Slavic knowledge on home improvement. Russian hut: interior decoration

Our Slavic culture has its own concepts about the arrangement of the house. We know, although we don’t remember where from for a long time, that the broom should be held with the broom up, that you can’t sit on the corner of the table, say goodbye across the threshold, twist your hat in your hands, hold out the sharp end of the knife to your neighbor, and so on. We have our own original history, we have something to be proud of and something to learn from the knowledge of our ancestors. Russia is a great power with its own traditions and rituals. Russian craftsmen are geniuses of their favorite business, who knew a lot about building strong, solid houses made of wood. It was the tree that was considered a symbol of beauty, life, greatness, which gave its owners warmth and comfort. The house for a Russian person was not only a shelter, but also a real complex of traditions.

It is impossible to overestimate the influence of the atmosphere of our home. We spend most of our time at home. About eight hours a day we spend in bed and the rest of the time at work. The atmosphere, setting and energy of a place affect our mood, self-confidence, relationships with households and our success in life, how we feel at work. Do we notice how we feel differently when we enter different rooms? It is easy to breathe in one, you feel some kind of light movement of air, your mood improves, you enjoy and relax while being there. And in the other, bad premonitions, bad smells, dark, unpleasant sensations fall upon you from the threshold. We want to leave this house as soon as possible. So a competent approach to housing arrangement will never be redundant.

So, guided by the experience and beliefs of the ancestors, one should simultaneously plant a tree in the middle of the future courtyard along with laying the foundation. Previously, they planted birch or mountain ash, very beautiful and graceful trees. In general, our ancestors endowed all trees with certain properties:

ebony symbolized the ability to magical protection,
oak- strength and luck,
pine- money and recovery,
cherry- love,
cedar- longevity,
maple- love and material well-being,
nut- health.

From time immemorial, a sign has remained: in order to ensure happiness and wealth, shreds of wool, grain or money were placed under the corners of the first logs. Before laying the ceiling, a turned-out bear short fur coat and a loaf of bread, a pie or a pot of porridge were tied to the base, and a green branch was installed in the front corner - it would “ensure” the health of the family.

According to Slavic beliefs, different objects in the house had their own meaning - some averted misfortune from the family, bringing happiness and prosperity, other objects called for misfortune; such things, of course, sought to get rid of.
For example, “happy” items were never loaned, otherwise one could lose their favor, and fire has always been a symbol of life and prosperity. Bast shoes - a gift to the brownie at home. They usually decorate the kitchen. A broom helped keep the house clean, garlic and pepper drove out evil spirits, homemade cakes and a pot of buckwheat porridge symbolized hospitality and prosperity. A bag of juniper helped to get rid of bad thoughts. Bast shoes always walked in pairs - that's why they testified to the strength of family ties.
But, perhaps, the most important feature of the house in the Slavic traditions is the atmosphere of comfort, prosperity, well-being and harmony, based on traditions, reverence for ancestors and family.

In Russia, they believed in a fiery spirit that kept the hearth. Signs were especially associated with the stove, foreshadowing the well-being of the family. Many made a hole on the wall above the stove, so that on a certain day the rays of the rising sun would penetrate into it, which promised peace and goodness in the house. It can be assumed that the hut was located in such a way that such a miracle occurred once on one of the holidays on Trinity or Easter. The stoves not only served for cooking and heat, but also were a real work of art, fitting perfectly into the interior. The stove-heater in tiles is a truly breathtaking sight, a handmade masterpiece. The entire interior of the hut was integral, the general style set the tone for the room. From it one could understand: a person is rich or poor, what kind of character he has, whether the hostess is clean.

The red corner of the house is the most elegant and ceremonial place, a symbolic center, to which everyone who enters immediately pays attention. And this part of the house was made out not only in order to admire it yourself, but also for incoming guests. Usually the red corner was located diagonally from the stove, and there could be several of them in the room. All things were placed on a table or shelf, covered with painted towels.

In our fleeting age, people especially need to feel at least somewhere protected and safe. And a natural place that gives such a feeling is your home. Not without reason the popular saying says: "my house is my fortress". But in order for a house to be a home, it must be properly built and equipped. Today, everyone is familiar with the art of home improvement feng shui, which came to us from China, a little less people know the ancient Indian Vastu Shastra. However, our Ancestors - the Slavs had their own art of home improvement, which has evolved over thousands of years and is consonant with our ancestral Spirit. In the ancient Slavic Volkhov art "VoyYarg" there was a whole section dedicated to the arrangement and furnishing of the house, which was called "Okay House" or "House-amulet".

If we turn to the worldview of our Ancestors, we will see that the entire universe for them was built according to the principle of similarity, where the small - Yar, reflects the great - Yarg. So the house was a likeness of the Universe, a kind of universe created by the owner and connecting it with the outside world. But in order for the house to become a likeness of the living Universe, it is necessary to fill it with the Life Force - the Vein. To do this, it was necessary to comply with a number of conditions, the first of which was the choice of the right place for future housing.

There are strong, neutral and dead places. Housing cannot be built on the latter, such places include cemeteries, places next to existing temples and shrines, or places where temples and shrines stood and were destroyed. Steep bends of rivers, places where the road used to pass - it was believed that happiness and wealth would not linger in such a place in the house. A strong place is rich in underground springs, trees and shrubs grow even and tall on it.

There was also a special ceremony to help determine whether the place was chosen for building a house.

The location of the house was also important, it was consistent with the cardinal points and, accordingly, with the so-called. geomagnetic network or, in the old way - Navi Lines. The house itself was built in the traditional span system of measures, which was tied to the human body. So, it was initially sweet with its owner, it was created exclusively for him. And a person in such a house felt free and comfortable. The internal layout of the house was consistent with the Kolovrats generated by the elemental Streams of Heaven and Earth. The outer decoration of the house was framed with protective patterns in order to attract positive elemental Streams into the house and eliminate the influence of the bad Streams. In the rooms of the house were placed special Items of Power, dedicated to the patron gods of these parts of the house.

During the construction of the house, a mortgage was laid under its foundation - special amulets with rune symbols and conspiracies that were supposed to attract, attract Zhilo to the house. The same amulets and signs were placed or drawn on the floor under the top covering, laid in corners, under baseboards and under the jambs of doors and windows.

The house itself was arranged according to a certain principle, and each part of it was interconnected with the Gods. Horizontally, the house was divided by the Perun Cross into four sectors, correlated with the four Gods - the organizers of the house space. Moreover, each of these sectors could also be divided according to the principle of nested spaces. Vertically, the house repeated the three-part structure of the world: the lower part - the foundation and the underground or cellar - Nav, the past, the foundation; the middle part - residential - Yav, the place where the life of the household passes; attic and roof - vault of heaven, Rule - the abode of higher Forces. Heavenly Streams go through the roof into the house, which is why in the old days the roof of any house was with slopes, so that the Force flowing from Heaven would not stagnate and create unnecessary tension, but would wash the house like rain. The gable roof was usually located in the east-west direction, and horse heads were carved on the skates, symbolizing the chariot or boat of Dazhbog-Sun, in which he sails across the Sky.
The southern side of the house was considered the strongest, the side in which the Strib (element) of the earth dominated the earthly Kolovrat of the elements, and the Strib of solar fire dominated the heavenly Kolovrat. It was on the south side, along which the Sun walks, that the facade was located - the face of the house. This side usually had the most windows.

The south side of the house also had a living room and a kitchen, since the south side is the side of fertility, goodness and health. Moreover, the living room merges with the eastern side, for the eastern side carries Streams of wandering, nomadic - just to welcome guests. The living room was patronized by Belobog - the organizer of manifest life and Striver - the owner of space, the Father of the winds. Therefore, all important family matters were decided in the living room, family councils were held, and guests who came to the house were welcomed here. The kitchen was connected with the western side, because the west carries the Streams of material wealth and stability. The kitchen is under the control of Chislobog - the keeper of time, numbers and the Deity of counting and calculations and Makosh - the heavenly spinner, the patroness of women. The kitchen space from the stove to the southern wall was called the women's kut - here the woman was a full-fledged mistress. In the kitchen there is also one of the most significant Places of Power at home - the oven. According to ancient Slavic legends, the first thing that the heavenly blacksmith Svarog bungled was the oven. And his first words were: "Let there be fire in this hearth!" And the light, already from the fire, appeared by itself. The first stove-maker was God Svarog, that's why all the Stove Masters are Svarog brothers. The stove is the gate to Nav - the ancient world of mankind. Behind each furnace lives the God of the beginning, our First Ancestor. He still lives there, only people have forgotten about it, whoever is friends with the stove can see Him. He usually appears in flames in the form of a Fireman. The female womb is arranged in the image of the furnace, inside which Svarog placed the Life-giving fire. You put raw material into it, and you get it ready-made, with Spirit and Soul. The oven brings death into life, from the past into the future. Hearth in the house - life in the house. A house without a hearth is not a house at all, even in a temporary house there is a hearth. In modern apartments in the kitchens there are gas, electric, but stoves. Fire can have any nature. Any stove is a child of that Divine First Furnace. Any fire by which you warm yourself and on which you cook food turns the house into a temple. You need to treat the hearth with understanding, according to all the rules: keep it clean, as you keep your body clean, wipe it every day. If you ask the oven well, it will save the house from all evil spirits, and drive away the disease, and all sorrow. In the furnace you can burn your sadness, drive away any trouble. And you can tell bad dreams to the stove fire, bad forebodings. The oven is almost like God, omnipotent! Prabog lives in a world called Nav, the Nav's live there - the Souls of the Ancestors, and we will go there after death. From there, new Souls come into the world. The stove is an image of Mother Earth. At the stove they pray for future children and bake the premature and sick. In the furnace, wild fire turns into manual fire and serves a person.

