On the scenic banks of Shya, 24 km far from Petrozavodsk there is an old Karelian village of Vidany, which celebrates its 500 anniversary in 2003. For the first time Vidany was mentioned in the scribe books in 1496. Long since there lived Karelian Livviki.
The name of the village is likely to have originated from Karelian "vidoin an", what in word-for-word translation means “under fir-grove”.
The villages called Pogost, Altyshevskaya, Nizhnie Vidany, Kyzminskaya and Vychegra are included in the list of the settlements of Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (according to the census data in 1926 -1933).
Now Vidany is one large settlement, divided into two banks by river Shya. The majority of population lives on the left bank. There is a club, a shop, and a kindergarten there. Today local people are trying to restore a chapel, robbed by tourists in 1970-s.
The village has its own chorus, and a folk holiday is annually organized.
