Eleven thousand years ago Valdai region’s glacierization was almost to be finished and on lowlands of nowadays Pskov and Novgorod regions formed a huge lake, the great-grandparent of the whole Polystovo-Lovatskaya swamp system.

Over the years the lake began growing over and on its site developed gigantic marshy ground, a self-sustained reservoir which can feed itself just with rainfalls. Somewhere the depth of turf bed could be measured to 10 meters; the deepest places of this glacier lake remained filled with water while highlands grew into small islands with tight and strong soil.

On rare clearings in this swampy hell a few Finno-Ugric tribes eventually appeared and left many burial mounts behind, with some of them still belowground because of impassibility of the swamp.

While mentally travelling around the ancient maps of 18-20 centuries it is clearly seen that there were a few villages and people were trying to settle it down over there. Back at the 1920’s there was electricity wired up to some villages and several bridges built throughout the marshlands. In every village there was at least one windmill (some settlements were a bit too lucky to have even 3 or 4 of them.)

But then people have left. What was the reason for that – nobody knows; whether it was a war, a sprouting possibility to move to the biggest cities or a policy of kolkhoz sprawling, there is no exact answer.

So, let’s tally it up. So far just 4 settlements out of 64 are left, with only 3 citizens in two of them.