Interesting things about swamps! Interesting properties of swamps. Secrets of the swamps Interesting facts about the inhabitants of the swamps

Over hundreds of millions of years, layers of peat turned into horizons coal. And in them, in the form of imprints, skeletons of strange animals and bizarre species of plants appeared. If there were no swamps on Earth, we would hardly know that magnolias and palm trees once upon a time grew in Greenland and Spitsbergen.

However, people are in no hurry to develop this natural storehouse. People burst into space and sink to the bottom of the oceans, but still shun the swamps. Even the most desperate berry pickers and hunters who visit the swamps say that as soon as you find yourself in the middle of a swamp, a strange ringing in your ears suddenly appears, you feel dizzy, your legs become weak, and you have a serious desire to run. Inexplicable fear grips you from head to toe, you want to forget this place forever. Hunters gloomily joke that it is impossible to quickly drown in a swamp; there remains “time to eat the toffee.” A person who is not familiar with the “rules of behavior in the swamps” seems to be paralyzed. Shackled by horror and swamp ligature, he can no longer move and seems to be watching his death from the sidelines. This can last from several minutes to several days. Until the swamp water begins to fill your lungs...

It’s not for nothing that swamps in Rus' are called Adovo, Sukino, Chertovo... These names reflect the people’s fear of the mystery and enigma of swamps.

Spirit Kingdom

The swamp has its own guardian spirit, the owner. The Slavs called him the swamp. It is he who scares those walking through the swamp with sharp sounds, sighs, and loud smacking. It is he who lures the self-confident and careless into the quagmire and, on the contrary, shows a safe path to those who respect nature. The mire has many neighbors, including mermen, lords of water, goblins, and kikimoras. The swamp gives unprecedented strength to its original inhabitants, such as the giant Yar Mort, a character in Finno-Ugric mythology.

None of the natural treasures are shrouded in so many secrets, legends and mysticism as swamps. Their fame is not good, so people bypass the kingdom of kikimora on the tenth road. And she loves uninvited guests. He drags unwary travelers into his quagmire. True, she rarely shows herself to people - she prefers to be invisible and only screams from the swamp in a loud voice. But if he gets naughty, he might even take a ride on a scared-to-death traveler. According to legend, girls cursed by their mother in the womb or in infancy before baptism, as well as girls born to a woman from a fiery serpent, turn into kikimoras. It was believed that such children were kidnapped and carried away evil spirits. Sometimes - straight from the mother's womb. After seven years, these children turn into kikimore. Children who died unbaptized could also turn into kikimoras. In most beliefs, kikimora is evil spirit. If she marries a brownie, she moves into the house and causes chaos. Sometimes even forcing the owners to leave their home. If a goblin took her fancy as her husband, then from now on her home is a swamp. Children are born to a kikimora and a goblin - lesavkas. They play pranks, lead travelers off the road, and do their best to help their parents lure travelers into the swamps.

The Celts called swamps “the gates of spirits” - where the seemingly solid soil instantly disappears from under one’s feet, the gates open to the world of mysterious nature spirits and deities. Therefore, the Celts revered the swamps and came there with sacrificial gifts. The Khanty and Mansi believed that the whole world was born from “liquid earth,” that is, from a swamp. The Egyptian goddess Isis hid her son there - the god Horus... It turns out that this place is not such a disastrous place?

Again the dead man lit a candle

The swamp beckons. The sounds that the swamp makes are similar to the speech of a giant living creature. And lonely travelers often mistake the will-o'-the-wisps in the swamps for the lights of their homes and come straight into the swamps. Due to the characteristic arrangement of the lights - at a height human hand- they were called "dead man's candles." It was believed that the one who saw them received a warning about imminent death, and they were carried by aliens from the other world. In Germany they said that the lights in the swamp are the ghosts of those who stole the land from their neighbors. The Finns called them "lecchio" and believed that they were the souls of children buried in the forest. In Northern Europe, it was believed that the lights in the swamp were the spirits of ancient warriors guarding treasures.

