Lyubytino

At Lyubytino the Bela joins the Msta amid a remarkable concentration of old burial mounds. Tall earthen sopki rise beside the river, traces of communities that inhabited this stretch of the Msta long before the modern settlement took shape. The river valley was known in early sources as Pomostye, a district of the Novgorod lands.

Later church settlements stood near the mouth of the Bela. The churchyard on the left bank of the Msta is recorded around 1495, and in the middle of the sixteenth century the trading settlement of Bely had 34 households. Pestilence and epidemics took a heavy toll: by the end of the seventeenth century, seven households on the left bank were occupied and twenty-two stood empty. The waterways nevertheless sustained exchange in timber, flour, livestock and pottery among the communities along the Msta.