accompanied by a number of customs. During the laying of the first crown of the log house (mortgage), a coin or paper bill was placed under each corner, a piece of wool from a sheep or a small skein of woolen yarn was placed in another, grain was poured into the third, and incense was placed under the fourth. Thus, at the very beginning of the construction of the hut, our ancestors did such rituals for the future dwelling, which signified its wealth, family warmth, well-fed life and holiness in later life.

In the setting of the hut there is not a single superfluous random object, each thing has its own strictly defined purpose and a place illuminated by tradition, which is a characteristic feature of the people's dwelling.

The doors in the hut were made as low as possible, and the windows were placed higher. So less heat left the hut.

The Russian hut was either a "four-walled cage" (a simple cage) or a "five-wall cage" (a cage partitioned off by a wall inside - a "cut"). During the construction of the hut, the stands were attached to the main volume of the cage utility rooms("Porch", "canopy", "yard", "bridge" between the hut and the yard, etc.). In Russian lands, not spoiled by heat, they tried to put the whole complex of buildings together, to press them together.

There were three types of organization of the complex of buildings that made up the courtyard. A single large two-story house for several related families under one roof was called a "purse". If the utility rooms were attached to the side and the whole house took on the form of the letter "G", then it was called a "verb". If the outbuildings were adjusted from the end of the main frame and the whole complex was stretched in a line, then they said that it was a "timber".

The porch of the hut was usually followed by a "canopy" (canopy - a shadow, a shaded place). They were arranged so that the door did not open directly to the street, and the heat did not come out of the hut in winter. The front part of the building, together with the porch and the entryway, was called in ancient times "sprout".

If the hut was two-story, then the second floor was called a "povetya" in outbuildings and a "room" in a dwelling. The rooms above the second floor, where the maiden was usually located, were called "terem".

The house was rarely built by everyone for himself. Usually the whole world ("society") was invited to the construction. The forest was harvested back in winter, while there is no sap flow in the trees, and construction began in early spring. After the laying of the first crown of the log house, the first meal "pomochanam" ("salary treat") was arranged. Such treats are an echo of ancient ritual feasts, which often took place with sacrifices.

After the "salary treat" they began to arrange a log house. At the beginning of summer, after the laying of the ceiling matts, a new ritual treat for the pomochans followed. Then they proceeded to the installation of the roof. Having reached the top, having laid down the skate, they arranged a new, "ridge" meal. And after the completion of construction at the very beginning of autumn - a feast.

Demyanov's ear. Artist Andrey Popov

The cat should be the first to enter the new home. In the North of Russia, the cult of the cat is still preserved. In most northern houses, thick doors in the canopy have a hole for the cat at the bottom.

In the depths of the hut there was a hearth made of stones. There was no smoke outlet, in order to save heat, the smoke was kept in the room, and the excess exited through the inlet. Chicken huts probably contributed to the short life expectancy in the old days (about 30 years for men): the products of burning wood are substances that cause cancer.

The floors in the huts were earthen. Only with the spread in Russia of saws and sawmills in cities and in the houses of landowners began to appear wooden floors. Initially, the floors were laid from planks made of logs split in half, or from a massive thick floorboard. However, plank floors began to spread en masse only in the 18th century, since sawmill production was not developed. It was only through the efforts of Peter I that saws and sawmills began to spread in Russia with the publication of Peter's decree "On the training of woodcutters to cut firewood" in 1748. Until the twentieth century, the floors in the peasant hut were earthen, that is, the leveled land was simply trampled down. Sometimes the top layer was smeared with clay mixed with manure, which prevented the formation of cracks.

Logs for Russian huts were prepared from November-December, chopping down tree trunks in a circle and letting them dry on the vine (standing up) over the winter. The trees were chopped up and the logs were taken out even in the snow before the spring thaw. When cutting the cage, the logs were laid with the northern, denser side outward, so that the wood cracked less and better withstood the effects of the atmosphere. Coins, wool and incense were placed in the corners of the house along the construction so that its inhabitants lived healthy, prosperity and warmth.

