The article deals with a unique work of Rossica, the first in Western Europe detailed description of the northern Russian regions of Novgorod and Pskov, written by an eyewitness. Memoirs of the Flemish knight, which contain this description, have been known for a long time and have been repeatedly researched. But in the context of the regional imagology of Russia they are considered for the first time. The relevance of the problem is also related to the importance of the study of francophone Rossica, which has not yet been sufficiently studied, for imagology and the history of intercultural interaction. The memoirs are valuable because they represent the only work describing these regions even before they were part of the Muscovite principality, and thus the "non-Muscovite" identity of their population is clearly visible. Despite considerable cultural and socio-political similarities between the regions, the observer knight notes well the specificity of each of them separately. The question is raised that the “muscovite identity” was secondary and by no means the only one in the descriptions of the “Russian character” and Russian state in European Rossica, and that the earliest sources describe just a different alternative identity, apparently especially relevant for the northern regions and closer to the European than to the “Muscovite” identity. It is also concluded that it is necessary to attract more attention to the historical experience of these regions in the teaching of history and in the formation of the historical memory of contemporary Russians. ; В статье рассматривается уникальное в своем роде произведение Россики — первое в Западной Европе подробное описание северных русских регионов — Новгородской и Псковской республик, написанное очевидцем. Мемуары фламандского рыцаря, в которых содержится это описание, известны давно и неоднократно исследовались. Но в контексте региональной имагологии России они рассматриваются впервые. Актуальность проблемы также связана с важностью для имагологии и истории ...