This 1824 map of Arkhangelsk Province is from a larger work, Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii, tsarstva Pol'skogo i velikogo kniazhestva Finliandskogo (Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland), containing 60 maps of the Russian Empire. Compiled and engraved by Colonel V.P. Piadyshev, it reflects the detailed mapping carried out by Russian military cartographers in the first quarter of the 19th century. The map shows population centers (six gradations by size), postal stations, roads (five types), state, provincial and district borders, monasteries, factories, and forts. Distances are shown in versts, a Russian measure, now no longer used, equal to 1.07 kilometers. Legends and place-names are in Russian and French. The Arkhangelsk region is referenced already in the Norse sagas of the 12th century. The Icelandic author Snorri Sturluson wrote about this region using the Viking term, Bjarmaland. Russians from Novgorod, who at this point were political if not ethnic descendants of the Vikings, also came to this area in the 12th century. They established Kholmogory as a trading center on the Northern Dvina River. This was superseded in the late 16th century by the town of Arkhangelsk, located at the mouth of the Northern Dvina on the White Sea. The most famous Russian Orthodox site in the Russian North, Solovetsky Monastery, was founded in the province in the 1430s, on an island in the White Sea. The area later was explored by the English merchant, Richard Chancellor, who sailed into the White Sea in 1553. Chancellor’s voyage led to the establishment of trade relations between England and Ivan the Terrible and the subsequent founding of the Muscovy Company. The trade corridor between Arkhangelsk and Moscow, also used by Scottish and Dutch merchants, became the most significant foreign trade outlet for Russia until the founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703.