Yezsk

Yezsk stood where the Osen joins the Mologa. Archaeological remains at the confluence include an early fortified settlement with an earthen rampart and ditch, timber buildings with stone ovens, and traces of metalworking. The place appears as Yezsk in a thirteenth-century addition to a princely charter and in a Novgorodian birch-bark letter. It belonged to Bezhetsky Verkh in the Novgorod lands and served as a point for collecting duties.

In later centuries Yeski became a substantial trading and craft village on the Mologa waterway. Fishing, trade and shoemaking occupied its inhabitants alongside farming. In 1585 Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich granted the village to the Siberian prince Mametkul; it was later granted to the boyar Suleshev. Its name has been associated with fishing weirs, a reminder of the fish-rich river beside which the settlement grew.