Writing on birch bark was common, to say the least. During the 1950s, a dig was started to find these; so far, over 1000 have been found and indexed over the years. Online, you can find digital copies of these over at gramoty.ru (sadly just in Russian). This is a tool to look into the mind of what people at the time were thinking - some of them are rude: «Brother Jakov, do your screwing lying down, you horny ballser!» reads one. I suppose the way that people at the time treated these birch barks is as rude as we treat text messages. The context to these letters sent was not just to brothers; there were so many written ones to lovers, friends, and ones talking about everyday life. Due to the way that the people of Veliky Novgorod, now Russia, saw these birch barks, they were simply thrown away into the mud; they wanted them to be thrown into the trash, but due to this mud and the lack of air inside of it, this is why we know so much about them.
One of my favorite finds of this was Onfim (Q3891932
on Wikidata), or «Онѳимє» as he would have
written it in the East
Slavic Old Novgorod, who lived around 1220–60. We don't know much
about this boy, but what we do know about him is, like many of the
birch, is thanks to the mud of Russia.
From what I have seen from the images uploaded online, Onfim, who was around six or seven at the time, was a school child who was made to write out things like Bible lines as well as other things, such as writing out the Cyrillic script in our ABCs. But, as with many children, Onfim had better things on his mind.
Diploma number 202 shows two people, two noodle-like people with forks for fingers, standing together; one of them to the left (who is only made up of arms, fingers, a simple round head, and a very long pair of legs) also has what some people think could be a beard, suggesting that the other person could be one of Onfim himself.
This is the art of the boy from the 1200s, doodles that he should not have been making. It's joyful to see.
Number 200 shows a person on horseback, striking down a poor soul with a pike or lance. Next to the horseback rider is the name ONFIM, telling us that this is the young boy killing another stickman.
«Lord, help your servant/slave Onfim» reads number 203, showing another stickman holding a long lance or pike, aiming for another person in the head. A lot of Onfim's work is of wars and battles, a daydream for the young boy.
My top pick of his work is Diploma number 199; it's a note that on one side has schoolwork on it. Turn it around and we can see a note. «Greetings from Onfim to Danilo!» says the boy with the final part of the text reading, «I am a wild beast!» Next to this text, we see that Onfim drew himself as a long noodle that appears to be a dragon with a square head, pointy ears, a tail that curls around on itself, all while spitting FIRE. It's adorable to see this boy picture himself as a scary animal like this, and of course, for all that it is worth, we should not know about Onfim, as, well, his work was put in the ground at the time.
I only talked about what I feel is a highlight of his work, but there are others to be found.
But, to end this off, what does this tell us? What can we learn from this child who lived so long ago? Well, a few things, mostly about education. We know that in what is now Russia, people, and children, were able to read and write, and we know that children are still the same, still wanting to do better things with their time than learn how to read and write.
I encourage people to take the time in looking up Onfim; there are a few good videos and articles about this boy, including even an album named after him. Wikipedia is a good jumping-off point for most things, including this subject.
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This page was last edited on 2026-09-09 03:47:17.
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