From the west, the south side was usually adjoined by an adjoining or veranda. Moreover, the entrance to the house should be from the western side, so that the Streams of material prosperity and stability flow into the house. The entrance hall and the entrance are under the control of Perun - he rules the streams that pull into the house. And standing guard over the boundary separating the space of the house from the foreign world of the backyard, he rules over the course of Lived in the house. From the outside, on the porch above the front door, they usually hang a sweatshirt, which must have been under a horse and found on its own. To attract happiness and prosperity, they hang it upside down. The horseshoe placed in this way also symbolizes a full bowl in the house. But from the inside, needles or a knife are usually stuck under the casing in order to interrupt the flow of bad streams and drive those who seek into the house with bad intentions. The architraves themselves above the front door and the pediment of the porch are decorated with carved signs of Perun - Hailstones.
On the western side of the house, all material values ​​\u200b\u200bshould be located, be it money, jewelry or pantries with food supplies. Then prosperity and well-being will continuously dominate in the house. In the West, it is also necessary to equip a business place, then any business will bring tangible material results.

These are just some of the principles of arranging the Okay House by our Ancestors, which can be a talisman and a real family nest for those who inhabit it. The Slavic knowledge of home improvement itself is very extensive, and includes, among other things, information about the creation of home amulets that ward off misfortunes and ailments, and exalt goodness, ancient rituals that call the Power and Grace of the Gods and Elements into the house. And many many others.

And even if you do not live in your own house, but in an apartment of a high-rise building, using the wisdom of our Ancestors, you can turn it from a gray typical cold crypt into a native corner that warms the Soul and heart.

Place. Landscape.

Our Ancestors had other than ours views on the place called home, where they were to live, raise children, celebrate, love, receive guests.

Let's try to turn to their experience, to restore for ourselves their sense of the space of being, which was "made" by them in compliance with customs and rituals in order to serve their life as successfully as possible.
First of all, the choice of location was not accidental. The Russian village, as a rule, is very picturesquely located. A settlement was set up on the banks of a river, a lake, on a hill near the springs. The place was well ventilated and washed by energy currents of air and water.

When building housing, the peasant gave it an orientation to the cardinal points. He put the hut where the rays of the sun gave more heat and light, where from the windows, from the porch platform, from the territory of the yard, the widest view of the lands he cultivated opened, where there was a good approach and entrance to the house. For example, in the Nizhny Novgorod province, they tried to orient houses to the south, “to the sun”; if this was not possible, then "facing" to the east or southwest. Houses of single-row settlements are oriented only to the south. The natural lack of space on the sunny side with the growth of the settlement led to the emergence of a second row of houses, with facades facing north. On a flat and dry site, he built a barn and a threshing floor, "in front of his eyes" - he put a barn in front of the house. He raised a windmill to the top of the hill, below by the water, he built a bathhouse.

It was impossible to build housing where the road used to pass. The space of the former road was penetrating, "blowing through"; in the house, the energy of life did not accumulate, but passed through it along the old route.
A place was considered unfavorable for construction if human bones were found there, or someone was injured with an ax or a knife to the point of blood, or other unpleasant, unexpected events occurred that were memorable for the village. This threatened misfortune for the inhabitants of the future home.

It was impossible to build a house on the site where the bathhouse stood. In the bath, a person did not just wash off dirt from himself, but, as it were, plunged into a vessel with living and dead water, was born anew each time, putting himself to the test of fire and water, steaming at a high temperature, and then dipping into an ice hole or a river, or simply doused himself ice water. The bath was both a maternity hospital and a dwelling place for the spirit of the bannik. The bath is an unconsecrated place - there are no icons there. Bath is a place where a lot of things happen, if you do not follow the rituals of visiting it.

Based on all this, the house, put on the site of the bath, was built in a space where a lot of things happened and it continued to keep the memory of it. The consequences of living on the site of the bath were unpredictable.
Favorable for construction was considered the place where cattle lie down to rest. The people attributed to him the power of fertility. Animals are more sensitive to the energy characteristics of the place. The ancients knew this and widely used in life. The peoples of the world have many similar signs and rituals, where the instinct of animals is used.
The whole process of house-building was accompanied by rituals. One of the obligatory customs is to make a sacrifice so that the house stands well.

Here it would be appropriate to recall that Orthodoxy has pagan roots that Christianity has not destroyed. The paganism of a Christian reflects the reality of his existence among living nature, which he perceived as spiritualized, that is, manifested as an equal subject to him. Our ancestors - the Slavs, as a rule, clothed knowledge in mythological metaphors, proverbs, sayings, signs. This did not in the least diminish the value of the knowledge they accumulated, which today is forgotten and little used. We tend to turn to a modern designer, again relying on traditional, but Chinese Feng Shui, rather than using the experience of our own ancestors.
Fragments of the picture of the world of the ancient Slavs were preserved by Russians almost until the end of the 19th century. Speaking about building a house, we can observe its manifestations in the rite described below.

A tree, usually a birch or a mountain ash, was installed on the site of the future log house, which symbolized the "world tree" - the "center of the world". In our opinion, this ritual reflects the idea of ​​our ancestors about their own time and place in the world. Note that the peasants of the 19th century hardly did this consciously, with understanding. The archaic meaning of the rite could mean that it is here, in the space of the future home, that all the most significant events for the owner of the house will take place, his life, the life of his children and, possibly, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, will flow. The ritual tree was replaced by a living one, planted near the house. It carried the sacred meaning of the world tree, and besides this, the person who planted the tree manifested that the space around the house was not wild, but cultural, mastered by him. It was forbidden to cut specially planted trees for firewood or for other household needs. The choice of tree species - most often they planted mountain ash, was also not accidental. Both the rowan fruit and the leaf have the graphics of a cross, which means that in the picture of the Russian world, they are a natural amulet.

Particular importance was attached to the laying of the first crown: he divided all the space into home and non-home, into internal and external. From the chaos of the surrounding nature, the elements, the promised island stood out - the macrocosm of human life.

Manor. HOUSE.

Consider a typical form of traditional housing. The hut is a cage, which is a rectangle, over which a gable roof rises. Let's try to read this in the Feng Shui system. According to the elements - this is the earth, heated by fire. That is, energetically the house was, as it were, a continuation of the element Earth, but so that it would not be washed away by the element of water pouring from above, the roof protected and warmed the fire. Fire connected the space of the house with the Heavenly Fire, the Sun, the Light of the Stars and the Moon. On a gable roof, energy flows down to the house, washing it. For comparison: our today's box houses are deprived of a vertical, which would contribute, like an antenna, to the connection with the energy of the Cosmos. This is directly related to the well-being of a person living in such a house and among such flat architecture. In the architecture of Nizhny Novgorod, for example, for the last 10 years, they have been trying to make a tower, a spire, a high roof directed to the sky, both for residential buildings and for administrative ones. This is an intuitive desire to compensate for a long period of a kind of gray stagnation in the external decoration and well-being. What can we remember from the "architectural styles" of the Soviet period? "Stalin", "Khrushchev", panel construction. Both their appearance and interior decoration cannot be called comfortable for a person.

On the facades of the houses of our ancestors, for example, in our forested Nizhny Novgorod region, the picture of the world of ancient ancestors was reflected in wooden carvings or its individual details were present, as if hinting at it. The essence of ornamental decoration is the image of three worlds. The pediment is the upper world, the middle part of the facade is the earth. The lower part, as a rule, is not filled with ornaments - the chthonic, unmanifested world. The abundance of solar signs, signs of fertility, the world tree - everything was designed not to decorate, but to carry certain meanings through which the space of the required quality unfolded. That is, it was assumed that the house should be a full bowl, its space to contribute to the health and happy life of the family. This was served by the ornaments of the facade.

Interior.

Sacred meanings in a simple Russian hut, manifested in rituals, dominated cleanliness and comfort from our modern point of view.

Almost the entire home space seemed to “come to life”, participating as a place for holding certain family rituals related to the growing up of children, weddings, funerals, and receiving guests.
Let's start, as usual, from the stove.

The Russian stove is the largest volume in the interior of the house. They occupied an area of ​​2.5 - 3 square meters. m. The heat capacity of the stove provided uniform heating of the living space throughout the day, allowing you to keep food and water hot for a long time, dry clothes, and sleep on it in damp and cold weather.

The stove, as we have already noted, is a home altar. She warms the house, transforms the products brought into the house with fire. The furnace is a place near which various rituals take place. For example, if a smartly dressed woman came into the house and almost without a word comes to the stove and warms her hands by the fire, it means that the matchmaker has come to woo.
And the person who spent the night on the stove becomes "his".

The point here is not in the furnace as such, but in the fire. Of all the elements, fire is the most revered. None of the pagan holidays could do without lighting ritual bonfires. Then the fire migrated to an Orthodox church: the lights of lamps, candles lit with prayer. In the traditional culture of Russians, a room that did not have a stove was considered not residential.
It should be noted that, for example, in the Nizhny Novgorod Territory, the stove was heated in black, and there was no talk of any convenience in our understanding - cleanliness, fresh air. The firebox of the stove transformed the house in a white way. At the same time, the traditional furniture and interior of the Trans-Volga peasant hut remained unchanged. Back in the middle of the nineteenth century, P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky wrote: “The Great Russian hut in the north, east and along the Volga has almost the same location everywhere: to the right of the entrance in the corner is a stove (rarely placed to the left, such a hut is called “unspun”, because on a long bench, which is opposite the stove, spinning from the red corner to the conic is not by hand - the right hand has to be against the wall and not in the light). The corner to the left of the entrance and the counter from the door to the corner is called “konik”, here is a place for the owner to sleep, and harness and various belongings are placed under the bench. The front corner to the right of the entrance is the “baby kut”, or “cooking”, it is often separated from the hut by a wooden partition. The shop from the holy corner to the concoction is called "big", and sometimes "red". The counter from the woman's kut to the stove is a “cooking shop”, next to it, right up to the stove itself, is a “cooking stand”, like a cupboard and a table together, dishes are cooked on it. ”(5, p. 199)

Each member of the family had their own space in the house. The place of the hostess - the mother of the family - is near the stove, that's why it was called so - "baby kut". The place of the owner - the father - is at the very entrance. This is the place of the guardian, the protector. The old people often lay down on the stove - a warm, comfortable place. Children, like peas, were scattered all over the hut, or sat on the floor - a flooring raised to the level of the stove, where they were not afraid of drafts during the long Russian winter.

The baby swayed in a shaky, attached to the end of a pole, which was attached to the ceiling through a ring fixed in it. This made it possible to move the unsteady to any end of the hut.

red corner .

An obligatory accessory of a peasant dwelling was a goddess (“tablo”, “kiot”), which was located in the front corner above the dining table.