Until the 9th century, there were no windows at all in Russian huts.

Until the 20th century, windows in Russian huts were not opened. We ventilated the hut through the door and the chimney (a wooden ventilation pipe on the roof). Shutters protected the huts from bad weather and dashing people. A shuttered window could serve as a "mirror" during the day.

In the old days, the shutters were single-leaf. There were no double frames in the old days either. In winter, for warmth, the windows were closed from the outside with straw mats or simply heaped up with heaps of straw.

Numerous patterns of the Russian hut served (and serve) not so much decoration as protection of the house from evil forces... The symbolism of sacred images came from pagan times: solar circles, thunder signs (arrows), fertility signs (a field with dots), horse heads, horseshoes, heavenly abyss (various wavy lines), weaving and knots.

The hut was installed directly on the ground or on poles. Oak logs, large stones or stumps, on which the frame stood, were brought under the corners. In summer, the wind blew under the hut, drying the boards of the so-called "black" floor from below. By winter, the house was sprinkled with earth or a mound was made of turf. In the spring, the embankment or embankment was dug in some places to create ventilation.

The "red" corner in the Russian hut was located in the far corner of the hut, on the east side diagonally from the stove. The icons were placed in the shrine in the "red" or "holy" corner of the room in such a way that a person entering the house could see them immediately. It was considered important element protecting the house from "evil forces". The icons had to stand, and not hang, as they were revered as "alive".

The emergence of the image of the "Hut on Chicken Legs" is historically associated with wooden log cabins, which in ancient Russia were placed on stumps with chopped off roots to protect the tree from decay. In the dictionary of V. I. Dal it is said that "kur" is the rafters on peasant huts. In swampy places, huts were built on such rafters. In Moscow, one of the old wooden churches was called "Nikola on chicken legs", because because of the swampy area it stood on stumps.

Hut on chicken legs - in fact, they are CHICKEN, from the word chicken hut. Chicken huts were called huts that were heated "in black", that is, without a chimney. A stove without a chimney was used, called a "chicken stove" or "black". The smoke came out through the doors and during the heating it hung from the ceiling in a thick layer, which caused the upper parts of the logs in the hut to be covered with soot.

In ancient times, there was a funeral rite, which included the smoking of the legs of a "hut" without windows and doors, into which a corpse was placed.

The hut on chicken legs in folk fantasy was modeled on the image of a Slavic churchyard, a small house of the dead. The house was placed on pillars. In fairy tales, they are presented as chicken legs, too, for a reason. The chicken is a sacred animal, an indispensable attribute of many magical rites. The Slavs put the ashes of the deceased in the house of the dead. The coffin itself, the domina or the graveyard-cemetery from such houses were presented as a window, an opening into the world of the dead, a means of passage to the underworld. That is why our fairytale hero constantly comes to the hut on chicken legs - to get into another dimension of time and the reality of not living people, but wizards. There is no other way there.

Chicken legs are just a "translation mistake".

The Slavs called the hemp "chicken (chicken) legs", on which the hut was placed, that is, the house of Baba Yaga originally stood only on smoked hemp. From the point of view of supporters of the Slavic (classical) origin of Baba Yaga, an important aspect of this image is that she belongs to two worlds at once - the world of the dead and the world of the living.

Chicken huts existed in Russian villages until the 19th century, they were encountered even at the beginning of the 20th century.

Only in the 18th century and only in St. Petersburg did Tsar Peter I forbid building houses with black heating. In other settlements, they continued to be built until the 19th century.

Today we will continue our conversation about the organization of the hut space taking into account. We will again refer to quotations from the scientific work of the candidate of art history Evgenia Vladimirovna Gavrilova "The main directions of the development of the subject-spatial environment country house in Russia in the 1980s - early 2000s. (historical traditions and innovative techniques) ”.

