Who is Who in Fourteenth-Century Novgorod? Evidence from Hanseatic Sources

Abstract

This article analyses the names of Novgorodians that appear in two Hanseatic documents from the beginning of the fourteenth century. Together, they shed further light on the identities and relationships of individuals in medieval Novgorod. In the first document, dated 1331 and written in Middle Low German, I will concentrate on a person called Thyrentekey. I will propose that this individual is the same person that is mentioned in a birchbark document (under the name Terentij Koj) and in the First Novgorod Chronicle (Terentij Danilovič). With regard to the second Hanseatic document (1311–1335), which is in Latin, I will examine a mysterious and distorted list of names of Novgorodians (and Pskovians), who “were betrayed by their own slave, who is called drelle in the vernacular.” This list most probably includes the name of the posadnik Semen Klimovič (symon filius klementis), whose son, Jakun, figures in the 1331 document (jacone symonen sone possatnicke), together with Thyrentekey.