Novgorod Slavs

The Novgorod Slavs or Ilmen Slavs (Russian: Ильменские словене, Il'menskiye slovene) were the northernmost tribe of the Early East Slavs, which inhabited the shores of Lake Ilmen and the basin of the rivers of Volkhov, Lovat, Msta, and the upper stream of the Mologa River in the 8th to 10th centuries.

The Ilmen Slavs seem to have been different from other Slavic tribes colonizing what is now Russia in that they were closely related to the Polabian Slavs in language and traditions (see old Novgorod dialect and Gostomysl for examples). They settled mostly Finnic areas in Northern Russia, moving along the major waterways, until they met the southward expansion of the Krivich in the modern-day Yaroslavl Oblast.

They left a few archaeological monuments of the 6th–8th centuries, such as agricultural settlements and tall cone-like kurgans with cremated bodies in the Ladoga region. The most ancient settlement is dated to the 7th or 8th century. Numerous archaeological finds, such as a metal tip for a wooden plough, indicate that the Ilmen Slavs had a well-developed agriculture.