In fact, lights in the swamps are not fantasies or inventions of dense grannies. In warm weather dark nights in swamps or fresh graves you can actually observe pale bluish, faintly flickering lights. They seem to be dancing in the air, tracing a complex trajectory. It is hydrogen phosphide that “burns.” At the bottom of the swamps, in damp areas, many remains of dead animals and plants rot. In this case, various gases are formed, including swamp gas. Phosphorus compounds, which are part of animal and human corpses, are exposed to groundwater decompose to form hydrogen phosphide. When there is a loose embankment over a grave or a small layer of water in a swamp, the gas, coming to the surface, is ignited by the vapor of liquid hydrogen phosphide.

Not all swamp mysteries can be explained by the results chemical reaction. And then the terrible swamp mysticism bursts into real life.

...Tikhvinsky district Leningrad region reputed to be a bearish angle. The places here are remote, swampy and sparsely populated, which makes them attractive to hunters and fishermen. One autumn, the leading engineer of the Elektrosila plant, Yakov Aizeman, came to hunt. He stayed with a friend in the village of Volozhba.
In the morning Eiseman went into the forest. And I didn’t notice how lost I was. This did not frighten him; the engineer considered himself a good expert on the Tikhvin forests. All day he wandered through completely unfamiliar places, and towards evening he came out onto a barely noticeable forest road. The road led him to an abandoned farm on the edge of a large swamp.
Apparently, the farm was abandoned quite a long time ago. Eiseman climbed onto the porch and pushed open the front door of the hut. It opened with a creak. There was nothing remarkable inside the house, except for the traces of someone's long-ago overnight stay: several empty cans, a vodka bottle and an armful of firewood thrown near the bed.
It was getting dark quickly. A whitish fog was creeping in from the swamp in wisps, and there was a chilly dampness. “I’ll spend the night in the house, and in the morning I’ll find out where the devil has taken me,” Eiseman decided and began to settle down for the night.

At night he suddenly woke up from wild horror. Someone shuffled past him. The engineer lay motionless for several seconds, but then stood up in fear on his bed. Nothing was visible in the pitch darkness, but Eiseman sensitively sensed someone’s presence in the hut and realized that the one hidden in the darkness was mortally dangerous. He hastily flicked his lighter. A flickering tongue of flame snatched out of the darkness the corner of the couch and the stooped figure of an old woman standing a few steps away from it.
Eiseman screamed in surprise. The old woman slowly, as if blind, moved towards him, spreading both her arms. A sweetish smell of decomposition flowed through the hut, and Eiseman clearly saw that... a corpse was approaching him! In desperation, he threw a Neva lighter at the deceased, still Soviet-made, hefty and weighty, like a chair. She hit the old woman hard on the rotten forehead and, rebounding, instantly went out. A scream was heard in the darkness. Eiseman rushed into the hallway. Fear gave him strength, and with one jerk he pulled out of the closed front door hook, jumped out onto the porch.

The rest of the night he ran over some unsteady hummocks, every now and then falling into the peat slurry. At dawn I felt solid ground under my feet and collapsed exhausted. Having caught my breath, I looked around and realized that I was not far from Volozhba.
When Eiseman appeared in the village, he caused a stir among the local residents - his appearance was so wild. However, everything he told did not surprise the villagers at all, since there had been bad rumors about the farm on the swamp for a long time. It was rumored that the old woman was a witch and kept an old book on witchcraft in her house.
Eiseman left Volozhba for St. Petersburg, not even remembering the backpack, bandolier and double-barreled gun abandoned on the farm. Upon arriving in the city he walked medical examination for a mental disorder, which could be attributed to everything that happened to him on the farm. But the engineer’s health was like that of an astronaut; doctors did not find any hints of mental instability. Then Yakov turned to a St. Petersburg researcher for clarification. anomalous phenomena Andron Friedman. The expert's opinion was:
- In the northern regions of Russia according to the old witchcraft ritual the sorcerer or witch needed to find a successor for himself in order to transfer to him all his forbidden knowledge before his death, usually in the form of a handwritten code. Otherwise, their black souls could not find peace and were doomed to eternal torment. The sudden death of Korenikha (she was killed by a shell fragment during the shelling of the village by the Germans) violated this ritual and became the reason for the appearance of the ghost of a witch.

