Boulder cenotaphs of Eastern Fennoscandia: the question of one kind of the orthodox funeral rite in the late middle ages

The paper is devoted to the little-studied funeral practice of the Orthodox communities of the White Sea region and Russian Lapland in the absence of a body. The research was based on the results of the author’s work in the last two decades. On the island of Kildin in the Barents Sea, on Lake Sredne Kuito in North Karelia and on a small forest lake near the town of Kovdor three original, similar monuments – groups of «stone structures of unknown purpose» have been recorded. The originality and controversiality of these objects requires their systematic study, introduction into scientific circulation and interpretation. Archaeologists, as a rule, carry out only a primary fixation of objects, but excavations do not always allow to determine clearly the purpose of stone piles. Based on the experience of working with such facilities in Karelia and on the Kola Peninsula, it can be argued that they were not intended for economic purposes. A number of common features make it possible to attribute these structures to a group of monuments associated with the Orthodox funeral tradition. This is the orientation of the stone constructions west – east, the general location «beyond the water», on the periphery of cemeteries, visual similarity with grave mounds of earth or wooden «houses of the dead». Presumably they were ground cenotaphs for the drowned – a «house» for the soul in the absence of a body. The spread of the tradition of their creation can be limited to the area of culture of the Russians and Karelians of the Pomerania of the European North. They are tentatively dated to the period of the Late Middle Ages – Modern Times and are considered as part of the Orthodox culture of the population of Eastern Fennoscandia. Understanding the idea of these objects is impossible without information on the ethnography of Slavic and Finno-Ugric ethnic groups – about the division of the dead into those who died a «natural» or «unnatural» death.