WORD DEPTH
2026
archive of disappearing words
2026
archive of disappearing words
The project documents and sacralizes the vanishing Novgorod dialect, recreating the visual reality of the 13th–14th centuries through the very structure of the language and graphic symbols. At the core of the concept lies the conviction that words preserve a way of thinking. Nouns conceal action within them, while verbs hold the magical and everyday meanings of a bygone era.
The material works as a "portal" to the past, allowing one to touch Ancient Novgorod through the living texture of speech from the 11th–15th centuries. Reality is encoded in the structure of the language — in the way it constructs meaning. The texts of birch bark letters and chronicles, woven from "lost words," sound like the voices of long-departed people.
What mattered to them? How did they perceive their native land, cultural environment, nature, God?
The archive consists of five thematic fragments that reveal the life of the ancient city through its lexicon: the commercial life of Novgorod (the language of the market, contracts, and trade routes), craftwork (the terminology of artisans), family structure (the lexicon of the home and kinship ties), a healer's herbal (incantatory lexicon), and an archive of lost words (a reconstruction of discovered birch bark letters).
The project captures the complex linguistic landscape of medieval Novgorod, which includes: Church Slavonic (the language of high bookishness); the supra-dialectal form of Old Russian (the business and official language); the Old Pskov dialect; East Novgorod sub-dialects; and the dialect of Novgorod itself and its surrounding areas.
*additional information available upon request
The material works as a "portal" to the past, allowing one to touch Ancient Novgorod through the living texture of speech from the 11th–15th centuries. Reality is encoded in the structure of the language — in the way it constructs meaning. The texts of birch bark letters and chronicles, woven from "lost words," sound like the voices of long-departed people.
What mattered to them? How did they perceive their native land, cultural environment, nature, God?
The archive consists of five thematic fragments that reveal the life of the ancient city through its lexicon: the commercial life of Novgorod (the language of the market, contracts, and trade routes), craftwork (the terminology of artisans), family structure (the lexicon of the home and kinship ties), a healer's herbal (incantatory lexicon), and an archive of lost words (a reconstruction of discovered birch bark letters).
The project captures the complex linguistic landscape of medieval Novgorod, which includes: Church Slavonic (the language of high bookishness); the supra-dialectal form of Old Russian (the business and official language); the Old Pskov dialect; East Novgorod sub-dialects; and the dialect of Novgorod itself and its surrounding areas.
*additional information available upon request
email: grushenkova.ad@gmail.com