Cherdyn

Cherdyn is one of the oldest towns in the Urals, its name in the land registers rendered as Great Perm of Cherdyn. The town stands on the high right bank of the Kolva near its confluence with the Vishera, opposite the Polyud hill. In the tenth to twelfth centuries trade ran from here with the Volga Bulgars, Iran, Novgorod and Yugra: the Novgorodians reached it by portage from the Vychegda to the Kolva. The town held a crossroads of river-and-portage routes: to the Vychegda along the Kolva through the Nem portage, to the Pechora and the Arctic Ocean, to Western Siberia along the Vishera. In the nineteenth century historians even identified the area with the Scandinavian Biarmia of the sagas. The exact founding date is unknown — by one hypothesis the town moved from Pyanteg to Pokcha before settling on its present site. Today Cherdyn is a quiet town of some four and a half thousand people, with the Troitskoye site on the bluff, the Resurrection cathedral and museum streets. People come here for genuine historical depth: not reconstruction, but layers of centuries visible from the high bank.