Exploring features planning and interior of the Russian hut, we are trying to convey to potential owners of such a structure the "subtleties" that should be known to the owners of the home. Modern stylized as an old Russian hut Vacation home should not be some kind of parody of the "original". Of course, an element of theatricality in such a dwelling will be present, but if all the elements of the interior are "kept" in one "tone" and do not reach the grotesque, then the owners themselves and their guests will come to the conclusion that this is a real Russian hut with its characteristic semantics (symbols).

So, let's take a look at the hut in which our ancestors lived and which is a model for architects and designers of the 21st century. “It is noteworthy,” writes E. V. Gavrilova in her work, “that the two centers into which the hut was divided were different not only in spirit, but also in figurative perception. Being in a single space, they were very different in their structure. The front corner with the goddess and the table, directed to the southeast, was considered a clean, ceremonial half of the hut. Here they prayed to God. The kiln corner, oriented to the northwest, was interpreted as a dark, unclean place. The front corner was considered the male half, the stove - the female. It is interesting how the spatial organization and decoration these two zones corresponded to the perception of images of a man and a woman by traditional consciousness. "

With a skillful approach to business, a modern architect is able to design a hut that is practically no different from the one described in the quote. By the way, the division of the house into female and male halves is relevant to this day. As a rule, each of the spouses wants to have a "personal space" in the house. As for the representatives of the strong half of humanity, then, according to the source, “the male principle was considered to be creative, balancing, dominant. However, the man, mostly outside the hut, in the inner space was the embodiment of the static principle. The situation was quite consistent with this. front corner- there was a table, above it was a shrine with icons. Along the walls there were motionless benches, above them - shelves cut into the walls, which were cut down together with the frame. Only on holidays was the table moved to the middle and covered with a white tablecloth, and festive utensils appeared on the shelves. This space was the most illuminated in the entire hut. During the meal, the owner of the house sat under the icons surrounded by the eldest sons - the embodiment of the notion that the husband is the head of the family church. The women, on the other hand, ate while sitting and on stools, because they needed more freedom of movement to serve and clear from the table. "

Not all housewives living in the 21st century will agree with such "discrimination". If a man is not against such a formulation of the question, then a woman is unlikely to share his point of view. But everything can be solved peacefully, and the problem will come to naught. After all, it's about its interior, not about the division of responsibilities between husband and wife.

In the scientific work of E.V. Gavrilova, it is also said about a woman in a Russian hut. But we are not at all encouraging homeowners to strictly follow the foundations of our ancestors. Nevertheless, we will quote from the dissertation. In particular, the author of the work writes that “... the wife personified the dynamic principle in the house, outside of which she was rarely.

"Woman's road - from the oven to the threshold." Her usual place of residence is stove corner- was much less laconic in structure than the ceremonial one. The oven itself was, in the words of A. V. Opolovnikov (Soviet and Russian scientist, academician, architect, restorer - approx. A. K.) "a multifunctional unit" that was used for a huge number of household needs, and together with constructively connected with it elements formed a very expressive volumetric composition in the hut. The stove stood on a log house, organically connected with the structure of the entire hut - it consisted of thick rectangular beams connected in a "paw" and cut with their other ends into the two walls of the hut closest to the stove. The front corner of the furnace house serves as the basis for a massive square pillar, which served as a support for two Vorontsov shelves, diverging from it at right angles. A wrought iron light was hammered into it - a clamp for the torches that illuminated the hut. Nearby was a hook for a hanging washstand. At one end, a wooden stove bench by the stove rested on a pillar, and a round depression, like a hollow, was made in it, where in ancient times dry tinder and flint were kept, and then matches. A conic was attached to the pillar - a rather wide heavy board with a figured top, separating a clean place for cooking - a pole, from a washstand and a tub in front of it, from a stove bench and from stoves - recesses in the furnace frame for drying mittens and other things. "

We talked in some detail about the construction of this integral element of the Russian hut. But the above quote will undoubtedly complement what was said earlier. By the way, potential owners of a Russian hut will have to use the oven for its intended purpose, that is, cook on it. Of course, no one obliges homeowners to forget about the fruits of civilization, and, even more so, no one has the right to prohibit them from having where the hostess can cook food as it is done in an urban setting. But such a kitchen should not violate the harmony of the decoration of the hut, and it is desirable that the kitchen is out of sight.

