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What 700-Year-Old Doodles Reveal About Medieval Life in Russia
In 1951, in Novgorod, Russia, more than 1100 pieces of birchbarks with doodles belonging to a child named Onfim were found. The world was shocked to find out that the doodles were more than 700 years old, making them the oldest confirmed children's drawings in the world. Onfim was a seven-year-old student in the Novgorod Republic, which stretched between current-day northern Russia and Finland. Russia was not a unified country but an alliance of different kingdoms and republics with Novgorod being one of them.
Onfim’s doodles reveal a lot about the medieval life of a Russian child at the time. All of his doodles were recorded on birchbarks because schools in Novgorod used dried birchbarks as papers due to the abundance of birchwood in Novgorod. Novgorod was relatively wealthy compared to other Russian kingdoms due to their dominance in the fur trade and many could afford to send their children to school. Like Onfim, many kids learned to read and write at a young age. Onfim’s writings are easy to decipher because Novgorod used Cyrillic alphabets like Russia does today.
In the doodle above, Onfim wrote his name next to a drawing of him riding a horse, and wrote the first letters of the Cyrillic alphabet…
