Dyatlov Hills — a scenic high escarpment along the Oka near the confluence of that river with the Volga, a chain of seven ravine-cut hills on the right bank of both rivers [1][2]. Nizhny Novgorod was founded on these hills, and its Upper Town stands upon them [1][2]; the Dyatlov Hills partially fall within the Historic Center of Nizhny Novgorod. The name was first recorded in the "Book of the Great Map" of 1627 [3][1]; local historians continue to debate its origin and age to this day, and the best-known explanation is a legend about a Mordva sorcerer named Dyatel (Woodpecker), said to be buried on the hill at the mouth of the Oka [3].
Location and Composition
The first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia described the Dyatlov Hills as seven heights along the right bank of the Oka and Volga at their confluence, rising approximately 120 meters above the Volga [1]. Local historical accounts also cite relative heights of 70–110 meters above river level.
In geomorphological descriptions the name is understood more broadly. The Dyatlov Hills form one segment of the Mstyora–Kozmodemyansk Ridge, which runs along the right bank of the Klyazma, Oka, and Volga across the entire Nizhny Novgorod Region and rises to 180–200 meters above sea level. Farther up the Oka, from Gorbatov to Nizhny Novgorod, lies Starodubye, while the Dyatlov Hills begin at the mouth of the Oka and extend downstream along the Volga as far as Kstovo; beyond that, from the mouth of the Kudma to the Sura, stretch the Fadeyev Hills. Within the Dyatlov Hills, loam cover deposits lie atop red-colored Permian rock [4] — a fact that gives rise to one of the theories about the name's origin, discussed below.
There is also the narrowest interpretation. Historian Fyodor Selyoznyov, drawing on Pavel Melnikov's remark about Sokol Hill being "above Dyatlov Hill" and next to Grebeshok, argues that originally there was just one Dyatlov Hill, situated below Grebeshok along the Oka. This is the triple-peaked hill on which Zalomov Street and the Fedorovsky Embankment now run; its spurs were once known as Gremyachaya Gora, Busheva Hill, and Petushkovo [5]. According to Nizhny Novgorodskaya Pravda, part of Zelensky Descent is also considered part of the Dyatlov Hills [2].
The hilltops are occupied by blocks of the Upper Town, with the Kremlin, many old buildings, and churches — which is why the Dyatlov Hills have long been called the face of Nizhny Novgorod [2].
Slopes and landslides
The northern boundary of the Volga Upland runs along the high, steep Oka–Volga escarpment, and geological processes there never cease: landslides, rockfalls, and the growth of numerous steep ravines [4]. The slopes of the Dyatlov Hills have been reinforced for many years: they are covered with special netting and seeded with lawn grass [2].
The most significant ground movements have occurred near Pochaina Ravine. On the evening of 11 April 2012, soil slid and the pavement collapsed on Zelensky Descent. An investigation attributed the accident to a sharp transition from frost to thaw, rapid snowmelt, and simultaneous heavy precipitation: the soil became waterlogged and the base of the ravine's right slope shifted. Traffic towards Dobrolyubov Street was closed; a retaining wall of piles was installed on the descent, and drainage and stormwater systems were repaired [6]. On 27 March 2026, on the same descent, waterlogged soil slid again. The slope was levelled, secured with a geogrid and screw piles, and at the same time the road on Pozharsky Street and its drainage were redesigned to redirect runoff in a different direction [7].
Origin of the name
According to one retelling, the Woodpecker was the nickname of a pagan Mordva man, given to him because he tirelessly worked with an axe, building dwellings at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga for his family of eighteen wives and seventy sons; his legacy was seized during Founding of Nizhny Novgorod by the holy prince Yuri Vsevolodovich.
According to another legend, the origin of the name is connected with the sorcerer Dyatel (Woodpecker), who lived in a ravine on the mountain near the mouth of the Oka even before the city was founded there. In the same area lived Skvorets (Starling) — a Mordva man married to eighteen women who bore him seventy children [2]. After Dyatel's death, Skvorets buried him, as requested, on the summit of one of the hills, which came to be called "Dyatlov" (Woodpecker's). And Skvorets's legacy was seized by the holy prince Yuri Vsevolodovich [2].
This tale traces back to a publication by Pavel Melnikov: on 20 January 1845 he printed the legend in the unofficial section of the Nizhny Novgorod Provincial Gazette. There, the Mordva man Skvorets lived "where Nizhny Novgorod now stands," and his friends were also Mordva men — Solovey (Nightingale) and the sorcerer Dyatel; Skvorets buried Dyatel, who had died at a great old age, on the hill at the mouth of the Oka, "and that place came to be called Dyatlov Hills" [3]. In this account, it is Skvorets who has the large family. Dyatel prophesied to him that his descendants, living in harmony, would long hold these lands, but that once they quarreled they would be conquered; the descendants quarreled, Andrey Bogolyubsky drove them from the mouth of the Oka, and his nephew Yuri Vsevolodovich built a city there [2]. The legend and its variants are examined in detail in the article "Nizhny Novgorod Woodpecker."
In his "Sketches of the Mordva" (1867), Melnikov noted that the tale was Russian and had been found by him "some twenty years ago in a handwritten miscellany of the seventeenth century." In 1855, in the village of Nizhny Landekh in Vladimir Governorate, he heard a variant from a one-armed, wandering blind singer named Anton Yakovlev — in that version the Mordva man at the mouth of the Oka was called not Skvorets (Starling) but Sokol (Falcon). Melnikov observed that in Nizhny Novgorod, near Grebeshok, there is indeed a hill called Sokol, separated from it by a ravine. The legend was subsequently retold after him by Nikolai Khramtsovsky and Alexander Gatsiskiy [3].