In addition, Andron Friedman put forward the version that the farm most likely contains a rare handwritten code of witchcraft - the Russian version of the terrible Necronomicon, known since the 13th century. The researcher intends to go in search of him, although such an undertaking will be incredibly dangerous. After all, a witch won’t just give up a witchcraft book...

A secret covered in peat

For us, swamps are an undiscovered treasury from which we can draw information not only about past landscapes, but also learn about our history. This historical book can be read endlessly, page after page, making new discoveries. But peat bogs indicate not only changes in bog vegetation. Often they also store tools of labor and wars of the past buried in them. And even the remains of the owners of these guns. Sphagnum moss and its decomposition products, including humic acid, react with calcium and nitrogen to make human flesh incorruptible.

...In May 1950, two Danish peasants were digging in the bogs of Bjeldskovdal, Jutland, and came across a corpse. They decided that they had found a schoolboy from Copenhagen who had disappeared in the swamps the year before. The police were called. Could they have imagined that they had found the corpse of a man who died in the 4th century BC?.. The eyelids of the “man from Tollund” were tiredly lowered, he seemed to be sleeping. The swamps even preserved his mustache and beard, and cuts from walking on sharp stones were clearly visible on his feet. The cause of death of the “man from Tollund” is shrouded in darkness (more precisely, peat), but forensic research has revealed a lot interesting details. For example, the last thing he ate before his death was a porridge made from barley, wild oats, buckwheat, flaxseed and mari - about thirty different herbs in total. Two English archaeologists tried the dish prepared according to this recipe and found its taste disgusting. Botanists have established the conditions in which he lived, and archaeologists have clarified his age.

In total, about 2,000 mummies have been discovered in the swamps of Europe over the past hundred years. These unfortunates were able to tell us something about the customs of the ancient Northern Europe, which until today remained a sealed secret for historians and archaeologists.

In 1984, an excavator digging for peat in the Lindow bog, south of Manchester, dug up a human leg, and then the whole body was found. This discovery is associated with the most thorough study of swamp mummies carried out so far. A team of fifty experts - from pathologists to paleobiologists - studied the "Lindov Man", whose age is estimated at two thousand years. It was established that this man's last food was a flat loaf of wheat and barley. They even found out that the bread was briefly heated before eating at a temperature of 200 to 250 degrees. The “Man from Lindov” was no older than thirty and suffered from arthritis of the lower thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. And perhaps the skin of this ancient Briton was colored blue or green. What was that - war paint? Julius Caesar in his War with Gaul writes: “All the Britons rub themselves with vitrum, which colors their skin so that they look even more fearsome in battle.” The only thing researchers are missing is the DNA formula. Humic acids in the swamps destroyed this hereditary material as thoroughly as they helped preserve hair and skin. Presenting to descendants a man made of flesh, but without blood.

And yet, the main question that scientists will have to wrestle with for a long time is: why did contemporaries treat these people so cruelly, why were they drowned in the black mud of swamps?.. Traces of blows were found on the body of the “man from Lindov”; the skull was pierced with an ax. The executioners tightened the animal's veins around the neck, after which they cut the throat - this increased the flow of gushing blood.
Under the long braids of the young "Elling woman" an inverted V was found deeply impressed on the back of her head. A teenager of 10-14 years old, who was removed from a grave in a bog near Kayhausen in Lower Saxony, was bound so tightly that he could not even move. He was stabbed in the throat several times. The "Woman from Huldremose" had her hand cut off. There were several puncture wounds on the thigh and foot. After death, the killers mutilated the face of another Jutland woman beyond recognition and, apparently, scalped her...
Were they victims to the gods, criminals, or worthy members of society who, following some mysterious rituals, were sent to the other world? Since ancient times, the swamp was considered a transitional place from the real world to the afterlife, which is why it was chosen as a place of sacrifice. After delving into folklore, researchers proposed a version: these people were drowned in a swamp so that they could not rise from the dead and begin to take revenge on the living. In their assumptions, scientists rely on the same shaky ground as the one in which these unfortunates were found. Scientists have yet to unravel the mysteries of the ancient swamp mummies.

