• Main page
  • News
  • Baba Yaga’s Mortar is the New Artifact in the Museum of Millstones


Baba Yaga’s Mortar is the New Artifact in the Museum of Millstones

The Novgorod Museum of Millstones has been replenished with a new tool for the mill trade – a mortar!

What is the connection between millstones and Baba Yaga’s mortar? It is very simple: a witch from Russian fairy tales could fly in a mortar with a broomstick when the mortar was worked off as… a millstone! A wooden mortar is a unit of a flour-grinding mill. In a mortar, the grain was transformed into flour by the shock-peen method. One could work with a pestle, and two could work in large mortars: with all their might they lowered the pestle on the grain in the mortar. Wooden mortars wore out quickly. Having been torn by work, the mortar was picked up by Baba Yaga, lined with a metal rim and – So long, Earth! Such a wooden mortar appeared in the Museum of Millstones in July 2020: patched, repaired, and strapped with a metal rim. At the bottom there is a stone, so that hard grain can be crushed faster and Baba Yaga could not steal it anymore!

A rare tool of bread technologies, Baba Yaga’s mortar, can be photographed and even “tried on” with a broom in the Museum of Millstones. You can mill flour in the millstones and treat yourself to millstone bread! To make an appointment call: +7 (911) 601-85-03, +7 (911) 624-74-02, VK group: vk.com/zanovgorod.