Arkhangelsk Dutch that sailed to the White Sea area. In 1584 Ivan ordered the founding of New Kholmogory (which would later be renamed after the nearby Archangel Michael Monastery). At the time access to the Baltic Sea was still mostly controlled by Sweden, so while Arkhangelsk was icebound in winter, it remained Moscow's almost sole link to the sea-trade. Local inhabitants, called Pomors, were the first to explore trade routes to Northern Siberia as far as the trans-Urals city of Mangazeya and beyond. In December 1613, during the Time of Troubles, Arkhangelsk was besieged by Polish-Lithuanian marauders commanded by Stanislaw Jasinski
Arkhangelsk Gospel in satisfactory condition - the ink and vermilion has crumbled in places, but the parchment does not have signs of contamination or moisture. The Archangel Gospel was reproduced in 1912 as a facsimile and in 1997 as a scientific publication. The early history of the manuscript and place of its provenance are unknown before 1876. There are some suggestions that it came from the scriptorium of the Lazarevsky monastery near Great Novgorod, but there is no unambiguous evidence to support the hypothesis. In early December 1876 the manuscript was brought to Moscow by a peasant from Arkhangelsk region and was