Where did Susanin lead his enemies?

And in Russia in this century, the legend about the brave Russian peasant Ivan Susanin, who started Polish army into the swamp and thereby saved Russia from ruin. Near the village of Isupovo, Susaninsky district, Kostroma region, where a century ago there was a swamp, archaeologists discovered hundreds of human remains and 40 pectoral crosses, presumably belonging to soldiers of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. One of the crosses is made in the tradition Orthodox Church and, most likely, adorned the chest of a heroic villager. Such pectoral crosses were made in the 16th - 17th centuries. In addition, the cross is not whole, but consists of fragments. It was possible to establish that it was chopped down - probably by the sabers of Polish soldiers. It is known that none of the Polish detachment survived. The only documentary evidence of Susanin's feat was the tsar's letter. In it, Mikhail Fedorovich gave Susanin’s son-in-law Bogdan Sabinin half of the village of Dereveshchi: “Knowing about us, Susanin endured unbearable torture, did not tell about us, and for that he was tortured to death by Polish and Lithuanian people.” So, after several centuries, the swamp revealed another secret to people.

Myth

According to the legend of the creation of the world, at first there was continuous water on the earth. God walked along it like on dry land and one day noticed a cloudy bubble. Having caught up with God, the bubble burst. And the Devil jumped out of it. God ordered the Devil to go down to the bottom and get earth from there. The devil obediently carried out the order. I couldn’t resist and hid some earth behind my cheeks. Meanwhile, God scattered the earth, and where it fell, dry land appeared, and on it were trees, bushes and grass of extraordinary beauty. But plants began to sprout in the Devil’s mouth. And the unclean one began to spit out the earth. This is how swamps appeared on the earth - liquefied earth with stunted, ugly trees and coarse grass.

Facts

In the south of the Tomsk region, on its very border with Novosibirsk, is the Vasyugan swamp. Stretching over 500 kilometers in length and from 15 to 120 in width, it is the largest swamp on the globe.

11,500 km3 are retained in the depths of swamps fresh water. This is five times more than all the rivers in the world (2,100 km3), and almost half the volume of Baikal’s water (23,000 km?)!
Stagnant swamps regulate the flow of rivers and streams and even feed big rivers. The Dnieper and Volga, for example, originate from swamps. But, contrary to popular belief, the water in swamps is not stagnant at all. Let's compare: in lakes the water is completely renewed in 17 years, in swamps - every five years!

Large swamps can stop forest fires.

Every year, one hectare of wetlands absorbs 550–1800 kg from the atmosphere carbon dioxide and releases 260–700 kg of oxygen. This is 7–15 times more than one hectare of forest or meadow can process.

But that’s not all: swamps attract and absorb dust particles, which, as is known, in calm weather move towards lower temperatures (and the temperature above the surface of swamps is always lower than around it). One hectare of swamps can “swallow” up to three tons of dust! (By the way, it contains minerals that plants feed on.)

Although unique complexes The swamps of Russia have suffered greatly from human intervention, but they are still preserved. And even in well-developed regions they remain the least disturbed ecosystems. Therefore, they often become a refuge for many Red Book plants and animals that cannot withstand anthropogenic stress.
In 1971, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance as Waterfowl Habitat was signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar; it is now commonly known as the Ramsar Convention. Its goal is to preserve the most valuable territories in this regard: sea bays, lakes, river deltas, swamps. Today, 60 countries participate in the convention, including Russia, where 35 Ramsar sites have been designated. Many of them are also of international importance because they are a refuge for migratory birds.

The first swamps on our planet appeared about 400 million years ago. Modern swamps are young, they are “only” 12,000 years old. They are distributed throughout the Earth, their total area is approximately 2,682,000 km2. Russia accounts for 73% of this territory, which is the area of five Frances!

