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So, in 17 century, a special type of merchants (called "Chumacks" or "Tschumaks") had developed. These merchants moved back and forth between #Crimea and cities like #Kyiv; bringing salt and fish to the North, and various city goods South. Selling #salt in the North was so profitable that in total tens of thousands of people were into this business; crossing the steppe on oxen.

Image sources: this page about Chumaks (in Ukrainian): https://localhistory.org.ua/texts/statti/zabuti-dorogi-istoriia-chumatskogo-promislu/

As the way was long and dangerous, Chumaks obviously prayed to God for protection, and were looking into some ways to avert the bad luck. And somehow (perhaps because dried fish, together was salt, was one of two main types of goods they transported?) a local tradition developed of painting icons directly on dried fish! (mostly flat fish, flounder-like). Chumaks would affix these icons on their carts.

From this description, it seems to me that these fish-icons became a type of an #apotropaic #charm with a very specific narrow protective purpose. Which explains the weird medium, which goes against everything that we typically know about icons (normally, artists would try to paint icons on something as permanent as possible, which fish quite obviously is not!)

But these fish were akin to beads and tiny icons people place in their cars these days. Designed for #luck, not necessarily for prayer.