Izboishchi

Izboishchi stands on the Kobozha River, in the wooded country between Novgorod and the lands of Belozero. Its inhabitants appear in a fifteenth-century birch-bark letter found at Novgorod: peasants of Izboishchi addressed a petition to a man named Ondreyan Mikhailovich. The historian Valentin Yanin associated that letter with the churchyard on the Kobozha, linking this small settlement to the written records of medieval Novgorod.