For a swamp to form, a combination of a number of conditions is necessary: climate humidity, proximity to groundwater, landscape features, water-resistant soil layers.
Swamps can appear on land - due to a constant excess of moisture in the soil and on its surface and weak water flow. It becomes difficult for air to penetrate into the pores of the soil, which is why dying plant debris is not completely oxidized, and as a result, organic materials are preserved. Sometimes swamps appear in places where there is little or no moisture, for example in desert areas. The lake can also become swampy if it, due to the abundance sunlight, quickly filled with aquatic plants.
Peat accumulates in the swamp very slowly. For example, in the north-west of Russia, the peat deposit increases its thickness by 0.5–1 mm per year. This is the growth rate of the main peat-forming agent - sphagnum moss.
Swamps are a holistic natural complex, where its three main components - excess moisture, organic deposits in the form of peat and specific vegetation - determine the existence of each other and the ecosystem as a whole. Peat retains moisture, and swamp vegetation in waterlogged conditions forms peat.

Swamps Russian Federation(with a peat depth of more than 30 cm) as a % of the territory area (from: Vompersky et al., 1999)

It’s worth getting to know the swamps better - and they will surprise you with the variety of their colors and smells. Most of all there are mosses here. In summer they are emerald green and pale light green, in dry summer they are white, and in autumn they are yellow, wine red, brown and even purple! And against the background of a moss carpet - light lilac heathers, white wild rosemary caps, pale pinkish bluebells, red cobs of marsh whitewing, bluish blue blueberries, inky purple blueberries, orange cloudberries... And dark red cranberries! And burgundy lingonberries!

On hot summer days, the swamps are filled with the smells of herbs and shrubs, exuding a unique, rich essential oils aroma not only during flowering, but also in “ordinary life”.

Myrtle Marsh.

Applied swamp science (for lovers of hunting, cranberries, etc.)
IN different times(winter, summer, autumn) swamps can be passable or, conversely, completely inaccessible. The very surface of the swamps is very deceptive; sometimes it seems solid, but in fact the swamp sinks down under the weight of a person. Some seemingly strong green areas are actually fireboxes, and you can suddenly fall into them.

The most dangerous are rafting swamps, or swamps. Here the vegetation has a slightly whitish color. When moving through a swamp, you should never rush or rush, and if you fall through, you should not give in to panic. It is better to have a long pole with you and, before taking the next step, use it to check where you can rest your foot. Hidden lakes, overgrown with swamp vegetation, under which the water is not visible, pose a great danger to people. Under this vegetation cover there may be a bottomless reservoir (charusa). You can easily fall into the peculiar crevices on such a hidden lake if you neglect precautions.
When moving through the swamp, you need to step on hummocks or rhizomes of plants and small shrubs, which provide strong support for your feet, and overcome dangerous areas very carefully, having first probed with a pole.
If you fall into a swamp, under no circumstances should you make sudden movements. It is necessary to carefully, leaning on a pole lying across (the presence of which is mandatory here), pull yourself up, take a horizontal position, throw off your backpack, free yourself from the gun, reach out with your hands to the strong marsh grass and, pulling yourself up, crawl away from the dangerous place.
When you get into a swamp, it happens that your legs and boots cannot be pulled out of the quagmire. All your attempts to pull out one or two legs at once do not lead to a positive result. The quagmire has a death grip. You feel like you are being slowly sucked in. In this case, you need to, without losing your composure, try, leaning on the same pole, to get out of your boots. This is possible - the legs are released with difficulty, but they are freed.

When overcoming a swamp, it is necessary to outline the azimuth of movement, otherwise, when going around swampy places, you can easily get lost, lose your way and wander along it forever. Moving through the swamp, it is very difficult to navigate - only a monotonous swamp landscape is visible around. In these cases, the sun helps. When starting to move, you need to look around carefully and try to find possible landmarks for yourself.
Sometimes you can appearance determine the degree of passability of the swamp.
A continuous moss cover, on which there are no trees or they are rarely found (a single pine tree), the water is above the surface or at its level, there are many hollows - such a raised (moss) bog is very difficult to pass.
In lowland (peat) swamps: there is a continuous cover of grass, there are no trees, bushes are very rare, and the water is on the surface - such a swamp will be very difficult to overcome. In peat bogs: peat is liquid, flowing, and when taken into a fist, the mass is completely pressed through the fingers - such bogs are absolutely impassable for pedestrians.
And if the peat is very loose, highly moistened and when squeezed in a fist, the water flows out in a trickle, and the mass is pressed through the fingers, then such terrain is considered “conditionally passable” - on bog shoes, the permissible pressure on it is only about 0.25 kg/cm2.

