Lena River - History

History

The majority of researchers believe that the name of the river Lena has been acquired from the original Even-Evenk name Elyu-Ene, which means "the Large River".

According to folktales related a century after the fact, in the years 1620-23 a party of Russian fur hunters under the leadership of Demid Pyanda sailed up Lower Tunguska, and discovered the proximity of Lena and either carried their boats there or built new ones. In 1623 Pyanda explored some 2,400 kilometers of the river from its upper rocky part to its wide flow in the central Yakutia. In 1628 Vasily Bugor and ten men reached the Lena, collected yasak from the natives and founded Kirinsk in 1632. In 1631 the voyevoda of Yeniseisk sent Pyotr Beketov and twenty men to found an ostrog at Yakutsk (founded in 1632). From Yakutsk other expeditions spread out to the south and east. The Lena delta was reached in 1633.

Baron Eduard Von Toll, accompanied by Alexander von Bunge, carried out an expedition to the Lena delta area and the islands of New Siberia on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1885. They explored the Lena delta with its multitude of arms that flow towards the Polar sea. Then in spring 1886 they investigated the New Siberian Islands and the Yana River and its tributaries. During one year and two days the expedition covered 25,000 km, of which 4,200 km were up rivers, carrying out geodesic surveys en route.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov took his alias, Lenin, from the river Lena, possibly because he was exiled to the Central Siberian Plateau.