Velsk

Velsk stands at the confluence of the Vel and Vaga, in a northern river country connected to the Dvina and the White Sea. A place on the Vel appears in a Novgorodian charter of 1137 as a point for collecting church tribute. The rivers helped make the settlement a centre for the surrounding forest villages.

The Velsk pogost passed from the Novgorodian sphere to Moscow in the fifteenth century and became a trading settlement, or posad, in 1550. Houses were built on higher ground above the Vaga’s floods. In 1780 it received town status and became the centre of a district under Catherine II's reforms. The Vaga was navigable in spring, and local products could be carried along the waterways to markets farther north and south.