Pomorye

Pomorye is the northern coastal country around the White Sea. Its seafaring communities, often called Pomors, relied on fishing, hunting sea mammals and trade as well as the limited farming possible in the north. Kholmogory was an important centre before the rise of Arkhangelsk in the late sixteenth century. Records from that century describe Pomor voyages to Novaya Zemlya and Vaygach; in 1556 local sailors guided the English navigator Stephen Borough toward the Pechora. Northern sailors used vessels known as koches on routes toward Siberia, where Mangazeya became an important fur-trading settlement in the early seventeenth century. Sea trade also linked northern Russia and Norway, exchanging fish and grain. These routes depended on practical knowledge of ice, weather and the short sailing season.