Do you know something interesting about swamps? Interesting information about the swamps of Ukraine for children and adults is collected in this article.

Interesting facts about swamps

On the surface of the swamps, organic matter turn into peat, he then transforms into coal. Peat itself is used as fuel, fertilizer, raw material for chemical industry and as feed for farm animals.

Swamps arise due to overgrowing of water bodies or through waterlogging of the soil.

The remains of plants and even human bodies are well preserved in swamps.

Cranberries, cloudberries, and blueberries grow in the swamps.

In swamps, on warm, dark nights, faintly flickering lights can be seen, this is due to the combustion of swamp gas (swamp methane), rotting plants or phosphorus organisms.

The swamp consists of 90% water and peat acids (this slows down the growth of bacteria) and therefore the body of a drowned person in the swamp is not destroyed and is perfectly preserved.

Most of the human bodies found in swamps occurred before the 1st-4th century BC (for example "The Man from Tollund" died in the 4th century BC and was found in a peat bog in Tollund (Denmark).

The Amazon River floodplain is the largest swamp in the world.

Although the swamp is not best place, yet they are visited for mushrooms, berries and medicinal plants that only grow there.

Swamps are mainly concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth. Total area wetlands in the world is approximately 3500000 km², of which about 50% are peat with a peat depth of more than 0.5 m. The largest areas occupied by swamps are concentrated in Belarus, Canada, Finland, the USA, and Russia.

In Ukraine, swamps occupy more than 1200 thousand hectares with reserves of air-dried peat of more than 3 billion tons.

Most swamps in Ukraine are in Polesie(900 thousand hectares), less in the Forest-Steppe (about 300 thousand hectares), even less in the Steppe and mountainous regions.

Was held in Ukraine great job to drain the swamps, as a result of which many species of plants, including valuable medicinal ones (Wolf's body swamp, White water lily, Calamus) and others, were listed in the Red Book of Ukraine.

Interesting things about the swamps, interesting information You can add swamps through the comment form.

Characters passed on legends and tales about treasures hidden in the mud from mouth to mouth. Belarus can safely be considered a tourist attraction of the country. The oldest are considered to be Polesie (about 11,000 years old), and the deepest are Vitebsk - up to 9 meters. Archaeologists often find sites of the first people. So in the Vitebsk region, near the village of Osovets, a village was discovered primitive people Mesolithic era.

Swamp near Obol. Photo by Evgenia Moskvina

1. In what swamp did Tsmok live?

According to legend, somewhere in the swamp under The stone with which the angry god Perun killed Tsmok is kept.

The beauty of Novolukoml Lake. Photo by Anastasia Veresk

Tsmok has long been considered a symbol of Belarus, an analogue of the Russian Serpent Gorynych. He lived in a swamp and guarded treasures. When there lived a people in Belarus who sacrificed their compatriots to Tsmoka - one person a day. And when the turn came to the daughter of the prince (or king), the snake was killed. In one legend, Perun dealt with him, in another - St. George.

2. Where do mermaids live?

In the Gorodok region in the Vitebsk region there are still eyewitnesses who claim that somewhere in the forest they live in lost swamps and lakes. Their eyes are blue and gentle, and their hair is brown. Seeing mermaids more often on the Holy Lake , the bottom of which, according to legend, is in the underworld. After all, it was in it that Lucifer drowned the church!

Not only mermaids and devils live in Belarusian swamps. Bagnik rules the peat bogs, and Kaduk rules the impenetrable swamp. The playful but harmless Lozovik is hiding in the vine. Even in Belarusian folklore you can find mention of Loims - creepy female creatures living in swamps and vines, who steal human children and put their own in their place.