This place was called "red corner". It was a home altar. A person began his day with a prayer, and prayer, with a look turned into a red corner, at the icons, accompanied his whole life in the house. For example, a prayer was always read before and after a meal.

The red corner - the Christian altar and the stove - the "pagan" altar, constituted a certain tension, located diagonally across the space of the house. It was in this - the front of the hut - that the red bench, the table were located, food was being prepared in front of the stove. The events of everyday life took place in a very saturated energy space. The guest entering the house immediately saw the icons of the red corner and was baptized, greeting the hosts, but stopped at the threshold, not daring to go further without an invitation, into this habitable space, protected by God and Fire.

In addition to the first level of the interior already described above, there was a second one, located on the stove column, which was located at the outer corner of the stove - almost in the middle of the hut and reached the height of the stove shoulder. From the stove column, leaning on it, there were two thick beams - one to the front, the other to the side walls opposite the stove. They were located approximately at a height of 1.6 - 1.7 meters from the floor. The first is ward, as it served as the supporting structure of the ward flooring - a traditional sleeping place. The grain bar limited the height of the "baby kut" oven. Freshly baked bread and pies were placed on the bread bar as if on a shelf. As we can see, the second residential tier is directly related to the life processes of the household - eating and sleeping. If you open the door and look into the hut, then what is happening on the floor will not be visible at all - they are located above the head of the person who entered, and the place by the stove will be hidden by a protruding stove pillar and a curtain, which was sometimes fenced off by a woman's kut just along the upper border, indicated by a bread bar . Naturally, many rituals are associated with the stove pillar - as it were, the strongest supporting structure in the house. For example, when a child stood on its feet and took its first steps, a midwife visited him. She put her pet with her back to the stove pillar with the sentence: “As the stove pillar is strong, so be you healthy and strong.”

From mobile furniture we can name only a table and one or two benches. The space of the hut did not imply excesses, and they were not possible in peasant life. A completely different space in the house of wealthy Volga or always free northern peasants.

Windows and doors.

The entrance to the hut was preceded by a passage, the entrance to the house - by a porch. The porch is a few steps up, then the door leading to the hallway, the hallway, and the door leading to the hut. The doors have never been in a straight line. The flow of air and everything that it carried, as it were, swirled, weakened, and already “cleaned” fell into the hut itself, filled with the good aroma of herbs drying in the hallway and the smell of a cow coming from the yard.

Windows and doors, like some kind of highways, passages to and from the house were always framed externally and their crossing was accompanied by rituals. Before the owners went out into the street, she could be like this: “God bless on a good day, save me from bad, evil people!”. Before entering someone else's house, a prayer was also read.

These customs are connected with the fact that a person, on a subconscious level, distinguished between the space of the house, where nothing threatened him, and the outer space, where anything could happen.

The window is also a connection with the world of the dead. For example, dead unbaptized children were carried out through the window: they died, although they had not yet been accepted by the world of the living. "God gave, God took." That is, there is almost no time for their earthly life and the soul of the child is returned to the world from which he had just come.

Through the window, carolers will be served at Christmas time - that is, those who brought divine wishes to the owners.

Space exploration.

The house was, as it were, a model of the person himself, and by its very design was called upon to help life in it.
The dwelling was likened to the human body. Forehead, face (platbands), window (eye), mouth (mouth), forehead, backside, legs - etc. terms common to describe a person and a dwelling. This is also reflected in the rituals. For example, at the birth of a child, the doors of the house were opened, which was thought of as a female body.

A fully rebuilt house is not yet a living space. It had to be properly populated and settled. A house was considered inhabited by a family if any event important for the household took place in it: the birth of a child, a wedding, etc.
To this day, even in cities, the custom has been preserved to let the cat in front of you. In the villages, traditionally, in addition to the cat, the house was "settled" by a rooster and a chicken left for the night. According to popular belief, the house was always built "on someone's head": this meant the possible death of one of the household members. Therefore, the house was inhabited in a certain sequence, and first by animals, then by people.

The transition to a new residence was preceded by rituals associated with the "resettlement" of the brownie.
Until our time, the brownie in the villages is revered as the owner of the dwelling, and, settling in a new house, they ask his permission:

"The owner of the brownie, let us live" or:
"Master and hostess,
Be with us
Give me a good life.
We can't spend the night
And to age forever. ”(3, p. 24, 21)

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVIC HOUSE.

Place. Landscape.
Our Ancestors had other than ours views on the place called home, where they were to live, raise children, celebrate, love, receive guests.
Let's try to turn to their experience, to restore for ourselves their sense of the space of being, which was "made" by them in compliance with customs and rituals in order to serve their life as successfully as possible.
First of all, the choice of location was not accidental. The Russian village, as a rule, is very picturesquely located. A settlement was set up on the banks of a river, a lake, on a hill near the springs. The place was well ventilated and washed by energy currents of air and water.
When building housing, the peasant gave it an orientation to the cardinal points. He put the hut where the rays of the sun gave more heat and light, where from the windows, from the porch platform, from the territory of the yard, the widest view of the lands he cultivated opened, where there was a good approach and entrance to the house. For example, in the Nizhny Novgorod province, they tried to orient houses to the south, “to the sun”; if this was not possible, then "facing" to the east or southwest. Houses of single-row settlements are oriented only to the south. The natural lack of space on the sunny side with the growth of the settlement led to the emergence of a second row of houses, with facades facing north. On a flat and dry site, he built a barn and a threshing floor, "in front of his eyes" - he put a barn in front of the house. He raised a windmill to the top of the hill, below by the water, he built a bathhouse.
It was impossible to build housing where the road used to pass. The space of the former road was penetrating, "blowing through"; in the house, the energy of life did not accumulate, but passed through it along the old route.
A place was considered unfavorable for construction if human bones were found there, or someone was injured with an ax or a knife to the point of blood, or other unpleasant, unexpected events occurred that were memorable for the village. This threatened misfortune for the inhabitants of the future home.
It was impossible to build a house on the site where the bathhouse stood. In the bath, a person did not just wash off dirt from himself, but, as it were, plunged into a vessel with living and dead water, was born anew each time, putting himself to the test of fire and water, steaming at a high temperature, and then dipping into an ice hole or a river, or simply doused himself ice water. The bath was both a maternity hospital and a dwelling place for the spirit of the bannik. Bath is an unconsecrated place - there are no icons there. Bathhouse is a place where a lot of things happen, if you do not follow the rituals of visiting it.
Based on all this, the house, put on the site of the bath, was built in a space where a lot of things happened and it continued to keep the memory of it. The consequences of living on the site of the bath were unpredictable.
Favorable for construction was considered the place where cattle lie down to rest. The people attributed to him the power of fertility. Animals are more sensitive to the energy characteristics of the place. The ancients knew this and widely used in life. The peoples of the world have many similar signs and rituals, where the instinct of animals is used.
The whole process of house-building was accompanied by rituals. One of the obligatory customs is to make a sacrifice so that the house stands well.
Here it would be appropriate to recall that Orthodoxy has pagan roots that Christianity has not destroyed. The paganism of a Christian reflects the reality of his existence among living nature, which he perceived as spiritualized, that is, manifested as an equal subject to him. Our ancestors - the Slavs, as a rule, clothed knowledge in mythological metaphors, proverbs, sayings, signs. This did not in the least diminish the value of the knowledge they accumulated, which today is forgotten and little used. We tend to turn to a modern designer, again relying on traditional, but Chinese Feng Shui, rather than using the experience of our own ancestors.
Fragments of the picture of the world of the ancient Slavs were preserved by Russians almost until the end of the 19th century. Speaking about building a house, we can observe its manifestations in the rite described below.
A tree, usually a birch or mountain ash, was installed on the site of the future log house, which symbolized the “world tree” - the “center of the world”. In our opinion, this ritual reflects the idea of ​​our ancestors about their own time and place in the world. Note that the peasants of the 19th century hardly did this consciously, with understanding. The archaic meaning of the rite could mean that it is here, in the space of the future home, that all the most significant events for the owner of the house will take place, his life, the life of his children and, possibly, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, will flow. The ritual tree was replaced by a living one, planted near the house. It carried the sacred meaning of the world tree, and besides this, the person who planted the tree manifested that the space around the house was not wild, but cultural, mastered by him. It was forbidden to cut specially planted trees for firewood or for other household needs. The choice of tree species - most often they planted mountain ash, was also not accidental. Both the rowan fruit and the leaf have the graphics of a cross, which means that in the picture of the Russian world, they are a natural amulet.
Particular importance was attached to the laying of the first crown: he divided all the space into home and non-home, into internal and external. From the chaos of the surrounding nature, the elements, the promised island stood out - the macrocosm of human life.

Manor. HOUSE.
Consider a typical form of traditional housing. The hut is a cage, which is a rectangle, over which a gable roof rises. Let's try to read this in the Feng Shui system. According to the elements, this is the earth heated by fire. That is, energetically, the house was, as it were, a continuation of the element Earth, but so that it would not be washed away by the element of water pouring from above, the roof protected and warmed the fire. Fire connected the space of the house with the Heavenly Fire, the Sun, the Light of the Stars and the Moon. On a gable roof, energy flows down to the house, washing it. For comparison: our today's box houses are deprived of a vertical, which would contribute, like an antenna, to the connection with the energy of the Cosmos. This is directly related to the well-being of a person living in such a house and among such flat architecture. In the architecture of Nizhny Novgorod, for example, for the last 10 years, they have been trying to make a tower, a spire, a high roof directed to the sky, both for residential buildings and for administrative ones. This is an intuitive desire to compensate for a long period of a kind of gray stagnation in the external decoration and well-being. What can we remember from the "architectural styles" of the Soviet period? "Stalin", "Khrushchev", panel construction. Both their appearance and interior decoration cannot be called comfortable for a person.
On the facades of the houses of our ancestors, for example, in our forested Nizhny Novgorod region, the picture of the world of ancient ancestors was reflected in wooden carvings or its individual details were present, as if hinting at it. The essence of ornamental decoration is the image of three worlds. The pediment is the upper world, the middle part of the facade is the earth. The lower part, as a rule, not filled with ornaments is a chthonic, unmanifested world. The abundance of solar signs, signs of fertility, the world tree - everything was designed not to decorate, but to carry certain meanings through which the space of the required quality unfolded. That is, it was assumed that the house should be a full bowl, its space to contribute to the health and happy life of the family. This was served by the ornaments of the facade.

