Western Dvina River

The lands, where soon after the arrival of the kriviches  the town of Polatsk grew up and the Polotsk Principality started to strengthen, had been known to ancient Greeks and Romans.

Do you remember the myth about Phaeton? The good chap asked his father, the god of the sun Helios, to allow him to run the  sun chariot .  The father agreed reluctantly and his bad anticipations were not in vain. Feeling an unexperienced hand of the young man, the fiery relay rushed to the side, the scared Phaeton  dropped the reins and the horses rushed forward - now flying high up into the sky, now flying over the land burning to the ground everything on their way. Furious Zeus sent the lightening into Phaeton, who fell down into the far away from the Olympus river Eridan. The sisters of Phaeton came to his grave and turned into trees, their tears were dropping into the transparent water of the Eridan became solid  and turned into amber. The stream took it and carried to the sea to decorate Roman beauties.

Why have I remembered this myth about Phaeton? Because the Eridan, which took the body of Phaeton was mentioned by Homer and his pupil wrote about the Eridan in the III-d century B.C. Appolo Rodossky  and many respectable scientists of the XIX - XX cc. stated that the Eridan was our river the Dvina. By the way the river had other names:the Rubon (hence the war-cry of the Polatsk knights with which they went to fights -"Rubon"), Dina, Duna, also Vina - this is how the Dvina is called in the Scandinavian Sagas. The river Polota also had the ancient name of the Turunt.

Showing his great patriotic feelings the Belarusian country study man Alexey Sapunov at the end of the XIX th c. wrote that we have the right to say about the Dvina that it caries in its waves the history and the life of the People.