You can taste all the charm of this house only by completely "surrendering" to it. Food cooked on the stove cannot be compared to food “born” on a gas (electric) stove or heated in a microwave oven.

At the beginning of the next meeting, we will devote, after which we will begin a conversation about the estate.

Alexey Kaverau

The article uses photos of the sites: photos.lifeisphoto, museum, kinoshljapa, vodla, bt-test

3 In a peasant hut

The peasant's dwelling was adapted to his lifestyle. It consisted of cold rooms - cages and canopy and warm - huts with a stove. The canopy connected the cold cage and the warm hut, the utility yard and the house. The peasants kept their goods in them, and in the warm season they slept. I was in the house basement, or subfloor (that is, what was under the floor, under the cage). It was a cold room where food was stored.

The Russian hut consisted of horizontally folded logs - crowns, which were stacked on top of each other, having cut round grooves along the edges. They put the next log in them. Moss was placed between the logs for warmth. Huts were built in the old days from spruce or pine. There was a pleasant resinous smell from the logs in the hut.

Cutting the corners of the hut: 1 - "in the field"; 2 - "in the paw"

The roof was made sloping on both sides. Rich peasants covered it with thin aspen planks, which they fastened to one another. The poor, on the other hand, covered their houses with straw. The straw was stacked on the roof in rows, starting from the bottom. Each row was tied to the base of the roof with bast. Then the straw was "combed" with a rake and watered with liquid clay for strength. The top of the roof was pressed with a heavy log, the front end of which was in the shape of a horse's head. This is where the name comes from skate.

Almost the entire facade of the peasant house was decorated with carvings. Carvings were made on shutters, window frames, which appeared in the 17th century, and the edges of the porch canopies. It was believed that images of animals, birds, ornamentation protect the home from evil spirits.

Hut on the basement of the XII-XIII centuries. Reconstruction

If we enter a peasant hut, we will surely stumble. Why? It turns out that the door, hung on forged hinges, had a low lintel at the top and a high threshold at the bottom. The incoming stumbled over him. They took care of the warmth and tried not to let it out in this way.

The windows were made small so that there was only enough light for work. There were usually three windows in the front wall of the hut. These windows were closed (covered) with plates and were called drag. Sometimes they were tightened with a bovine bubble or oiled linen. Through the window, which was closer to the stove, smoke was released during the firebox, since there was no chimney on the roof. It was called to drown "In black".

In one of the side walls of the peasant hut they made oblique window - with jambs and vertical beams. Through this window they watched the courtyard, through which light fell on the bench, on which the owner was engaged in his craft.

Drag window

Oblique window

Hut on a residential basement. Reconstruction. On the second floor you can see the oven on the guardianship

Grip and cast iron

In the northern regions of Russia, its central regions, the floors were laid from floorboards- halves of logs, along the hut from the door to the front windows. In the South, the floors were earthen, smeared with liquid clay.

The central place in the house was occupied by the stove. Suffice it to recall that the word "hut" itself comes from the word "to heat": "firebox" is the heated part of the house, hence the "istba" (hut). There was no ceiling in the hut where the stove was fired "in black": the smoke came out of the window under the very roof. Such peasant huts were called smoked. Only the rich had a stove with a chimney and a hut with a ceiling. Why is that? In the smoky hut, all the walls were black and smoked. It turns out that such sooty walls do not rot longer, the hut could serve for a hundred years, and the stove without a chimney "ate" less firewood.

The stove in the peasant house was set on guardians- a foundation made of logs. Inside laid out under- the bottom, where firewood burned and food was cooked. The upper part of the furnace was called vault, hole - mouth. The stove occupied almost a quarter of the peasant hut. The internal layout of the hut depended on the location of the stove: even a saying arose - "To dance from the stove." The stove was placed in one of the corners, to the right or to the left of the entrance, but so that it was well lit. The location of the furnace mouth relative to the door depended on the climate. In areas with a warm climate, the stove was placed with its mouth towards the entrance, in areas with a harsh climate - with its mouth against the wall.