Interior.
Sacred meanings in a simple Russian hut, manifested in rituals, dominated cleanliness and comfort from our modern point of view.
Almost the entire home space seemed to “come to life”, participating as a place for holding certain family rituals related to the growing up of children, weddings, funerals, and receiving guests.
Let's start, as usual, from the stove.
The Russian stove is the largest volume in the interior of the house. They occupied an area of ​​2.5 - 3 square meters. m. The heat capacity of the stove provided uniform heating of the living space throughout the day, allowing you to keep food and water hot for a long time, dry clothes, and sleep on it in damp and cold weather.
The stove, as we have already noted, is a home altar. She warms the house, transforms the products brought into the house with fire. The furnace is a place near which various rituals take place. For example, if a smartly dressed woman came into the house and almost without a word comes to the stove and warms her hands by the fire, it means that the matchmaker has come to woo.
And the person who spent the night on the stove becomes "his".
The point here is not in the furnace as such, but in the fire. Of all the elements, fire is the most revered. None of the pagan holidays could do without lighting ritual bonfires. Then the fire migrated to an Orthodox church: the lights of lamps, candles lit with prayer. In the traditional culture of Russians, a room that did not have a stove was considered not residential.
It should be noted that, for example, in the Nizhny Novgorod Territory, the stove was heated in black, and there was no talk of any convenience in our understanding - cleanliness, fresh air. The firebox of the stove transformed the house in a white way. At the same time, the traditional furniture and interior of the Trans-Volga peasant hut remained unchanged. Back in the middle of the nineteenth century, P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky wrote: “The Great Russian hut in the north, east and along the Volga has almost the same location everywhere: to the right of the entrance in the corner is a stove (rarely placed to the left, such a hut is called “unspun”, because on a long bench, which is opposite the stove, from the red corner to the conic, do not spin from the hand - the right hand has to be against the wall and not in the light). The corner to the left of the entrance and the counter from the door to the corner is called “konik”, here is a place for the owner to sleep, and harness and various belongings are placed under the bench. The front corner to the right of the entrance is the “baby kut”, or “cooking”, it is often separated from the hut by a wooden partition. The shop from the holy corner to the concoction is called "big", and sometimes "red". The counter from the woman’s kut to the stove is a “cooking shop”, next to it, right up to the stove itself, is a “cooking station”, like a cupboard and a table together, dishes are cooked on it. ”(5, p. 199)
Each member of the family had their own space in the house. The place of the hostess, the mother of the family, is by the stove, which is why it was called “baby kut”. The place of the owner - the father - is at the very entrance. This is the place of the guardian, the protector. The old people often lay down on the stove - a warm, comfortable place. Children, like peas, were scattered all over the hut, or sat on the floor - a flooring raised to the level of the stove, where they were not afraid of drafts during the long Russian winter.
The baby swayed in a shaky, attached to the end of a pole, which was attached to the ceiling through a ring fixed in it. This made it possible to move the unsteady to any end of the hut.
An obligatory accessory of a peasant dwelling was a goddess (“tablo”, “kiot”), which was located in the front corner above the dining table.
This place was called "red corner". It was a home altar. A person began his day with a prayer, and prayer, with a look turned into a red corner, at the icons, accompanied his whole life in the house. For example, a prayer was always read before and after a meal.
The red corner - the Christian altar and the stove - the "pagan" altar, constituted a kind of tension, located diagonally across the space of the house. It was in this - the front of the hut - that the red bench, the table were located, food was being prepared in front of the stove. The events of everyday life took place in a very saturated energy space. The guest entering the house immediately saw the icons of the red corner and was baptized, greeting the hosts, but stopped at the threshold, not daring to go further without an invitation, into this habitable space, protected by God and Fire.
In addition to the first level of the interior already described above, there was a second one, located on the stove column, which was located at the outer corner of the stove - almost in the middle of the hut and reached the height of the stove shoulder. From the stove pillar, leaning on it, there were two thick beams - one to the front, the other to the side walls opposite the stove. They were located approximately at a height of 1.6 - 1.7 meters from the floor. The first one is ward, as it served as the supporting structure of the ward flooring - a traditional sleeping place. The grain bar limited the height of the "baby kut" oven. Freshly baked bread and pies were placed on the bread bar as if on a shelf. As we can see, the second residential tier is directly related to the life processes of the household - eating and sleeping. If you open the door and look into the hut, then what is happening on the floor will not be visible at all - they are located above the head of the person who entered, and the place by the stove will be hidden by a protruding stove pillar and a curtain, which was sometimes fenced off by a woman's kut just along the upper border, indicated by a bread bar . Naturally, many rituals are associated with the stove pillar - as it were, the strongest supporting structure in the house. For example, when a child stood on its feet and took its first steps, a midwife visited him. She put her pet with her back to the stove pillar with the sentence: “As the stove pillar is strong, so be you healthy and strong.”
From mobile furniture we can name only a table and one or two benches. The space of the hut did not imply excesses, and they were not possible in peasant life. A completely different space in the house of wealthy Volga or always free northern peasants.

Space exploration.
The house was, as it were, a model of the person himself, and by its very design was called upon to help life in it.
The dwelling was likened to the human body. Forehead, face (platbands), window (eye), mouth (mouth), forehead, backside, legs - etc. terms common to describe a person and a dwelling. This is also reflected in the rituals. For example, at the birth of a child, the doors of the house were opened, which was thought of as a female body.
A fully rebuilt house is not yet a living space. It had to be properly populated and settled. A house was considered inhabited by a family if any event important for the household took place in it: the birth of a child, a wedding, etc.
To this day, even in cities, the custom has been preserved to let the cat in front of you. In the villages, traditionally, in addition to the cat, the house was "settled" by a rooster and a chicken left for the night. According to popular belief, the house was always built "on someone's head": this meant the possible death of one of the household members. Therefore, the house was inhabited in a certain sequence, and first by animals, then by people.
The transition to a new residence was preceded by rituals associated with the "resettlement" of the brownie.
Until our time, the brownie in the villages is revered as the owner of the dwelling, and, settling in a new house, they ask his permission:
"The owner of the brownie, let us live" or:
"Master and hostess,
Be with us
Give me a good life.
We can't spend the night
And to age forever. ”(3, p. 24, 21)

Russian hut: where and how our ancestors built the huts, arrangement and decor, elements of the hut, videos, riddles and proverbs about the hut and reasonable housekeeping.

"Oh, what mansions!" - so often we talk now about a spacious new apartment or cottage. We speak without thinking about the meaning of the word. After all, mansions are an ancient peasant dwelling, consisting of several buildings. What kind of mansions did the peasants have in their Russian huts? How was the Russian traditional hut arranged?

In this article:

- where were the huts built before?
- attitude to the Russian hut in Russian folk culture,
- the device of the Russian hut,
- decoration and decor of the Russian hut,
- Russian stove and red corner, male and female halves of the Russian house,
- elements of a Russian hut and a peasant yard (dictionary),
- proverbs and sayings, signs about the Russian hut.

Russian hut

Since I am from the north and grew up on the White Sea, I will show photos of northern houses in the article. And as an epigraph to my story about the Russian hut, I chose the words of D. S. Likhachev:

Russian North! It is difficult for me to put into words my admiration, my admiration for this region. When for the first time, as a boy of thirteen, I traveled along the Barents and White Seas, along the Northern Dvina, visited the coast-dwellers, in peasant huts, listened to songs and fairy tales, looked at these unusually beautiful people, carrying on simply and with dignity, I was completely stunned. It seemed to me that this is the only way to truly live: measuredly and easily, working and getting so much satisfaction from this work ... In the Russian North, there is an amazing combination of the present and the past, modernity and history, the watercolor lyricism of water, earth, sky, the formidable power of stone , storms, cold, snow and air "(D.S. Likhachev. Russian culture. - M., 2000. - S. 409-410).

Where were huts built before?

A favorite place for the construction of a village and the construction of Russian huts was the bank of a river or lake. At the same time, the peasants were guided by practicality - proximity to the river and the boat as a means of transportation, but also by aesthetic reasons. From the windows of the hut, standing on a high place, there was a beautiful view of the lake, forests, meadows, fields, as well as the courtyard with barns, the bathhouse near the river itself.

The northern villages are visible from afar, they were never located in the lowlands, always on the hills, near the forest, near the water on the high bank of the river, they became the center of a beautiful picture of the unity of man and nature, fit organically into the surrounding landscape. On the highest place they usually built a church and a bell tower in the center of the village.

The house was built thoroughly, "for centuries", a place for it was chosen high enough, dry, protected from cold winds - on a high hill. They tried to locate villages where there were fertile lands, rich meadows, forests, rivers or lakes. The huts were placed in such a way that they were provided with a good entrance and approach, and the windows were turned "for the summer" - on the sunny side.

In the north, they tried to place houses on the southern slope of the hill, so that its top would reliably cover the house from violent cold northern winds. The south side will always warm up well, and the house will be warm.

If we consider the location of the hut on the site, then they tried to place it closer to its northern part. The house closed the garden part of the site from the wind.

In terms of the orientation of the Russian hut according to the sun (north, south, west, east) there was also a special structure of the village. It was very important that the windows of the residential part of the house were located in the direction of the sun. For better illumination of houses in rows, they were placed in a checkerboard pattern relative to each other. All the houses on the streets of the village "looked" in one direction - at the sun, at the river. From the window one could see sunrises and sunsets, the movement of ships along the river.

Prosperous place for the construction of a hut was considered a place where cattle lie down to rest. After all, cows were considered by our ancestors as a fertile life-giving force, because the cow was often the breadwinner of the family.

They tried not to build houses in or near swamps, these places were considered "chilly", and the crops on them often suffered from frosts. But a river or lake near the house is always good.

When choosing a place to build a house, the men guessed - they used an experiment. Women never participated in it. They took sheep's wool. She was placed in a clay pot. And left for the night at the site of the future home. The result was considered positive if the wool was damp by morning. So the house will be rich.

There were other fortune-telling - experiments. For example, in the evening, chalk was left overnight at the site of the future home. If the chalk attracted ants, it was considered a good sign. If ants do not live on this earth, then it is better not to build a house here. The result was checked in the morning the next day.

They began to chop down the house in early spring (Lent) or in other months of the year on the new moon. If a tree is cut down on a waning moon, then it will quickly rot, which is why there was such a ban. There were also more stringent prescriptions for the days. The forest began to be harvested from the winter Nikola, from December 19th. The best time for harvesting a tree was considered December - January, according to the first frosts, when excess moisture comes out of the trunk. They did not cut dry trees or trees with growths for the house, trees that fell to the north during felling. These beliefs related specifically to trees, other materials were not furnished with such norms.

They did not build houses on the site of houses burned by lightning. It was believed that lightning Elijah - the prophet strikes places of evil spirits. They also did not build houses where there used to be a bathhouse, where someone was injured with an ax or a knife, where human bones were found, where there used to be a bathhouse or where a road used to pass, where some kind of misfortune occurred, for example, a flood.

Attitude to the Russian hut in folk culture

The house in Russia had many names: a hut, a hut, a tower, kholupy, a mansion, a horomina and a temple. Yes, do not be surprised - the temple! Mansions (huts) were equated with the temple, because the temple is also a house, the House of God! And in the hut there was always a holy, red corner.

The peasants treated the house as a living being. Even the names of the parts of the house are similar to the names of the parts of the human body and its world! This is a feature of the Russian house - "human", that is, anthropomorphic names of parts of the hut:

• Chelo hut is her face. Chelom could be called the pediment of the hut and the outer opening in the furnace.
• Prichelina- from the word "brow", that is, the decoration on the forehead of the hut,
• platbands- from the word "face", "on the face" of the hut.
• Ochelie- from the word "eyes", a window. This was the name of the part of the female headdress, the window decoration was also called.
• Forehead- so the frontal board was called. There were also "fronts" in the design of the house.
• Heel, foot- so the part of the doors was called.

There were also zoomorphic names in the arrangement of the hut and yard: “bulls”, “hens”, “skate”, “crane” - a well.

The word "hut" comes from the Old Slavic "ist'ba". “Istboy, firebox” was a heated residential log house (and a “cage” is an unheated log house of a residential building).

The house and the hut were living models of the world for people. The house was that secret place in which people expressed ideas about themselves, about the world, built their world and their lives according to the laws of harmony. Home is part of life and a way to connect and shape your life. The house is a sacred space, an image of the family and homeland, a model of the world and human life, a person’s connection with the natural world and with God. A house is a space that a person builds with his own hands, and which is with him from the first to the last days of his life on Earth. Building a house is a repetition of the work of the Creator by a person, because a human dwelling, according to the ideas of the people, is a small world created according to the rules of the “big world”.

By the appearance of a Russian house, it was possible to determine the social status, religion, and nationality of its owners. In one village there were no two completely identical houses, because each hut carried an individuality and reflected the inner world of the family living in it.

For a child, the house is the first model of the outer big world, it “feeds” and “nurtures” the child, the child “absorbs” the laws of life in the big adult world from the house. If a child grew up in a light, cozy, kind house, in a house in which order reigns, then this is how the child will continue to build his life. If there is chaos in the house, then chaos is in the soul and in the life of a person. From childhood, the child mastered the system of ideas about his house - the outcrop and its structure - the mother, the red corner, the female and male parts of the house.

The house is traditionally used in Russian as a synonym for the word "motherland". If a person does not have a sense of home, then there is no sense of homeland! Attachment to the house, taking care of it was considered a virtue. The house and the Russian hut are the embodiment of a native, safe space. The word “house” was also used in the sense of “family” - they said “There are four houses on the hill” - this meant that there were four families. In a Russian hut, several generations of the family lived and ran a common household under one roof - grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren.

The inner space of the Russian hut has long been associated in folk culture as the space of a woman - she followed him, put things in order and comfort. But the outer space - the courtyard and beyond - was the space of a man. My husband's grandfather still remembers such a division of duties, which was accepted in the family of our great-grandparents: a woman carried water from a well for the house, for cooking. And the man also carried water from the well, but for cows or horses. It was considered a shame if a woman began to perform men's duties or vice versa. Since they lived in large families, there were no problems. If one of the women could not carry water now, then this work was done by another woman in the family.

The male and female half were also strictly observed in the house, but this will be discussed further.

In the Russian North, residential and utility premises were combined under the same roof, so that you can manage your household without leaving your home. This was how the vital ingenuity of the northerners living in harsh cold natural conditions manifested itself.

The house was understood in folk culture as the center of the main life values.- happiness, prosperity, prosperity of the family, faith. One of the functions of the hut and the house was a protective function. The carved wooden sun under the roof is a wish of happiness and well-being to the owners of the house. The image of roses (which do not grow in the north) is a wish for a happy life. The lions and lionesses in the painting are pagan amulets, scaring away evil with their terrible appearance.

Proverbs about the hut

On the roof there is a heavy ridge made of wood - a sign of the sun. There must have been a house goddess in the house. S. Yesenin wrote interestingly about the horse: “The horse, both in Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and in Russian mythology, is a sign of aspiration. But only one Russian peasant thought of putting him on his roof, likening his hut under him to a chariot ”(Nekrasova M.A. Folk art of Russia. - M., 1983)

The house was built very proportionately and harmoniously. In its design - the law of the golden section, the law of natural harmony in proportions. They built without a measuring tool and complex calculations - by instinct, as the soul prompted.

A family of 10 or even 15-20 people sometimes lived in a Russian hut. In it they cooked and ate, slept, wove, spun, repaired utensils, and did all household chores.

Myth and truth about the Russian hut. There is an opinion that in Russian huts it was dirty, there was unsanitary conditions, diseases, poverty and darkness. I used to think so too, that's how we were taught in school. But this is absolutely not true! I asked my grandmother shortly before her departure to another world, when she was already over 90 years old (she grew up near Nyandoma and Kargopol in the Russian North in the Arkhangelsk region), how they lived in their village in her childhood - did they really wash and clean the house once a year and lived in darkness and mud?

She was very surprised and said that the house was always not just clean, but very light and comfortable, beautiful. Her mother (my great-grandmother) embroidered and knitted the most beautiful valances for the beds of adults and children. Each bed and cradle was decorated with her valances. And each bed has its own pattern! Imagine what a job it is! And what a beauty in the frame of each bed! Her dad (my great-grandfather) carved beautiful ornaments on all household utensils and furniture. She recalled being a child under the care of her grandmother along with her sisters and brothers (my great-great-grandmother). They not only played, but also helped adults. Sometimes, in the evening, her grandmother would say to the children: “Soon mother and father will come from the field, we need to clean up the house.” And oh yes! Children take brooms, rags, put things in order so that there is not a speck in the corner, not a speck of dust, and all things are in their places. By the time mother and father arrived, the house was always clean. The children understood that the adults had come home from work, were tired and needed help. She also remembered how her mother always whitewashed the stove so that the stove was beautiful and the house was cozy. Even on the day of childbirth, her mother (my great-grandmother) whitewashed the stove, and then went to give birth in the bathhouse. Grandmother recalled how she, being the eldest daughter, helped her.

There was no such thing as clean on the outside and dirty on the inside. Cleaned very carefully both outside and inside. My grandmother told me that “what is outside is how you want to appear to people” (outside is the appearance of clothes, house, closet, etc. - how they look for guests and how we want to present ourselves to people clothes, appearance of the house, etc.). But “what’s inside is what you really are” (inside is the wrong side of embroidery or any other work, the wrong side of clothes that must be clean and without holes or stains, the inside of cabinets and other invisible to other people, but visible us moments of our lives). Very instructive. I always remember her words.

Grandmother recalled that only those who did not work had poor and dirty huts. They were considered as if holy fools, a little sick, they were pitied as people with a sick soul. Who worked - even if he had 10 children - lived in bright, clean, beautiful huts. Decorate your home with love. They ran a large household and never complained about life. There was always order in the house and in the yard.

The device of the Russian hut

The Russian house (hut), like the Universe, was divided into three worlds, three tiers: the lower one is the basement, the underground; the middle one is living quarters; the upper one under the sky is an attic, a roof.

Hut as a design It was a frame made of logs, which were tied together into crowns. In the Russian North, it was customary to build houses without nails, very durable houses. The minimum number of nails was used only for attaching decor - prichelin, towels, platbands. They built houses "as measure and beauty will say."

Roof- the upper part of the hut - gives protection from the outside world and is the border of the inside of the house with space. No wonder the roof was so beautifully decorated in the houses! And in the ornament on the roof, symbols of the sun were often depicted - solar symbols. We know such expressions: "father's shelter", "to live under one roof". There were customs - if a person was sick and could not leave this world for a long time, then in order for his soul to more easily pass into another world, then they removed the skate on the roof. It is interesting that the roof was considered a female element of the house - the hut itself and everything in the hut should be “covered” - the roof, and buckets, and dishes, and barrels.

The upper part of the house (prichelina, towel) were decorated with solar, that is, solar signs. In some cases, the full sun was depicted on the towel, and only half of the solar signs were depicted on the berths. Thus, the sun was shown at the most important points of its path across the sky - at sunrise, at zenith and at sunset. There is even an expression in folklore, "the three-light sun," reminiscent of these three key points.

Attic was located under the roof and on it were stored items that were not needed at the moment, removed from the house.

The hut was two-story, living rooms were located on the "second floor", as it was warmer there. And on the "ground floor", that is, on the lower tier, there was basement He protected the living quarters from the cold. The basement was used for food storage and was divided into 2 parts: the basement and the underground.

Floor they made it double to keep warm: at the bottom there is a “black floor”, and on top of it is a “white floor”. The floor boards were laid from the edges to the center of the hut in the direction from the facade to the exit. It mattered in some ceremonies. So, if they entered the house and sat on a bench along the floorboards, then this meant that they had come to woo. They never slept and did not lay the bed along the floorboards, As the dead person was laid along the floorboards "on the way to the doors." That is why we did not sleep with our heads towards the exit. They always slept with their heads in the red corner, towards the front wall, on which the icons were located.

