Case file · High strangeness
The Volkhov flows backwards for five days
The Primary Chronicle records that in 1063 the river Volkhov at Novgorod flowed backwards for five days, 'and this sign was not good', for Vseslav burned Novgorod four years later.
1063 CE · 58.52, 31.28 · status: explained
The account
The chronicle reads the reversal as an omen. The Volkhov runs from Lake Ilmen past Novgorod to Lake Ladoga; it has a very slight gradient, and when the Ilmen is low and the lower river is high from floods, ice jams or strong north winds, it can briefly run the other way. Such reversals were noted again in later centuries.
The sceptical view
A known hydrological effect of the Volkhov's very low gradient, not a supernatural event.