"Kon-kamen" ("Horse-stone"), a natural monument

Subject / Nature memorials
Kon-kamen ("Horse-stone") is a natural and history monument in the Konevets Island (the Priozersk district). It is a glacial boulder (the length is 9,2 meters, the width is 6,4 meters, the height is 4,3 meters; the weight is more than 750 tonnes). At heathen time Karelian used the island as a summer pasture for horses and annually sacrificed a horse on this stone (from here the name of the stone; besides the form of the Kon-kamen resembles the horse head). According the legend, when St. Arseniy, the founder of the Konevsky Rozhdestvo-Bogoroditskiy Monastery, arrived on Konevets Island in 1393, he committed the religious service near the stone and aspersed it with holy water. Then demons in the appearance of the ravens flew out of the stone and flew towards a bay that was afterwards named Chertova Lahta (it is Vladimirskaya Bay). Snakes disappeared out of island together with demons. In the memory of this event there is a chapel on the stone (it is considered that the first chapel was built by St. Arseniy Konevetskiy himself; the existing building was built in 1815). Tripolskaya, Anna Aleksandrovna
Arseny Konevsky, St.
Topographical landmarks/Konevets, Island
Дмитриев А.П., Лихой А.И. Приозерская земля: История и культура. СПб. – Приозерск, 2004., С. 70-72
Монастыри Санкт-Петербургской епархии. Справочник паломника. СПб., 2001, С. 115-117
Конь-камень. URL: http://konevets.spb.ru/03/100.htm, С. 115-117
Konevets Munastery of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary