VH4W+VH Vladimirovka, Leningrad Oblast, Russia
Horse-Stone (an archaic Finnish name Hevoskivi) is a boulder made of gray granite with quartz veins, approximately 9×6 meters in size, just over 4 meters high, and weighing more than 750 tons. It is located on Konevets Island in Lake Ladoga, 7 kilometers from the coastal village of Vladimirovka in the Gromovskoye rural settlement of the Priozersky District of the Leningrad Region of Russia.
Historically, the boulder represents an ancient monument and is one of the rare surviving Finno-Ugric sanctuaries (trace sites). Many years ago, even before the arrival of Reverend Arseny on the island, the stone served as a place for pagan rituals. Every year, local residents used Konevets as a summer pasture for their horses. As a gift to the spirits who lived near this stone and protected the livestock transported from the shore to the island and left on the local pastures all summer without any supervision, the coastal residents annually sacrificed one horse; this horse died in winter, and superstitious peasants were convinced that it was devoured by invisible spirits. Therefore, the boulder, which resembled a horse’s skull, was named Horse-Stone, and the island itself was called Konev, later Konevets.
Horse-Stone on Konevets Island. Drawing from the 1792 edition by N. Ya. Ozereckovsky.
Horse-Stone gave its name to the island of Konevets itself, while the Finns called it Rantasaari — Coastal Island.
The legend that the Karelians used Konevets Island as a summer pasture for their horses and annually sacrificed one horse appeared in the description of the life of Arseny of Konevets, which was compiled in the 16th century, about a hundred years after the death of the ascetic. The author was the Konevets hegumen Varlaam. The life story says: “At the end of the 14th century, St. Arseny of Konevets came to the island. According to legend, here he met a fisherman named Philip and learned from him about the sacrifices. St. Arseny considered this place ‘surrounded by a demonic horror denser than a primeval forest.’ According to legend, he spent the whole night in prayer in his cell, and in the morning made a procession around the stone with an icon of the Mother of God in his hands and sprinkled the boulder with holy water. According to the life story, the spirits came out of the stone, turned into black ravens, and flew away to the opposite shore of Lake Ladoga, which since then has been called Devil’s Bay (Sortan-lahta). Along with the demons, according to the legend, snakes also disappeared from the island.”
To this day, forests cover more than 80% of the island. Currently, only in the area of the Kazan Skete is there a so-called “zone of cultural development.” It consists of a small park and several hectares of meadow land, which arose as a result of cultivating the land for the monastery’s agricultural needs.
In memory of this event, a small wooden chapel stands on top of the stone. There is no reliable information about when exactly the first chapel was built on Horse-Stone. Most likely, it was at the very beginning of the monastery’s foundation.
During the Swedish abandonment, the chapel was destroyed and was only restored in 1815 under the abbot Hilarion. The chapel was about 3 meters high, with a small gallery. Inside were icons of “simple workmanship” and a wooden cross.
The current chapel, with beautiful window trims decorated with fretwork carving, was built in 1895 and is now fully restored. You can climb up to the chapel by a wooden staircase. Inside, the chapel has no special decorations; the walls and ceiling are painted with plain white paint. Only on the eastern wall are two icons of modern painting: one of the Konevskaya Mother of God, the other of St. Arseny. In front of the icons stands an analogion for the reader.
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