There are also explanations that involve no sorcerer. Some local historians, including Alexander Gatsiskiy, believed that the Dyatlov Hills took their name from the abundance of woodpeckers that inhabited the forests once covering these hills on the right bank of the Oka. Others connect the name with the appearance of the riverbanks themselves: veins of red and white clay on the cliffs recall the coloring of a woodpecker's plumage [2].
Another legend, also cited by Melnikov in his "Sketches of the Mordva," is associated with the Dyatlov Hills — a local story about a Mordva man named Abramka, who came from beyond the Kudma River to the mouth of the Oka and settled on the Dyatlov Hills, which were covered in dense forest; he had fourteen sons and three daughters, and "Abramov's settlement" of seventeen houses reportedly stood where the bishop's residence later appeared — the present-day building of the conservatory [5].
How old is the name
The name appears late in written sources, and this has given rise to a dispute. A. A. Kuznetsov considers the name a late coinage: since the first "Book of the Great Map" was compiled shortly after 1552, the name, in his view, arose in the sixteenth century, while the texts of the legend date to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and could have been written by Melnikov himself. A. V. Danilov, having examined the positions of the individual Dyatlov Hills, concluded that neither the antiquity of the toponym nor its late origin can yet be established with confidence [3].
Selyoznyov objects to Kuznetsov. The coining of a name and its first written record may be separated by centuries, and the "Book of the Great Map" served as a guide for state service and named the hills as landmarks along routes of communication — meaning these were places long known to everyone. Melnikov, as a newspaper editor, in Selyoznyov's view, merely retold for its readers a cumbersome text from a seventeenth-century manuscript, and there are no grounds for treating the legend as his invention. For Selyoznyov, the Dyatlov Hills were, before the city was founded, a site of pagan worship — first Mordva, then Slavic — and a name connected with paganism long eluded written sources; it arose, by his conclusion, no later than the thirteenth century [3].
Support for this version comes from a song recorded in the nineteenth century by a local priest among the Nizhny Novgorod Mordva-teryukhans; in 1848 the record was passed to Melnikov through the Nizhny Novgorod Bishop Yakov. Thirty years later, a matching variant was recorded in another teryukhan village. The song begins as follows [3]:
On the hills, on the Dyatlov Hills
The Mordva pray to God
Alongside the Mordva place of worship, Selyoznyov also locates a Slavic one — the field of Yarilo opposite Grebeshok, where, according to his data, there is now a small square to the left of house no. 31 on Malaya Pokrovskaya Street [3]. This field was described by Maxim Gorky:
The Gendarme Spring ran along the bottom of a deep ravine descending to the Oka; the ravine cut off from the city a field named after an ancient god — Yarilo.
According to Seleznev's conclusion, before the city was founded the Dyatlov Hills were inhabited by neither the Mordva nor the Slavs: archaeologists found no traces of Mordva settlements here, while the Slavs lived some distance away — in a fishing village on the site of the urochishche Sluda, where clay net sinkers were found, and at the location near Semashko Hospital, where a burial ground dating from the 10th–13th centuries was excavated [5][3]. The theory of a Bulgar town supposedly standing on the Dyatlov Hills before 1221 traces back to Vasily Tatishchev, and historians reject it [5] — see the article "Historians Disproved the Existence of a Bulgar Town on the Dyatlov Hills" for more detail.
The name in today's city
The legend of the Dyatlov Hills inspired designer Nikita Kiselyov to create a pair of characters — Dyatel Gor (Woodpecker of the Hills) and Olenyonok Nino (Fawn Nino). The project won a public vote, and the characters became the official mascots of the celebrations marking Nizhny Novgorod's 800th anniversary in 2021 [2]. At the Rowing Canal, students together with street artist Anton Tabatchikov painted a mural in honor of the Dyatlov Hills depicting a sorcerer in the form of a soaring bird; the image is best seen from above, for example from the cabin of the cable car [2]. The name is also carried by the Nizhny Novgorod publishing house "Dyatlov Hills," which publishes books on local history [3].
See also
Sources
- ru.wikisource.org — Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1st edition (text on Wikisource) — "Dyatlov Hills" (archive)
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — New symbols, blooming sakuras, and a glowing kremlin: uncovering the secrets of Dyatlov Hills, 26.11.2020 (archive)
- imomi.unn.ru — Nizhny Novgorod Local Historian: a collection of scholarly articles. Issue 1. Nizhny Novgorod, 2015 — F. A. Seleznev. On the origin of the Nizhny Novgorod toponyms "Dyatlov Hills" and "Pochaina", pp. 5–10 (archive)
- arz.unn.ru — Arzamas Branch of Lobachevsky University — Nizhny Novgorod Local Studies: Relief (archive)
- zhurnalnyimir.rf — F. Seleznev. On Prince Mstislav, Dyatlov Hills, and the predecessor city of Nizhny Novgorod — journal "Nizhny Novgorod", 2021, no. 5
- NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" — Anti-landslide measures to reinforce the slope of Zelensky Descent in Nizhny Novgorod will be completed before winter, 13.08.2012
- nn.aif.ru — AiF — Nizhny Novgorod — The slope of Zelensky Descent is being reinforced with geogrid and piles in Nizhny Novgorod, 21.07.2026