Vodlozero

The Vodlozero country lies east of Lake Onega, around an island-studded lake surrounded by forest and marsh. Villages stood on its shores and islands, and the lake's waters fed the Vodla, which flows westward to Onega. The waterways also formed part of an old route toward the Onega River and the White Sea.

A survey of 1563 recorded villages and abandoned clearings in the Vodlozero parish district. The churchyard was a centre for communities scattered across the lake. In the seventeenth century the region also sheltered religious dissenters: hermitages opposed to Patriarch Nikon's reforms appeared around Vodlozero and in neighbouring districts. Their presence added another chapter to the religious life of a region whose wooden churches and chapels served settlements separated by water and forest.