The stove was always built at a certain distance from the wall so that there was no fire. The small space between the wall and the stove was called bake- it was used for household needs. Here the hostess kept the necessary supplies for work: grips different sizes, poker, chapelnik, a large shovel.

Grips are “horned” semicircular devices for placing pots in the stove. The bottom of the pot, or cast iron, entered between the horns of the grip. They took the frying pans out of the oven with a chapelnik: for this, a bent tongue was made in the middle of the iron strip. These devices were mounted on a wooden handle. With the help of a wooden shovel, they put bread in the oven, and raked out coals and ash with a poker.

The stove was sure to six, where the pots were. Coals were raked onto it. Under the pole in a niche they kept inventory, a splinter, and in winter ... chickens lived there. There were also small niches for storing household items, drying gloves.

Everyone loved the stove in the peasant family: she fed it with delicious, steamed, incomparable food. The stove warmed the house, the old people slept on the stove. But the hostess of the house spent most of the time near the stove. The corner near the mouth of the furnace was called so - woman's kut, that is, the female corner. Here the hostess prepared food, there was a cupboard for storing kitchen utensils - dishware.

The other corner - near the door and opposite the window - was masculine. There was a shop where the owner worked and sometimes slept. Peasant goods were kept under the bench. And on the wall hung horse harness, clothes and work accessories. This corner, like the shop that stood here, was called conic: on the bench they made patterns in the form of a horse's head.

Wooden spoons. XIII and XV centuries

Ladles. XV century

Think why so often in a peasant hut there is a pattern with a horse's head.

Between the oven and the side wall under the ceiling was laid polati, where children slept, stored property, dried onions and peas. They even added a tongue twister about this:

Under the mat, under the ceiling

Hanging half a cap to the peas

No worm, no wormhole.

From the side of the entrance to the stove there was an extension made of boards - pies, or golbets. It was possible to sit on it, from it - to climb onto the stove or down the stairs to the cellar. Household utensils were also kept in the oven.

In the peasant house, everything was thought out to the smallest detail. A special iron ring was inserted into the central beam of the hut ceiling - matica, a cradle was attached to it. A peasant woman, sitting at work on a bench, inserted her leg into the loop of the cradle and rocked it. So that there was no fire, where the torch burned, a box with earth was always placed on the floor, where sparks flew.

Interior view of a hut with battens. Reconstruction

Interior view of the 17th century hut. Reconstruction

The main corner of the peasant house was the red corner: there was a special shelf with icons - goddess, stood under it dinner table... This place of honor in the peasant hut was always located diagonally from the stove. The person entering the hut always looked into this corner, took off his hat, crossed himself and bowed low to the icons. And only then he greeted.

In general, the peasants were very religious, and the very word "peasant" came from the related "Christian", "Christian". The peasant family attached great importance to prayers: morning, evening, before meals. It was an obligatory ritual. Without praying, they did not start any business. The peasants regularly attended church, especially in winter and autumn, when they were free from economic hardships. The peasant family also strictly observed posts. The peasants loved icons: they were carefully kept and passed on from generation to generation. The icons were lit icon lamps- special small vessels with oil. The goddess was decorated with embroidered towels - towels.

Russian village in the 17th century Engraving

Water dispenser. XVI century

Russian peasants who sincerely believed in God could not work badly on the land, which they considered a divine creation.

In the Russian hut, almost everything was done by the hands of the peasants themselves. The furniture was homemade, wooden, of a simple design: a table in the red corner of the size of the number of eaters, benches nailed to the walls, portable benches, and chests. Good was stored in the chests, so in several places they were upholstered with iron strips, locked with locks. The more chests there were in the house, the richer the peasant family was considered.

The peasant hut was notable for its cleanliness: cleaning was done regularly, curtains and towels were changed often. Next to the stove in the hut was always water dispenser- an earthenware jug with two spouts: on one side, water was poured, on the other, it was poured out. Dirty water collected in tub- a special wooden bucket. Water was also carried in wooden buckets on yoke. It was said about him: "Not the light of dawn went, bent over, from the yard."

