Birch bark letter no. 292

Okay kiddo, so have you ever seen a birch tree before? You know, the one with a white bark that peels off like paper? Well, a long long time ago, before people had paper like we do now, some people in Russia, called the Karelian people, used the bark of these trees to write on.

And that's where Birch Bark Letter No. 292 comes in. It's a letter that was written on a piece of birch bark a loooong time ago, around the year 1240! The letter was found by some archaeologists in the 1950s, and it's really special because it tells us some things about what life was like back in those days.

The letter is written in a language called Old Novgorod - nobody speaks that language anymore, so it was really hard for people to read it at first. But some smart people who study languages were eventually able to figure out what it said. Basically, it's a letter from a guy named Onfim, who's about your age, to his dad. Onfim asks his dad to send him some money, and he draws a picture of himself and his horse on the letter so his dad knows who he's talking to.

So Birch Bark Letter No. 292 might not seem that exciting to some people, but it's actually really important because it's one of the few things we have from that time period that shows us what everyday life was like for regular people. Plus, it's really cool to imagine Onfim sitting under a birch tree, carving his letter into the bark with a sharpened stick!