Important in the arrangement of the Russian hut was the diagonal "red corner - oven." The red corner always pointed to noon, to the light, to God's side (red side). It has always been associated with Votok (sunrise) and the south. And the stove pointed to the sunset, to darkness. And associated with the west or north. They always prayed for the icon in the red corner, i.e. to the east, where the altar in the temples is located.

Door and the entrance to the house, the exit to the outside world is one of the most important elements of the house. She greets everyone who enters the house. In ancient times, there were many beliefs and various protective rituals associated with the door and threshold of the house. Probably not without reason, and now many people hang a horseshoe on the door for good luck. And even earlier, a scythe (garden tool) was laid under the threshold. This reflected people's ideas about the horse as an animal associated with the sun. And also about the metal created by man with the help of fire and which is a material for protecting life.

Only a closed door saves life inside the house: "Do not trust everyone, lock the door tighter." That is why people stopped in front of the threshold of the house, especially when entering someone else's house, this stop was often accompanied by a short prayer.

At a wedding in some localities, a young wife, entering her husband's house, was not supposed to touch the threshold. That is why it was often brought in by hand. And in other areas, the sign was exactly the opposite. The bride, entering the groom's house after the wedding, always lingered on the threshold. It was a sign of that. That she is now her own kind of husband.

The threshold of the doorway is the border of "one's own" and "alien" space. In popular beliefs, it was a borderline, and therefore unsafe place: “They don’t greet people across the threshold”, “They don’t shake hands across the threshold.” You can't even accept gifts across the threshold. Guests are met outside the threshold, then let in ahead of them through the threshold.

The height of the door was below human height. At the entrance I had to bow my head and take off my hat. But at the same time, the doorway was wide enough.

Window- another entrance to the house. Window is a very ancient word, it was first mentioned in the annals in the year 11 and is found among all Slavic peoples. In folk beliefs, it was forbidden to spit through the window, throw out garbage, pour something out of the house, since under it "there is an angel of the Lord." “Give (to the beggar) through the window - give to God.” Windows were considered the eyes of the house. A person looks through the window at the sun, and the sun looks at him through the window (the eyes of the hut). That is why signs of the sun were often carved on the architraves. The riddles of the Russian people say this: “The red girl looks out the window” (the sun). The windows in the house traditionally in Russian culture have always tried to be oriented “for the summer” - that is, to the east and south. The largest windows of the house always faced the street and the river, they were called "red" or "skewed".

Windows in a Russian hut could be of three types:

A) Volokovoe window - the most ancient type of windows. Its height did not exceed the height of a horizontally laid log. But in width it was one and a half times the height. Such a window was closed from the inside with a latch, “dragging” along special grooves. Therefore, the window was called "portage". Only dim light penetrated the hut through the porthole window. Such windows were more common in outbuildings. Through the portage window, the smoke from the stove was taken out (“dragged out”) from the hut. They also ventilated basements, closets, winds and cowsheds.

B) A box window - consists of a deck made up of four bars firmly connected to each other.

C) An oblique window is an opening in the wall, reinforced with two side beams. These windows are also called "red" regardless of their location. Initially, the central windows in the Russian hut were made like this.

It was through the window that the baby had to be passed if the children born in the family died. It was believed that this way you can save the child and ensure him a long life. In the Russian North, there was also such a belief that the soul of a person leaves the house through the window. That is why a cup of water was placed on the window so that the soul that left the person could wash and fly away. Also, after the commemoration, a towel was hung on the window so that the soul would rise into the house through it, and then descend back. Sitting at the window, waiting for news. A place by the window in the red corner is a place of honor, for the most honored guests, including matchmakers.

The windows were located high, and therefore the view from the window did not bump into neighboring buildings, and the view from the window was beautiful.

During construction, between the window beam and the log, the walls of the house left free space (sedimentary groove). It was covered with a board, which is well known to all of us and is called platband("on the face of the house" = casing). The platbands were decorated with ornaments to protect the house: circles as symbols of the sun, birds, horses, lions, fish, weasel (an animal that was considered the guardian of livestock - it was believed that if a predator was depicted, it would not harm pets), floral ornament, juniper, mountain ash .

Outside, the windows were closed with shutters. Sometimes in the north, to make it convenient to close the windows, galleries were built along the main facade (they looked like balconies). The owner walks along the gallery and closes the shutters on the windows at night.

Four sides of the hut facing the four directions of the world. The appearance of the hut is turned to the outside world, and the interior decoration - to the family, to the clan, to the person.

Russian hut porch was more open and spacious. Here were those family events that the whole street of the village could see: they saw off the soldiers, met the matchmakers, met the newlyweds. On the porch they talked, exchanged news, rested, talked about business. Therefore, the porch occupied a prominent place, was high and rose up on pillars or log cabins.

The porch is “the visiting card of the house and its owners”, reflecting their hospitality, prosperity and cordiality. A house was considered uninhabited if its porch was destroyed. They decorated the porch carefully and beautifully, the ornament was the same as on the elements of the house. It could be a geometric or floral ornament.

What do you think, from what word the word "porch" was formed? From the word "cover", "roof". After all, the porch was necessarily with a roof that protected from snow and rain.
Often in a Russian hut there were two porches and two entrances. The first entrance is the main one, where benches were set up for conversation and relaxation. And the second entrance is “dirty”, it served for household needs.

Bake located near the entrance and occupied about a quarter of the space of the hut. The stove is one of the sacred centers of the house. “The oven in the house is the same as the altar in the church: bread is baked in it.” “Our mother bake us”, “A house without a stove is an uninhabited house”. The stove had a feminine origin and was located in the female half of the house. It is in the oven that the raw, undeveloped turns into boiled, “own”, mastered. The furnace is located in the corner opposite the red corner. They slept on it, it was used not only in cooking, but also in healing, in folk medicine, small children were washed in it in winter, children and the elderly warmed themselves on it. In the stove, they always kept the damper closed if someone left the house (so that they would return and the road was happy), during a thunderstorm (because the stove is another entrance to the house, the connection of the house with the outside world).

Matica- a beam running across the Russian hut, on which the ceiling rests. This is the boundary between the front and back of the house. A guest coming into the house, without the permission of the hosts, could not go further than the mother. Sitting under the mother meant wooing the bride. In order to succeed, it was necessary to hold on to the mother before leaving the house.

The entire space of the hut was divided into female and male. Men worked and rested, received guests on weekdays in the male part of the Russian hut - in the front red corner, away from it to the threshold and sometimes under the curtains. The man's workplace during the repair was next to the door. Women and children worked and rested, stayed awake in the female half of the hut - near the stove. If women received guests, then the guests sat at the threshold of the stove. Guests could enter the female territory of the hut only at the invitation of the hostess. Representatives of the male half, without a special emergency, never went to the female half, and women to the male half. This could be taken as an insult.

Stalls served not only as a place to sit, but also as a place to sleep. A headrest was placed under the head when sleeping on the bench.

The shop at the door was called “konik”, it could be the workplace of the owner of the house, and also any person who entered the house, a beggar, could spend the night on it.

Shelves were made above the benches above the windows parallel to the benches. Hats, thread, yarn, spinning wheels, knives, awls and other household items were placed on them.

Married adult couples slept in the boots, on the bench under the curtains, in their separate cages - in their places. The old people slept on the stove or by the stove, the children on the stove.

All utensils and furniture in the Russian northern hut are located along the walls, and the center remains free.

Svetlitsy the room was called - a light room, a burner on the second floor of the house, clean, well-groomed, for needlework and clean classes. There was a wardrobe, a bed, a sofa, a table. But just like in the hut, all items were placed along the walls. There were chests in the gorenka, in which they collected dowry for daughters. How many marriageable daughters - so many chests. Here lived girls - marriageable brides.

The dimensions of the Russian hut

In ancient times, the Russian hut did not have internal partitions and was square or rectangular in shape. The average dimensions of the hut were from 4 x 4 meters to 5.5 x 6.5 meters. The middle peasants and wealthy peasants had large huts - 8 x 9 meters, 9 x 10 meters.

The decoration of the Russian hut

In the Russian hut, four corners were distinguished: oven, woman's kut, red corner, back corner (at the entrance under the floor). Each corner had its own traditional purpose. And the whole hut, in accordance with the angles, was divided into the female and male halves.

The female half of the hut runs from the mouth of the furnace (furnace outlet) to the front wall of the house.

One of the corners of the female half of the house is a woman's kut. It is also called "bake". This place is near the stove, women's territory. Here they cooked food, pies, stored utensils, millstones. Sometimes the "women's territory" of the house was separated by a partition or screen. In the female half of the hut, behind the stove, there were cabinets for kitchen utensils and edible supplies, shelves for tableware, buckets, cast iron, tubs, oven appliances (bread shovel, poker, tong). The “long bench” that ran along the female half of the hut along the side wall of the house was also female. Here women spun, weaved, sewed, embroidered, and a baby cradle hung here.

Men have never entered the "women's territory" and touched the utensils that are considered women's. And a stranger and a guest could not even look into a woman's kut, it was insulting.

On the other side of the oven male space, "male kingdom at home". There was a threshold men's shop here, where men did housework and rested after a hard day's work. Under it, there was often a locker with tools for men's work. It was considered indecent for a woman to sit on a threshold bench. On a side bench at the back of the hut, they rested during the day.

Russian stove

Approximately a fourth, and sometimes a third of the hut was occupied by a Russian stove. She was a symbol of the hearth. They not only cooked food in it, but also prepared fodder for livestock, baked pies and bread, washed themselves, heated the room, slept on it and dried clothes, shoes or food, dried mushrooms and berries in it. And even in winter they could keep chickens in the oven. Although the stove is very large, it does not “eat up”, but, on the contrary, expands the living space of the hut, turning it into a multidimensional, uneven height.

No wonder there is a saying “to dance from the stove”, because everything in a Russian hut begins with the stove. Remember the epic about Ilya Muromets? Bylina tells us that Ilya Muromets "lay on the stove for 30 years and 3 years," that is, he could not walk. Not on the floors and not on the benches, but on the stove!

“Bake us like a mother,” people used to say. Many folk healing practices were associated with the stove. And omens. For example, you can not spit in the oven. And it was impossible to swear when the fire burned in the furnace.

The new furnace began to warm up gradually and evenly. The first day began with four logs, and gradually one log was added every day to ignite the entire volume of the furnace and so that it was without cracks.

