Blue Stone (Russia)

Blue Stone, or Blue Rock (Russian: Синь-камень) is a type of pagan sacred stones, widespread in Russia in areas historically inhabited by both Eastern Slavic (Russian), and Volga Finnic tribes (Merya, Muroma[1]).

If used as a personal name, Sin-Kamen (Blue Rock) usually refers to the most famous sacred stone of this kind, located on a shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo near Pereslavl-Zalesskiy.

[2] The stone surface is covered with small knobs;[2] its weight is estimated to be about 12 tons.

[3] Sin-Kamen' is a grey boulder of coarse-grained quartz-biotite schist that used to be venerated by the Meryans and the pagan Slavs on the shore of Lake Pleshcheyevo not far from the early medieval town of Kleshchin.

Although it is widely believed that the stone was overthrown from a pagan sanctuary on top of Bald Hill at the bidding of Tsar Basil IV, early descriptions locate it in the vicinity of the Pereslavl Monastery of Sts.