Lake Peipus (Estonian: Peipsi-Pihkva järv) is an inland body of water between Estonia and Russia. At 3555 km², it is about seven times the size of Lake Constance and is the fifth largest lake in Europe.
The lake stretches 143 km from north to south and is up to 50 km wide. Together with the Narva, its outlet to the Baltic Sea, it forms almost the entire eastern state border of Estonia with the Russian Federation.
Despite increasing environmental pollution, Lake Peipus is very rich in fish. The average annual catch is around 10,000 tons.
The battle on Lake Peipus was historically of great importance: On April 5, 1242, on the ice of the frozen lake, a Russian army under the Novgorod prince Alexander Nevsky defeated the German and Danish crusaders of the Teutonic Order and the Order of the Brothers of the Sword, as well as their Estonian allies.
A regionally significant minority of Old Believers lives on the western shore of the lake. Their ancestors came to what was then Swedish Estonia at the end of the 17th century as religious refugees from the Russian Empire.[2] To this day, the Russian-speaking Old Believers, who maintain special religious and cultural customs, make up the majority of residents in some places along the lake, e.g. B. in the so-called "onion villages" Varnja, Kasepää and Kolkja (Wikipedia).
Translated by Google •
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