Northwest Russia

Northwest Russia or Northern European Russia can be roughly defined as that part of European Russia bounded by Finland, the Arctic Ocean, the Ural Mountains and the east-flowing part of the Volga River. Although it was never a political unit there is some reason for treating it as a distinct region.

The Volga marks the approximate northern limit of moderately dense settlement. The area to the north was valued mainly as a source of fur. The western side was the main source of squirrel, for which there was a large demand during the Middle Ages. Luxury fur, especially sable, came mostly from the northeast.

The Weichselian glaciation that came to cover much of northwestern originated most likely from small ice fields and ice caps in the Scandinavian Mountains before the ice spread eastward. In northwestern Russia the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet reached its Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) extent 17 ka BP, five thousand years later than in Denmark, Germany and Western Poland. In Russia the LGM ice margin was highly lobate. Lobes originated as result of ice flow following shallow topographic depressions filled with soft sediment substrate. The whole of the basins of the Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega and the White Sea were glaciated at the time of the LGM. These basins possibly canalized the Weschelian ice into streams that feed the lobes found further east and south. Highlands made up of hard bedrock like Valdai and Tihvin had the opposite effect of diverting ice into basins. The three main lobes of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet in Russia during the LGM followed the basins of Rybisnk and the rivers of Dvina, Vologda. By 13 ka BP the ice margin had receded towards the west and northwestso that all of Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega were free of glacier ice as was almost all of the White Sea and the Kola Peninsula. As the ice margin continued to recede towards the west despite occasional re-advances by 10.6 years BP the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet had left Russia. North of the Kandalaksha Gulf, in Murmansk Oblast, the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet was mostly cold based while south of the gulf it was warm based.

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