All the dishes in the peasant house were wooden, and the pots and patches(low flat bowls) - earthenware. Cast irons were made from a hard material - cast iron. Furnace cast irons had a rounded body and a narrow bottom. Thanks to this shape, the oven heat was evenly distributed over the surface of the pots.

The liquids were stored in clay pots with a round body, a small bottom and an elongated throat. For storing kvass, beer were used korchagi, valleys(with spout) and brothers(without him). The most common form bucket in Russia there was a swimming duck, whose nose served as a handle.

Earthenware was covered with simple glaze, wood was decorated with paintings and carvings. Many of the ladles, cups, bowls and spoons are now in museums in Russia.

Ladle. XVII century.

Wooden crockery of the 12th – 13th centuries: 1 - plate (traces of cutting meat are visible); 2 - bowl; 3 - bettor; 4 - dish; 5 - valley

Cooper products of the 10th – 13th centuries: 1 - tub; 2 - gang; 3 - barrel; 4 - tub; 5 - tub; 6 - bucket

Teslo and scraper

In the peasant economy, cooperage products were also widely used: barrels, tubs, vats, tubs, tubs, gangs. Tub It was called so because ears with holes were attached to it on both sides. A stick was threaded into them to make it more convenient to carry water in a tub. Gangs were with one handle. Barrels called large round-shaped containers with a narrow bottom, and in tub the bottom was wide.

Bulk products were stored in wooden suppliers with lids, birch bark tuesah and beetroot. Wicker products were in use - baskets, baskets, boxes made of bast and rods.

All the utensils were made by the peasants using simple tools. Chief among them was axe. There were carpentry, big axes and joiner, small hatchets. When chiselling troughs, making barrels and tubs, a special ax was used - adze. For planing and skinning of the tree, they used scraper- a flat, narrow, slightly curved plate with a blade on the working part. For drilling used drills. The saw did not appear immediately: in ancient times, everything was done with axes.

Centuries passed, and the peasant hut with its simple household utensils was passed from generation to generation without changing. The new generation only gained more experience and dexterity in making products and building houses.

Questions and tasks

1. How was the peasant hut built? What parts did it consist of? Try to draw her plan.

2. Describe what the inside of the peasant hut looked like.

3. How were windows, stoves and benches located in the peasant hut? Why is it so?

4. What role did the Russian stove play in the peasant house and how was it arranged?

5. Draw the items of peasant utensils:

a) stove utensils; b) kitchen utensils; c) furniture; d) tools for work.

6. Rewrite, insert missing letters and explain the words:

k-h-rga

to-r-thought

kr-stianin

p-catcher

hand-washbasin

p-bet

7. Make a detailed story "In a peasant hut".

8. Solve the riddles and draw the answers to them.

1. Base - pine, Ducks - straw.

2. Marya-princess Herself in the hut, Sleeves in the yard.

3. Two clerks Lead Mary to the spin.

4. White eats, Black drops.

5. The mother is fat, The daughter is red, The son is a falcon, He has gone under the skies.

6. Good to pray, Good to cover pots.

7. The black horse Rides into the fire.

8. Not a bull, but butts,

He does not eat, but there is enough food,

What grabs, gives

He goes to the corner himself.

9. - Blackie-tan!

Where did you go?

- Be quiet, twisted-twisted,

You will be there.

10. Three brothers

Let's go swimming,

Two are swimming,

The third is lying on the shore.

Have a swim, come out,

They hung on the third.

11. Fish in the sea,

The tail is on the fence.

12. It is worth a hit,

It is belted with three belts.

13.With ears, but may not hear.

14. All the doves

Around one groove.

Answers: buckets and a rocker, an icon, a burning torch, a ladle, a tub, a roof, a poker, spoons and a bowl, a mat, hinges and a door, a stove, a grab, a tub, cast iron and a pot.

This text is an introductory fragment.