Details of the Peasant House (izba)

   The northern peasant house was huge and monumental like a fortress. It combined under one roof different spaces allocated for farm animals, various domestic tasks, and living rooms. During the long, severe winters it was sometimes impossible to leave the house for many days.

   The openwork pattern of the uppermost windows (ocheles) sometimes accented with paint stood out against the dark log walls, revealing the construction of the building.

   The house was crowned with the traditional figure of a horse or the deer cut from the root of a large log that formed the ridgepole of the roof. This figure was called okhlupen’.

Svetlana Zhizhina