At first, in Russian houses there were adobe stoves that were heated in black. That is, the furnace then did not have an exhaust pipe for smoke to escape. Smoke was released through the door or through a special hole in the wall. It is sometimes thought that only the poor had black huts, but this is not so. Such stoves were also in rich mansions. The black oven gave more heat and kept it longer than the white one. Smoked walls were not afraid of dampness or rot.

Later, stoves were built white - that is, they began to make a pipe through which smoke escaped.

The stove was always located in one of the corners of the house, which was called the stove, door, small corner. Diagonally from the stove there was always a red, holy, front, large corner of a Russian house.

Red corner in a Russian hut

Red corner - the central main place in the hut, in a Russian house. It is also called "holy", "divine", "front", "senior", "big". It is illuminated by the sun better than all other corners in the house, everything in the house is oriented towards it.

The goddess in the red corner is like the altar of an Orthodox church and was interpreted as the presence of God in the house. The table in the red corner is the church altar. Here, in the red corner, they prayed for the image. Here, at the table, all the meals and the main events in the life of the family were held: birth, wedding, funeral, seeing off to the army.

There were not only icons here, but also the Bible, prayer books, candles, consecrated willow twigs were brought here on Palm Sunday or birch twigs on Trinity.

The red corner was especially worshiped. Here, during the commemoration, they put an extra device for another soul who had gone into the world.

It was in the Red Corner that the chipped birds of happiness, traditional for the Russian North, were hung.

Seats at the table in the red corner were rigidly fixed by tradition, And not only during the holidays, but also during regular meals. The meal brought family and family together.

• Place in the red corner, in the center of the table, under the icons, was the most honorable. The host, the most respected guests, the priest were sitting here. If a guest, without the invitation of the host, passed and sat in a red corner, this was considered a gross violation of etiquette.
• The next most important side of the table is right from the owner and the places closest to him on the right and left. This is a men's shop. Here, according to seniority, the men of the family were seated along the right wall of the house towards its exit. The older the man, the closer he sits to the owner of the house.
• And on "lower" end of the table on the "women's bench", women and children sat down along the pediment of the house.
• mistress of the house was placed opposite her husband from the side of the stove on a side bench. So it was more convenient to serve food and arrange lunch.
• During the wedding newlyweds also sat under the icons in the red corner.
• For guests had its own guest shop. It is located by the window. Until now, there is such a custom in some areas to seat guests by the window.

This arrangement of family members at the table shows a model of social relations within the Russian family.

Table- he was given great importance in the red corner of the house and in general in the hut. The table in the hut stood in a permanent place. If the house was sold, then it must be sold along with the table!

Very important: The table is the hand of God. “The table is the same as the throne in the altar, and therefore you need to sit at the table and behave as in the church” (Olonets province). It was not allowed to place foreign objects on the dining table, because this is the place of God himself. It was impossible to knock on the table: "Do not hit the table, the table is God's palm!" There should always be bread on the table - a symbol of prosperity and well-being in the house. They said this: “Bread on the table - and the table is the throne!”. Bread is a symbol of prosperity, abundance, material well-being. Therefore, he always had to be on the table - God's palm.

A small lyrical digression from the author. Dear readers of this article! Perhaps you think that all this is outdated? Well, what's with the bread on the table? And you bake yeast-free bread at home with your own hands - it's quite easy! And then you will understand that this is a completely different bread! Not like store bought bread. Yes, and a loaf in shape - a circle, a symbol of movement, growth, development. When for the first time I baked not pies, not cupcakes, but bread, and the smell of bread smelled of my whole house, I realized what a real house is - a house where it smells of .. bread! Where would you like to return? Don't have time for this? I thought so too. Until one of the mothers, whose children I work with and she has ten!!!, taught me how to bake bread. And then I thought: “If the mother of ten children finds time to bake bread for her family, then I definitely have time for this!” Therefore, I understand why bread is the head of everything! You have to feel it with your hands and your soul! And then the loaf on your table will become a symbol of your home and bring you a lot of joy!

The table was necessarily installed along the floorboards, i.e. the narrow side of the table was directed towards the western wall of the hut. This is very important, because the direction "longitudinal - transverse" in Russian culture was given a special meaning. The longitudinal one had a “positive” charge, and the transverse one had a “negative” one. Therefore, they tried to lay all the objects in the house in the longitudinal direction. This is also why it was along the floorboards that they sat down during rituals (matchmaking, as an example) - so that everything would go well.

Tablecloth on the table in the Russian tradition, it also had a very deep meaning and is integral with the table. The expression "table and tablecloth" symbolized hospitality, hospitality. Sometimes the tablecloth was called "holy-solker" or "samobranka". Wedding tablecloths were kept as a special relic. The tablecloth was not always covered, but on special occasions. But in Karelia, for example, the tablecloth had to be always on the table. At the wedding feast, they took a special tablecloth and laid it inside out (from spoilage). A tablecloth could be spread on the ground during a commemoration, because a tablecloth is a “road”, a connection between the cosmic world and the human world, it is not for nothing that the expression “tablecloth is a road” has come down to us.

At the dinner table, the family gathered, were baptized before eating and read a prayer. They ate decorously, it was impossible to get up while eating. The head of the family, the man, started the meal. He cut food into pieces, cut bread. The woman served everyone at the table, served food. The meal was long, slow, long.

On holidays, the red corner was decorated with woven and embroidered towels, flowers, and tree branches. Embroidered and woven towels with patterns were hung on the shrine. On Palm Sunday, the red corner was decorated with willow branches, on Trinity - with birch branches, and with heather (juniper) - on Maundy Thursday.

It is interesting to think about our modern houses:

Question 1. The division into "male" and "female" territory in the house is not accidental. And in our modern apartments there is a “women's secret corner” - personal space as a “women's kingdom”, do men interfere in it? Do we need it? How and where can you create it?

Question 2. And what is in the red corner of an apartment or cottage - what is the main spiritual center of the house? Let's take a look at our home. And if something needs to be corrected, then we will do it and create a red corner in our house, we will create it to really unite the family. Sometimes there are tips on the Internet to put a computer in the red corner as in the "energy center of the apartment", to organize your workplace in it. I am always surprised by such recommendations. Here, in the red - the main corner - to be what is important in life, what unites the family, what carries true spiritual values, what is the meaning and idea of ​​the life of the family and family, but not a TV or an office center! Let's think together what it could be.

Types of Russian huts

Now many families are interested in Russian history and traditions and build houses as our ancestors did. Sometimes it is believed that there should be only one type of house according to the arrangement of its elements, and only this type of house is "correct" and "historical". In fact, the location of the main elements of the hut (red corner, stove) depends on the region.

According to the location of the stove and the red corner, 4 types of Russian hut are distinguished. Each type is characteristic of a particular area and climatic conditions. That is, it is impossible to say directly: the oven has always been strictly here, and the red corner is strictly here. Let's take a closer look at the pictures.

The first type is the North Central Russian hut. The stove is located next to the entrance to the right or left of it in one of the back corners of the hut. The mouth of the stove is turned to the front wall of the hut (The mouth is the outlet of the Russian stove). Diagonal from the stove is a red corner.

The second type is the Western Russian hut. The furnace was also located next to the entrance to the right or left of it. But it was turned by its mouth to a long side wall. That is, the mouth of the furnace was near the front door to the house. The red corner was also located diagonally from the stove, but the food was cooked in a different place in the hut - closer to the door (see picture). At the side of the stove they made flooring for sleeping.

The third type is the eastern South Russian hut. The fourth type is the western South Russian hut. In the south, the house was placed to the street not with a facade, but with a side long side. Therefore, here the location of the furnace was completely different. The stove was placed in the farthest corner from the entrance. Diagonally from the stove (between the door and the front long wall of the hut) there was a red corner. In the eastern South Russian huts, the mouth of the stove was turned towards the front door. In the western southern Russian huts, the mouth of the stove was turned towards the long wall of the house, which overlooked the street.

Despite the different types of huts, they follow the general principle of the structure of the Russian dwelling. Therefore, even being far from home, the traveler could always orient himself in the hut.

Elements of a Russian hut and a peasant estate: a dictionary

In a peasant estate the economy was large - in each estate there were from 1 to 3 barns for storing grain and valuables. And there was also a bath - the most remote building from the residential building. Every thing has its place. This principle from the proverb was observed always and everywhere. Everything in the house was thought out and arranged reasonably so as not to waste extra time and energy on unnecessary actions or movements. Everything is at hand, everything is convenient. Modern home ergonomics comes from our history.

The entrance to the Russian estate was from the side of the street through a strong gate. There was a roof over the gate. And at the gate on the side of the street under the roof there is a shop. Not only the villagers, but also any passer-by could sit on the bench. It was at the gate that it was customary to meet and see off guests. And under the roof of the gate one could meet them cordially or say goodbye.

Barn- a separate small building for storing grain, flour, supplies.

Bath- a separate building (the building farthest from the residential building) for washing.

Crown- logs of one horizontal row in the log house of a Russian hut.

anemone- a carved sun, attached instead of a towel on the pediment of the hut. Wishing a rich harvest, happiness, well-being to the family living in the house.

barn- platform for threshing compressed bread.

crate- a structure in wooden construction, formed by crowns of logs laid on top of each other. Mansions consist of several stands, united by passages and passages.

Chicken-elements of the roof of a Russian house built without nails. They said this: "Chickens and a horse on the roof - it will be quieter in the hut." It is precisely the elements of the roof that are meant - the ridge and chickens. A water drain was laid on the chickens - a log hollowed out in the form of a gutter to drain water from the roof. The image of the "hens" is not accidental. The chicken and the rooster were associated in the popular mind with the sun, since this bird announces the sunrise. The cry of a rooster, according to popular belief, drove away evil spirits.

Glacier- the great-grandfather of the modern refrigerator - an ice room for food storage

Matica- a massive wooden beam on which the ceiling is laid.

platband- decoration of the window (window opening)

Barn- a building for drying sheaves before threshing. Sheaves were laid out on the floor and dried.

ohlupen- horse - connects the two wings of the house, two roof slopes together. The horse symbolizes the sun moving across the sky. This is an indispensable element of the roof construction, built without nails and a talisman of the house. Okhlupen is also called "shelom" from the word "helmet", which is associated with the protection of the house and means the helmet of an ancient warrior. Perhaps this part of the hut was called “cool”, because when laid in place, it makes a “clap” sound. Ohlupni used to do without nails during construction.

