Birchbark letters from the excavations of 2024. I. Veliky Novgorod, Troitsky excavation site

This article contains a preliminary publication of 30 birchbark letters found during the 2024 archaeological season at the Troitsky excavation in Veliky Novgorod. The vast majority of the published texts date back to the 12th century. Most important in historical and philological terms are the following items: a letter mentioning a military campaign and related negotiations with the prince (No. 1186); a letter about a court case mentioning an ordeal, namely, a water test (No. 1187); a woman’s letter of personal content, filled with emotional figurative language (No. 1229); a note with the curse “hang yourself” (No. 1189); an alphabet with an unusual design (No. 1183); a set of seven ‘labels’ with names (1201), a tag with the word rozmetъ ‘fee schedule’, identical to letter No. 1135 and written in the same hand (No. 1212). Of special linguistic interest are: the contaminated paradigm of the word for fish guts — čerevьe (Nom. sg.) / čerevьe (Nom. pl.), čerevьjaxъ (Loc. pl.) (No. 1173), the oldest example of the Nom. pl. ending -ě in the soft variant of the o-declension (No. 1186); two different symbols for [’o] (No. 1201), unusual forms of Gen. and Dat. of the first-person personal pronoun (No. 1229), the earliest fixations of the words voščaga, gumnica, žukъ, tata; the composition of alphabets (No. 1183, 1195); new etiquette formulas (Nos. 1210, 1211), and new anthroponyms: Vadogostь, Gorěnъ, Voixanъ, etc.