Volga | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

The Volga (Во́лга) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment area of . It is also Europe's largest river in terms of average discharge at delta – between and – and of drainage basin. It is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. The hypothetical old Russian state, the Rus' Khaganate, arose along the Volga 830 AD. Historically, the river served as an important meeting place of various Eurasian civilizations. The river flows in Russia through forests, forest steppes and steppes. Five of the ten largest cities of Russia, including the nation's capital, Moscow, are located in the Volga's drainage basin. Some of the largest reservoirs in the world are located along the Volga River. The river has a symbolic meaning in Russian culture – Russian literature and folklore often refer to it as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka (Mother Volga). The Russian hydronym () derives from Proto-Slavic *vòlga 'wetness, moisture', which is preserved in many Slavic languages, (влага) 'moisture', Bulgarian () 'moisture', Czech 'dampness', Serbo-Croatian: vlaga () 'moisture', Slovene 'moisture', Polish wilgoć 'moisture' and Macedonian () 'moisture', among others. The Scythian name for the Volga was , literally meaning 'wetness'. This is related to the Avestan name for a mythical stream, (), which means "wet" or "moisture," and was derived from Proto-Indo-European or ). This name can be compared several Indo-Iranic terms, such as: Sogdian () 'vein, blood vessel' (from Old Iranian ), Persian رگ 'vein,' Vedic Sanskrit () 'dew, liquid, juice; mythical river'), which was also the name of a tributary of the Indus river. The Scythian name survives in modern Moksha as (). The Greek author Herodotus recorded two more ancient Iranic names of the Volga: (Οαρος; Oarus), which was derived from Scythian , meaning "broad." The Huns' name of the Dnipro river, Var, was also derived from Scythian .

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (2)

Related concepts (45)

Golden Horde

The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the disintegration of the Mongol Empire after 1259, it became a functionally separate khanate. It is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi, and it replaced the earlier, less organized Cuman–Kipchak confederation.

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau of West Asia. It covers a surface area of (excluding the highly saline lagoon of Garabogazköl to its east), an area approximately equal to that of Japan, with a volume of .

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus', also known as Kyivan Rus' ( , or ро́усьскаѧ землѧ́ ; Garðaríki), was a state and later an amalgam of principalities in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. Encompassing a variety of polities and peoples, including East Slavic, Norse, and Finnic, it was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, founded by the Varangian prince Rurik. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim Kievan Rus' as their cultural ancestor, with Belarus and Russia deriving their names from it.

Maximum entropy production, carbon assimilation, and the spatial organization of vegetation in river basins

Andrea Rinaldo

The spatial organization of functional vegetation types in river basins is a major determinant of their runoff production, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. The optimization of different objective functions has been suggested to control the adaptive be ...

Natl Acad Sciences2012

Flood management in a complex river basin with a real-time decision support system based on hydrological forecasts

Javier García Hernández

In alpine valleys with strong urban development, river training works for flood safety become more and more difficult to implement because of economic and environmental constraints. Thus flood management has a great importance especially in river basins eq ...

EPFL - LCH2011