The Russian North is a term used to describe the lands in the north of the European part of Russia. It’s a historical and cultural, rather than geographical, designation, however. A cold climate, a territory that’s far from the state centers, a land that avoided the Tartar-Mongol Yoke and serfdom – all of this created a unique community of people, bold and freedom-loving. The nature here is so beautiful that the native inhabitants of these lands believed that everything surrounding them was animated with spirits. The mountains became shrines. The pines were idols. The forests, rivers and waterfalls were homes to mythological creatures. The poetry of this northern region to this day lives on in the ancient Karelian and Finnish runes and in Russian