Peryn

An excavated open-air site

Peryn sits on the west bank of the Volkhov river, near where it drains from Lake Ilmen, just south of Novgorod. Soviet-era excavations (led by V. V. Sedov in the 1940s–50s) uncovered a roughly circular, horseshoe-shaped ditch with a central pit interpreted as the foundation for a wooden idol or post, surrounded by evidence of fire pits — a layout that does not match a Christian church and that most archaeologists read as a pre-Christian open-air sanctuary, consistent with the general East Slavic pattern (unlike the West Slavic Baltic coast) of worshipping without enclosed temple buildings.

Chronicle connection

The name Peryn is transparently linked to Perun, and the First Novgorod Chronicle records that in 989, following Vladimir's conversion of Kiev the year before, the newly appointed bishop Akim (Joachim) had Novgorod's Perun idol thrown into the Volkhov, an episode local place-name tradition and the excavated site are usually connected to, though the chronicle's own wording does not name Peryn specifically — the identification rests on the site's location, layout, and name rather than an explicit textual statement placing the idol there.