The Svir River provides a waterway between Europe’s two largest lakes—Lake Onega and Lake Ladoga. Since Peter the Great connected the Svir with the Neva River by the Ladoga Canal, the river has been part of the Volga-Baltic Waterway. Completed in 1964 to replace the antiquated Mariinskaya Canal, the Volga-Baltic Waterway is a system of rivers and canals linking Russia’s Volga with the Baltic Sea. Spanning 229 miles and including seven locks, the waterway starts in Rybinsk and journeys along the Svir and Neva Rivers, emptying into the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea, at St. Petersburg.
The Svir’s water is very clean and abundant with fish, including salmon and trout. Home to various waterfowl, the river is surrounded by pine forests inhabited by bear, elk and lynx, and are a key source of Russian timber. Stacks of lumber and sawmills dot the shore as reminders of the lumber industry, and there are also two hydroelectric power plants on the Svir.
The river has many shallow sections, narrow rapids, hidden curves and sometimes dense fog. During the first half of the 20th century, ships’ captains had to navigate by means of wooden buoys—not always reliable in the days when they were lit by kerosene lamps. Now, all 4,070 modern buoys are lit automatically.
The first settlements were built along the banks of the Svir more than 5,000 years ago. The Svir flows past the Alexander-Svirsky Monastery, which used to house Svirlag, one of the most infamous of the Soviet gulags. The area around the river saw heavy fighting during the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union (1941–1944).