Waiting by the sea for the weather is about amber mining. Water throws the petrified resin of ancient coniferous trees onto the shore, the more abundant the storm. There is even a special term - amber storms. The Baltic Sea is the richest in amber. It's estimated that in the three millennia since the beginning of trade between the North and Ancient Egypt, about 125 thousand tons of this precious stone have been collected on its shores.
In the old Russian tradition, the mineraloid is called alatyr (from Farsi al-atar is translated as "white-flammable"). According to the medieval legends, it was used for making the altar on the island of Buyan, the "center of the Earth," which Pushkin took from the folklore in his "Tale of Tsar Saltan." The holy stone Alatyr is not mentioned there, but another tale - "About the Fisherman and the Fish" - could well claim to be the encrypted story of the amber collector.
The old man, the main character of the tale, had no luck with fish:
"Once he cast a seine into the sea, the seine came with only mud.
Another time he cast his seine - the seine came with a sea grass.
The third time he cast his seine - a seine with one fish came,
With a fish of gold".
Translated from fairy tales into symbolic language, the goldfish is the solar amber or "white amber is the mother of all stones" (according to one version of the "Book of Doves", an apocryphal spiritual text from the late 15th century). The color of classical amber ranges from white and golden to brown. Although specimens of blue and green hues are sometimes found.
We continue with the deciphering. The old woman in the tale appreciated the benefits of the amber trade and demanded more and more finds from the old man. Further, the extraction increased from time to time, as the excitement of the elements increased - everything was as in life.
"The sea is a little wild," the old man gathered amber for the "new trough." "The blue sea is not calm" - they extracted stone for the "high mansion". "The blue sea has turned black" - and now the old woman walks as a queen. Farther the sense of proportion betrays the greedy woman, she already wants to rule the "Okiyan-sea".
The moment has come, promising especially large acquisitions - "there is a black storm on the sea". However, as is the custom in fairy tales, her unrestrained thirst for gain does not lead to good. In Pushkin, the old man did not wait for the fish to answer his last request. This can be interpreted as follows: the wave washes the old man away, the fishing is stopped, and the old woman remains at the broken trough for the readers' edification. For it is not good to tempt fate by bargaining with sacred stones.
"On a white casket on the rock, Jesus Christ, the King of Heaven, Himself, spoke and held fast. With ten apostles, with ten teachers, he established faith on the rock, he spread the Book of Doves all over the earth, in all the land - because the rock is the mother of all stones" - says the Book of Doves.
Our ancestors used small pieces of amber for jewelry, or crushed into small pieces for church incense. Bigger pieces, reminiscent of the conversations of Jesus Christ with the apostles, as a rule, were not for sale. They were kept as relics. Even today the Kaliningrad Amber Factory has a rule: the pieces weighing over 1 kilogram are treated as precious stones and are not subject to free sale.
The combine is developing a deposit containing 90% of the world's reserves of succinites (from the Latin name of the pine tree Pinus succinifera, which grew 30 million years ago - the most famous and characteristic type of amber on earth). In the Mining Museum in St. Petersburg there are amber artworks and amber specimens from Kaliningrad region, Ukraine, Belarus and Germany. Including so-called inlusions: insects and other particles of flora and fauna in amber. The goldfish in amber, unfortunately, has not yet been found.
