Kon-kamen

Early 1900's. Monks of the Konevsky Monastery in front of the forest chapel built on top of the ancient sacred Kon-kamen (Horse stone)...The monastery is situated on the Konevets (Horse) Island in the western part of the Lake Ladoga, North Russia...

Kon-kamen ("Horse-stone") is a glacial boulder (the length is 9,2 meters, the width is 6,4 meters, the height is 4,3 meters; the weight is more than 750 tonnes)...

Before the first missionaries arrived to the area, Karelians used the island as a summer pasture for horses and performed their annually sacrifice of a horse on this stone which also resembles a horse's head...

According to the legend about the founding of the monastery, when St. Arseniy, the founder of the Konevsky Rozhdestvo-Bogoroditskiy Monastery, arrived on Konevets Island in 1393, he performed a religious ceremony (exorcism???) near the stone and sprinkled it with holy water...

Then demons in the shape of ravens flew out of the stone and flew off the island. Snakes also disappeared off the island together with the demons. Ha!!! St Patrick 2.0

It is believed that the first chapel on the Horse Stone was built by St. Arseniy Konevetskiy himself. (Just to make sure that the demons don't return) The existing building was built in 1815).

Here is a colour pic of the Horse stone with the chapel. Really pretty.

The veneration of glacial boulders and exposed bedrock was widespread among Balts and Slavs, From Baltic to Balkans. I wrote about this in many posts on my blog. For instance "Weather stones"