Regarding Starover Blue: I noticed years ago, while reading
Billington's The Icon and the Axe, his assertion that Novaia
Zem(b)lia was inhabited by Old Believer settlements. Perhaps someone
has done some work on this topic that I haven't seen; but if no-one
has, it may be a paper-chase begging for a runner. Can this relate to
the Shade's bloody shaving in the tub, where slaves make hay on
Zembla's fields? I have long toyed with a particular word-golf par-3
hole: Shade-shave-slave-slavs; but I've never been able to make it do
any tricks.
~SB