Onfim

He left his notes and homework exercises scratched in soft birch bark,[2] which was preserved in the clay soil of Novgorod.

[4] Some 200 kilometres (120 mi) south of Saint Petersburg, the city is surrounded by birch forests, whose bark was used for centuries by the locals for writing since it was soft and easily scratched.

[10]Onfim's illustrations include pictures of knights, horses, arrows, and slain enemies.

One image, "a portrait of himself, disguised as a fantastic animal",[11] is found on item 199 (pictured above; it was originally the bottom of a basket made of birch bark), which contains a picture of a beast with a long neck, pointy ears, and a curly tail.

[12] The number of fingers on the pictured people's hands varies from three to eight; Onfim had yet to learn how to count.

Russian поклонъ; as spelt before the 1918 spelling reform) and ꙁвѣре "wild beast" (cf.