ABSTRACT
The songs about Sadko, like those about Vasily Buslayev, in many ways are closely connected with the life, history, and culture of Novgorod (Smirnov and Smolitskii 1978: 314–35). This city, which was often addressed as “Lord Great Novgorod,” was one of the principal urban centers in Kievan Rus, was located in the northwest, was primarily a merchant city, and had a democratic assembly called the veche. Novgorod was situated on the Volkhov River near the northern side of Lake Ilmen, carried on trade through river passages with the Baltic area in the west and with the Caspian region in the east, was associated with the Hanseatic League, and colonized much of the Russian North and Western Siberia. The city was known especially for its merchants, craftsmen, fishermen, sailors, and minstrels (skomorokhs). Novgorod belonged to a different cultural zone than the southern city of Kiev and shared many ethnographic features with nearby Scandinavia or with Finnish groups living in the same area. While much of the Russian land was devastated by the Tatar invasion in the middle of the thirteenth century, the northwestern part of the country, including Novgorod, remained largely untouched.
