Totma

Totma was founded in 1137 and is on the list of forty-one especially valuable historic towns of Russia that have kept both their layout and most of their old building stock; the town holds a considerable number of federal and regional monuments. The name comes from Finno-Ugric languages: Komi 'tod' — 'a damp place grown with firs and shrubs' and '-ma' — 'land'. The town stands on the left bank of the Sukhona at the mouth of the Pesya-Denga river. Peter the Great, runs the legend, joked over Totma — 'that is no town, that is darkness' — though the toponym predates Peter's era by centuries, and the flaw in this version is obvious. But 'the town that conjures water' is almost a scientific formula: the Sukhona flows out of Kubenskoye lake, yet in flood season the river's level rises above the lake's, and the current in the upper reaches reverses — for a time the river flows towards the very lake it flows out of. A river that runs both ways is a rarity, alive to this day, and locals gladly show where and when it can be seen. Totma's chief historical story is its navigators and salt. Totma merchants outfitted expeditions to the east of the country, salt was boiled here at the Sol onye Varny pans — a quarter that gave its name to a street and district — and a native son, Ivan Kuskov, founded Fort Ross in California and willed himself to be buried in his native Totma: his grave is in the Spaso-Sumorin monastery. The town's museums keep charts and relics of the Pacific voyages of Totma's navigators. The architectural signature is Totma baroque: churches with unique cartouches — medallions on the facades, found nowhere else in Russia. A walk through town, from the Trinity church to the Sol onye Varny quarter, reads like a textbook of northern history: salt, fur, sea, charts. All of it at the scale of one small town that lived by a great ocean — and that paradox of Totma's history is best felt on the spot.