Ochelie - this was the name of the most beautifully decorated part of the Russian women's headdress on the forehead (“on the forehead was also called the part of the window decoration - the upper part of the “forehead decoration, forehead” of the house. Ochelie - the upper part of the casing on the window.

Povet- hayloft, it was possible to drive here directly on a cart or on a sleigh. This room is located directly above the barnyard. Boats, fishing gear, hunting equipment, shoes, clothes were also stored here. Here they dried and repaired nets, crushed flax and did other work.

basement- the lower room under the living quarters. The basement was used for food storage and household needs.

Polaty- wooden flooring under the ceiling of a Russian hut. They settled between the wall and the Russian stove. It was possible to sleep on the floors, as the stove kept heat for a long time. If the heating stove was not heated, then vegetables were stored on the floors at that time.

Police- curly shelves for utensils above the benches in the hut.

Towel- a short vertical board at the junction of two berths, decorated with the symbol of the sun. Usually the towel repeated the pattern of the quilts.

Prichelina- boards on the wooden roof of the house, nailed to the ends above the gable (hut hut), protecting them from decay. The prichelins were decorated with carvings. The pattern consists of a geometric ornament. But there is also an ornament with grapes - a symbol of life and procreation.

Svetlitsa- one of the rooms in the choir (see "mansions") in the female half, in the upper part of the building, intended for needlework and other household activities.

canopy- the entrance cold room in the hut, usually the canopy was not heated. As well as the entrance room between the individual cells in the mansions. This is always a utility room for storage. Household utensils were stored here, there was a shop with buckets and pails, work clothes, rocker arms, sickles, scythes, rakes. They did their dirty housework in the hallway. The doors of all the rooms opened into the canopy. Canopy - protection from the cold. The front door opened, the cold let in into the vestibule, but remained in them, not reaching the living quarters.

Apron- sometimes "aprons" decorated with fine carvings were made on the houses from the side of the main facade. This is a wooden overhang that protects the house from rain.

barn- a place for livestock.

Mansions- a large residential wooden house, which consists of separate buildings, united by vestibules and passages. galleries. All parts of the choir were different in height - it turned out to be a very beautiful multi-tiered structure.

Utensils of a Russian hut

Dishes for cooking was stored in the stove and by the stove. These are boilers, pots for porridges, soups, clay patches for baking fish, cast-iron pans. Beautiful porcelain dishes were kept so that everyone could see them. She was a symbol of wealth in the family. Festive dishes were kept in the upper room, and plates were displayed in the cupboard. Everyday utensils were kept in hanging cabinets. Dinner utensils consisted of a large clay or wood bowl, wooden spoons, a birch bark or copper salt shaker, and cups of kvass.

To store bread in a Russian hut, painted box, brightly colored, sunny, joyful. The painting of the box distinguished it from other things as a significant, important thing.

Drinking tea from samovar.

Sieve it was also used for sifting flour, and as a symbol of wealth and fertility, it was likened to the vault of heaven (the riddle “The sieve is covered with a sieve”, the answer is heaven and earth).

Salt- this is not only food, but also a talisman. Therefore, they served bread and salt to the guests as a greeting, a symbol of hospitality.

The most common was earthenware pot. Porridge and cabbage soup were prepared in pots. Shchi in a pot was well rebuked and became much tastier and richer. And even now, if we compare the taste of soup and porridge from the Russian oven and from the stove, we will immediately feel the difference in taste! Out of the oven - delicious!

Barrels, tubs, baskets were used for household needs in the house. They fried food in pans, as they do now. The dough was kneaded in wooden troughs and vats. Water was carried in buckets and jugs.

For good hosts, immediately after a meal, all the dishes were washed clean, dried and put upside down on the shelves.

Domostroy said this: "so that everything is always clean and ready for the table or for delivery."

To put the dishes in the oven and get them out of the oven, they needed grips. If you have the opportunity to try to put a full pot filled with food in the oven or take it out of the oven, you will understand how physically difficult this work is and how strong women used to be even without fitness :). For them, every movement was exercise and physical education. I'm serious 🙂 - I tried and appreciated how difficult it is to get a large pot of food for a large family with a tong!

Used for raking coal poker.

In the 19th century, clay pots were replaced by metal ones. They're called cast iron (from the word "cast iron").

Clay and metal pots were used for frying and baking. frying pans, patches, braziers, bowls.

furniture in our understanding of this word, there was almost no Russian hut. Furniture appeared much later, not so long ago. No wardrobes or chests of drawers. Clothes and shoes and other things were not stored in the hut.

The most valuable things in a peasant house - ceremonial utensils, festive clothes, dowries for daughters, money - were kept in chests. Chests were always with locks. The design of the chest could tell about the prosperity of its owner.

Russian hut decor

To paint a house (they used to say “bloom”) a master in painting could. Outlandish patterns were painted on a light background. These are the symbols of the sun - circles and semicircles, and crosses, and amazing plants and animals. The hut was also decorated with wood carvings. Women weaved and embroidered, knitted and decorated their home with their needlework.

Guess what tool was used to carve in a Russian hut? With an ax! And the painting of houses was done by "painters" - that was the name of the artists. They painted the facades of houses - pediments, architraves, porches, chapels. When white stoves appeared, they began to paint guardianships and partitions, lockers in the huts.

The decoration of the pediment of the roof of the northern Russian house is actually an image of the cosmos. Signs of the sun on the berths and on the towel - the image of the path of the sun - sunrise, sun at its zenith, sunset.

Very interesting an ornament that adorns the berths. Below the solar sign on the chapels, you can see several trapezoidal ledges - the paws of waterfowl. For the northerners, the sun rose from the water, and also set into the water, because there were many lakes and rivers around, and therefore waterfowl were depicted - the underwater-underground world. The ornament on the porches personified the seven-layer sky (remember the old expression - “to be in the seventh heaven with happiness”?).

In the first row of the prichelin ornament there are circles, sometimes connected with trapeziums. These are symbols of heavenly water - rain and snow. Another row of images from triangles is a layer of earth with seeds that will wake up and give a harvest. It turns out that the sun rises and moves across the seven-layer sky, one of the layers of which contains moisture reserves, and the other contains plant seeds. The sun at first does not shine at full strength, then it is at its zenith and at the end rolls down to start its journey through the sky again the next morning. One row of ornament does not repeat the other.

The same symbolic ornament can be found on the architraves of a Russian house and on the decoration of windows in central Russia. But the decor of the windows has its own characteristics. On the lower board of the casing there is an uneven relief of the hut (a plowed field). On the lower ends of the side boards of the casing there are heart-shaped images with a hole in the middle - a symbol of a seed immersed in the ground. That is, we see in the ornament a projection of the world with the most important attributes for the farmer - the earth sown with seeds and the sun.

Proverbs and sayings about the Russian hut and housekeeping

• Houses and walls help.
• Every house is kept by the owner. The house is being painted by the owner.
• What is it like at home - like this yourself.
• Make a barn, and there the cattle!
• Not according to the house of the master, but the house according to the master.
• It is not the owner's house that paints, but the owner the house.
• At home - not away: after sitting, you will not leave.
• A good wife will save the house, and a thin one will shake it with her sleeve.
• The mistress of the house is like pancakes in honey.
• Woe to him who lives in disorder in the house.
• If the hut is crooked, the hostess is bad.
• What is the builder - such is the abode.
• Our hostess has everything at work - and the dogs wash the dishes.
• Leading the house - do not weave bast shoes.
• In the house, the owner is more archiere
• Start a pet at home - do not open your mouth to walk.
• The house is small, but does not order to lie.
• Whatever is born in the field, everything in the house will come in handy.
• Not the owner, who does not know his economy.
• Prosperity is not maintained by the place, but by the owner.
• If you don’t manage the house, you can’t manage the city either.
• The village is rich, and the city is rich.
• A good head feeds a hundred hands.

Dear friends! I wanted to show in this hut not just the history of the Russian house, but also to learn from our ancestors, together with you, housekeeping - reasonable and beautiful, pleasing to the soul and eye, living in harmony with nature and with your conscience. In addition, many points in relation to the house as the home of our ancestors are very important and relevant now for us, living in the 21st century.

The materials for this article were collected and studied by me for a very long time, checked in ethnographic sources. I also used materials from the stories of my grandmother, who shared with me her memories of the early years of her life in the northern village. And only now, during my vacation and my life - being in the countryside in nature, I finally completed this article. And I understood why I could not write it for so long: in the bustle of the capital in an ordinary panel house in the center of Moscow, under the roar of cars, it was too difficult for me to write about the harmonious world of the Russian house. And here, in nature, I completed this article very quickly and easily, from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to learn more about the Russian house, then below you will find a bibliography on this topic for adults and children.

I hope that this article will help you to tell about the Russian house in an interesting way during your summer trips to the village and to museums of Russian life, and also tell you how to look at illustrations for Russian fairy tales with your children.

Literature about the Russian hut

For adults

1. Baiburin A.K. Dwelling in the rituals and ideas of the Eastern Slavs. - L .: Nauka, 1983 (Institute of Ethnography named after N.N. Miklukho - Maclay)
2. Buzin V.S. Russian ethnography. - St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Publishing House, 2007
3. Permilovskaya A.B. Peasant house in the culture of the Russian North. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.
4. Russians. Series "Peoples and Cultures". - M.: Nauka, 2005. (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology named after N. N. Miklukho - Maclay RAS)
5. Sobolev A.A. The wisdom of the ancestors Russian yard, house, garden. - Arkhangelsk, 2005.
6. Sukhanova M.A. The house as a model of the world // House of man. Materials of the interuniversity conference - St. Petersburg, 1998.

For kids

1. Alexandrova L. Wooden architecture of Russia. – M.: Bely Gorod, 2004.
2. Zaruchevskaya E. B. About peasant mansions. Book for children. - M., 2014.

Russian hut: video

Video 1. Children's educational video tour: children's museum of rural life

Video 2. Film about the northern Russian hut (Museum of Kirov)

Video 3. How a Russian hut is built: a documentary for adults

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