Forest swamps are fraught with danger. Photo by Evgenia Moskvina

3. In which swamps were the icons found, and where are the holy springs?

Holy Patch Swamp near the village of Sloboda Shumilinsky district famous for the fact that it is shown to people here, which was once located in the house of local landowners. Because they treated the holy image disrespectfully, the icon disappeared. And she appeared in the swamp.

And in the village of Ugly Polotsk district near the bog there is a holy healing water, near which there used to be both a cross and a chapel.

4. Where was the unique tank “Klim Voroshilov” found?

Not only people died in the swamp. During the war, entire planes disappeared here. So, in November last year, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations lifted from a quagmire near the village of Tesishche Sennensky district KV-1 tank, an example of armored vehicles used in initial period war. It was sent for reconstruction.

5. Where devils drown and people wander

Near the village of Mateiki in Postavshchina There is a small forest on the hill. Contrary to the laws of nature, there is a swamp in the forest. According to legend, the devil once settled in these parts. And he got into the habit of ruining the lives of the villagers: either he drove horses to death, or he poisoned the wheat. And finally there was only one man left in the village named Matei. He made an agreement with the devil: if the evil one creates a swamp on the hill, Matei will leave the village. And if he can’t, then the devil will have to leave Postavshchina. And the unclean one began to spin around in place to make a swamp. As a result, his head began to spin, and he drowned in the quagmire.

Since then, if a person goes to that, the Devil's swamp, by all means. He will circle in one place and suffer.

Here it is, a quiet pool where the devils live. Photo by Evgenia Moskvina

6. What swamp do they nest in? rare species birds

IN there is a unique landscape reserve Yelnya, on the territory of which one of the largest lake-marsh complexes in Europe is located. Here, on an area of 4.84 hectares, 117 species nest, among which you can find the white-tailed eagle, gray heron, black stork, and black-throated loon listed in the Red Book.

Beautiful Yelnya. Photo by Anastasia Veresk

7. Which swamp is called Zhidovsky

Near the village of Drisvyaty in Braslav district there is a swamp called Zhidovsky. According to legend, a large Jewish family once lived in these parts. A girl named Hanka fell in love with a Polish guy. However, her brothers were against it. They drowned the unfortunate Khanka in the swamp.

8. Where is the Pearl of Poozerye located?

Raised bogs were awarded the noble title “Pearl of Lakeland” edges with an area of 1096 hectares. You can see really beautiful landscapes here! And it seems that these quiet pools are safe...

Evening on the Obolsky swamp. Photo by Evgenia Moskvina

9. In what swamp is Yuryev Island located?

Among Osipovsky swampson there is the famous Yuryev Island. According to legend, an evil master once lived in these parts. He decided to punish his peasant Yuri. He ordered him to be tied to a horse and driven through the swamps. The rope came untied, and Yuri managed to escape. He found an island among the endless quagmire and settled there. When the evil lord learned about the peasant’s miraculous salvation, he gave chase, but drowned in the swamp. And Yuryev Island has survived to this day.

10. Where can you find real cranberry heaven?

Belarusian swamps are rich. However, most of the healing berries can be collected in the biological reserve Chistik in Vitebsk region , created on the Zhukovsky swamp in 1979 to protect areas of mass cranberry growth. The territory of the reserve is about 300 hectares.

The swamps of Belarus are called the lungs of Europe. They occupy 14% of the country's area or 2.5 million hectares. A lot of berries and berries grow here. The swamps of Belarus are included in the international list of the Ramsar Convention for the Protection of Wetlands.

A brief definition of the word “swamp” is a part of an ecosystem, a swampy place.

A bog is a part of the hydrosphere, a section of the landscape characterized by low acidity and a high degree of moisture. Popularly, especially in fairy tales, it is often described as a lost place.

Although the soils are not fertile, they grow here various representatives flora, animals and birds live. In human life they also have great value. There are various types(classifications) of swamps, which will be discussed below.

