Salt was one of the few store-bought, and rather expensive, products on a peasant’s table. It was treated with special reverence. To store and serve salt, special vessels were made — saltcellars (solonitsa or, more common, solonka).

Saltcellars were hollowed out or turned out of wood and burl, woven from birch bark and root. They had a wide variety of shapes, depending on the local tradition, and were decorated with carvings or paintings depicting birds, horses, and church domes. There were table, kitchen and travel saltcellars and they always had a lid.

Bread (khleb) and salt (sol) became a symbol of festive meals and hospitality in general, which in the Russian North was called khlebosolstvo.

It was obligatory to have a saltcellar on the table at the viewing of the bride, engagement and at the wedding feast. The bridegroom brought a saltcellar, a tablecloth, and a treat to the bride’s house; the bride, in turn, took the saltcellar from her father’s home to her husband’s family.

The association of the saltcellar with the hearth was used in Christmas fortune-telling. Girls buried the saltcellar in the snow and made a series of mounds of snow: the diviners who guessed the place where the saltcellar was hidden would get married.

When the woman started to cut a loaf of bread, she left a small slice of it in the salt container, and two days later she ate it, “so that the bread would grow well”.

A saltcellar had a protective function: it was taken along on a trip not only for eating salt, but also to ward off evil spirits. For example, salt was poured into the fire to protect against the devil. The use of the saltcellar was strictly regulated: it was forbidden to dip bread in it or to take salt out of it by hand, which in popular consciousness made people think of Judas; when passing saltcellars around, people were supposed to laugh in order to avoid a quarrel.