Pomors

Pomors or Pomory (Russian: Помо́ры; IPA: [pɐˈmorɨ], Seasiders) are Russian settlers, primarily from Novgorod, and their descendants living on the White Sea coasts and the territory whose southern border lies on a watershed which separates the White Sea river basin from the basins of rivers that flow south.

As early as the 12th century, explorers from Novgorod entered the White Sea through the Northern Dvina and Onega estuaries and founded settlements along the sea coasts of Bjarmaland. Kholmogory served as their chief town until the rise of Arkhangelsk in the late 16th century. From their base at Kola, they explored the Barents Region and the Kola peninsula, Spitsbergen, and Novaya Zemlya.

Later the Pomor discovered and maintained the Northern Sea Route between Arkhangelsk and Siberia. With their ships (koches), the Pomors penetrated to the trans-Ural areas of Northern Siberia, where they founded the settlement of Mangazeya east of the Yamal Peninsula in the early 16th century. Tatyana Bratkova has reported that some historians speculate that in the early 17th century, Pomors settled the isolated village of Russkoye Ustye in the delta of the Indigirka, in north-eastern Yakutia.

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