Origin of the term

The word was formed a very long time ago and has roots in the dialects of the ancient Slavs. It was also found among the Balts.

An early meaning of "white", resulting from white grass growing in places or the ash-gray color of dried mud.

Why do swamps form?

Causes of swamps:

Reservoirs are overgrown with algae and grass.
Waterlogging of the area. Bogs are formed by human activities (such as dam construction) or animals (such as beavers).

Conditions of education:

lowland;
high humidity;
water stagnation.

Fresh water serves as a source of swamp formation. But there is an exception - there are salt pans. A salt marsh is formed by flooding with salt water (periodically or continuously).

Swamps of Russia

Mokhovinas cover approximately 1/10 of the entire area of the country. The main part is located on West Siberian Plain and in the center of Russia.

Map of Russian swamps (click to enlarge)

A large percentage of the taiga and half of the tundra area are swamps. Moreover, their predominant part is peat swamps.

The meaning of swamps

Muds play an important role in nature:

water filtration;
preventing the greenhouse effect;
promoting the formation of charcoal and peat;
source of methane.

Types of swamps

Some types of shaky terrain:

If honeydew is fed by groundwater, and rich vegetation grows on its surface, then this lowland (eutrophic) swamps.
If nutrition occurs with the help of groundwater and atmospheric precipitation, but not so much is observed on the surface rich variety flora, then this transitional (mesotrophic) swamps.
If the moss fly is fed by atmospheric precipitation, and poor flora is observed on the surface, then this raised (oligotrophic) bogs.

Classification of swamps

Bogs are classified according to various criteria:

by the nature of the macrorelief— watershed, slope, floodplain, valley, etc. swamps;
by the nature of the microrelief- lumpy, flat, convex, etc.;
by dominant vegetation-shrubs, moss, forest, herbaceous.
by the nature of the climate- subtropical, topical, temperate, subarctic.

Swamp inhabitants

Various animals live here: raccoons, muskrats, minks, otters.

Among the largest representatives of the fauna are moose. The marsh turtle lives on some hummocks.

IN large quantities Insects, amphibians (frogs, toads), and reptiles are represented.

Marsh sandpiper

Birds include moorhens, partridges, lapwings, ducks, waders, etc.

Swamp plants

The most important plant is sphagnum moss.

Especially in large quantities it is common in oligotrophic swamps.

Many berries grow here: cloudberries, lingonberries, blueberries, cranberries. As a rule, they can be collected by residents of surrounding villages who know the extent and specifics of the bog.

The flora is also represented by such plants as calamus, sundew, wild rosemary, cotton grass, bladderwort, and sedge. Swamp cypress is found in the Danube region. A swampy forest is growing.

The problem of preserving wetlands

Currently, there is an acute problem of protecting the rapids as an important part of the ecosystem.

The main reasons for the disappearance of swamps, violation of the ecological integrity of nature:

In the twentieth century, a policy of marsh reclamation was pursued. During this process, the entire system changed, including flora and fauna specific and characteristic only of swampy areas. Drainage has led to a decline in the population of some animal species. Reasons for the spread forest fires in 2010, over a large area, it is also associated with the absence of swamps.
Peat extraction in industrial scale negatively affects swamps.
Water intake will change the swamp's water system.
The construction of infrastructure (roads, gas pipelines) changes the ecosystem of swamps and forests in general.

Swamps - botanical natural monuments

Wetlands are needed to preserve the overall ecosystem as well as botanical diversity.

Many plants can develop in conditions such as swampiness, high humidity, freshwater, stagnant water, and highly acidic soil. These conditions are optimal for the development of berries, sphagnum moss, and lichens.

Properties of swamps

Let's name two interesting properties that not many people know about:

Glow- explained by the release of methane.
Mummifying effect- the absence of oxygen allows the mummification and preservation of living beings.

Swamps are dangerous (they have a marshy bottom), but at the same time interesting. It will be especially interesting for children to learn that swamps can keep big secrets.

Due to the mummifying effect of swamps, animals, including extinct ones (mammoths) and people (one of the illustrative examples is a medieval knight) can be preserved in excellent condition in its depths.