Volkhov Pedestrian Bridge

The present pedestrian bridge stands on three spans above the Volkhov riverbed and links the Sophia Side and the Market Side of the city. It was opened in nineteen eighty-seven, but the crossing between these banks is much older. The medieval Great Bridge ran roughly fifty meters upstream, between the Prechistensky Gates of the Novgorod Kremlin and the market rows; the remains of its twelfth-century wooden supports were found underwater. At that time, the deck served as a city square where people traded, negotiated, and passed judgment, while the river beneath it was part of the punishment.

At the beginning of eleven forty-one, Sviatoslav Olgovich, the prince invited by the people of Veliky Novgorod, secretly left the city at night. His older brother intended to hand the Novgorod principality over to his own son, and Sviatoslav decided to leave before an open break with the townspeople. Yakun Miroslavich fled with him—a posadnik, the elected head of the city administration and a participant in judicial proceedings. Yakun tried to save himself and his position alongside the allied prince.

Sviatoslav managed to escape. Yakun and his brother Prokopii, who had helped him flee, were caught and brought back to Veliky Novgorod. Both were beaten almost to death, stripped, and thrown from the Great Bridge into the Volkhov River.

For a medieval city, the bridge was a shared street between the Sophia Side and the Market Side. People traded on it, gathered there for negotiations, and carried out sentences there. Throwing someone into the river served as a method of execution. The punishment of Yakun took place here because the bridge gave the townspeople both a public place in the center of Veliky Novgorod and water beneath its deck.

Yakun managed to reach the shore. The chronicler explained his rescue as God's will; the fugitive was neither beaten nor thrown into the water a second time. They exacted one thousand grivnas from him—an enormous sum even for a boyar from one of the wealthiest city clans. They took one hundred grivnas from Prokopii. Then the brothers were shackled with their hands drawn tight to their necks and sent to Chud Land—the name for the lands of Finno-Ugric peoples west of Veliky Novgorod.

Fifteen years later, Yakun returned. In the spring of eleven fifty-six, the people of Veliky Novgorod elected him posadnik again, and later entrusted him with the office once more. The man whom the townspeople stripped and threw from the bridge as a fugitive headed the city administration three times in all.

The Great Bridge of Yakun's time ran roughly fifty meters upstream—from the lost Prechistensky Gates of the Novgorod Kremlin to the main row of the Torg. Underwater archaeologists found the remains of its twelfth-century wooden supports there. The present three-span bridge was opened in nineteen eighty-seven and set aside for pedestrians. It connects the same two sides, but stands downstream. There is now neither a deck nor railings above the place from which Yakun was thrown.