Studia mythologica Slavica

Emotions of Fear in Narratives about the Plague and the Contemporary Pandemic

Monika Kropej Telban — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Narratives about the plague and other pandemics essentially induce fear and predict death and hunger, triggering a variety of emotions among people, particularly anxiety. The paper discusses how the motifs of plague narratives – despite being ancient, traditional and old – resurface from the collective memory and the subconscious as people now have experiences comparable to those endured by humanity centuries ago. Although the COVID-19 pandemic that confronted the planet from 2019 to 2022 is not as deadly as the plague, it is still an ongoing existential threat. A discussion is also presented of the ways that old traditions and social constructs re-emerge in contemporary narratives and discourses about COVID-19, and how the atmosphere of fear affects the emotional and social lives of the people, along with their narratives, jokes, fake news, and the conspiracy theories that have been circulating online.

COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories in Slovenia

Kristina Radomirović Maček, Saša Babič — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article discusses conspiracy theories concerned with the global crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovenia based on material collected from the Internet and during fieldwork. Content is examined using the well-established foundations of conspiracy theories, the semiotics of the conspiracy theories, and their mythological structure. Pandemic-related conspiracy stories appear to emerge from already established conspiracy narratives, linking them to a bigger and imminent threat to the health and freedom of humanity, believed to be perpetrated by conspiring evil forces.

Living with the covid-19 virus in internet folklore

Mirjam Mencej — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article discusses memes about the COVID-19 virus shared in the Belief Narrative Network’s Facebook group since its inception in April 2020 until the end of August 2020 (when this article was written), i.e., during the first wave of the pandemic. The author addresses the main preoccupations and anxieties of the members of the group as they reflect on the themes addressed in the memes, and the roles the memes played in their lives.

The Treasure-bearer in East Slavic and Finno-Ugric Contexts

Mare Kõiva, Elena Boganeva — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The goal of this article is to conduct comparative and structural-semantic research into belief narratives concerning flying serpents and treasure-bearers in East Slavic (Belarusian, Estonian Russian, other Slavic traditions) and Finno-Ugric (Estonian, Votic, Livonian, Finnish, Vepsian) regions related to Baltic and Scandinavian beliefs. The source material was collected between the 19th and 21st centuries. Based on the available materials, a character profile was created with respect to the following features while describing a flying serpent and a treasure-bringer: description of the origin (how and from whom the supernatural being originates), general forms of appearance, aspects of time and location, as well as the creature’s behaviour (active/passive; rituals) and genre affiliation (the process of storytelling, perception of the character).

From Ritual Communication to Convivial Entertainment: Reflections of Old Drinking Rituals in Folk Songs

Vita Ivanauskaitė-Šeibutienė — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article considers changes in drinking rituals and how they are reflected in folklore. Belarusian and Lithuanian songs sharing several similarities are selected for a more detailed discussion. The song motifs analysed in the article show clear links between drinking rituals and folklore (wedding songs and betrothal drinking customs), along with a certain implicit cultural link between the old ritual attitudes and festivities in subsequent times (motifs of feast songs paraphrased in drinking traditions). The theoretical framework of the paper is supported by research from the fields of folklore, ritual communication, and the history of traditional beverages that examines the cultural continuity of community life phenomena. The experiences of ritual attitudes passed down from generation to generation may encourage the existence of archaic cultural forms, even when specific ritual practices have long died out and become irrelevant as people’s life circumstances have changed significantly.

Folk Demonology of Polesye in the Context of East-Slavic Traditional Beliefs

Ľudmila N. Vinogradova — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article studies folk demonological beliefs in the territory of Polesye, a region located on the border of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The region’s traditional culture is of great interest to ethnologists and linguists of the broadest profiles since it retains many archaic elements of common-Slavic significance. In the first part of our research, two blocks of mythological beliefs were considered: the spirits of domestic and natural loci, and the demons-deceased returning from the other world. (The first part of the article is published in Studia Mythologica Slavica 24 (2021).)
The second part of the work analyses beliefs about characters belonging to the two other mythological blocks: a group of certain non-localised spirits (devil, personification of a whirlwind, personification of Death, spirits of diseases, intimidation characters) and different categories of living people endowed with super-knowledge (witches, sorcerers, healers, werewolves, people of narrow professional occupations). The research was carried out taking data about the East Slavic mythological system into account.

«Impure» dead people in perceptions of the population of the Belarusian-Russian (Polotsk-Pskov and Vitebsk-Smolensk) borderland

Auseichyk Uladzimir — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article deals with the perceptions of «un-pure» dead people on the basis of the materials of the Belarusian-Russian (Polotsk-Pskov and Vitebsk-Smolensk) borderland. Special attention is paid to the analysis of such categories of «un-pure» dead people as unbaptized children, suicides and sorcerers. The study has shown the presence of many archaisms in these representations even on the basis of contemporary materials. The paper traces the evolution of the funeral rites of the «un-pure» dead, as well as the beliefs associated with them. The study is based on published and archival materials, as well as the author’s notes. An important place in the study belongs to the materials of folklore and ethnographic expeditions which were conducted in the region at the end of XXth – beginning of XXIst century. A significant part of these materials is published for the first time.

Rus, Russia and Ukraine between Fairy Tales and History: Alternative Slavic Fantasy by English-Language Writers

Larisa Fialkova — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This is the second part of the paper (for introduction and the first part which addresses Medieval Rus in Peter Morwood’s and Katherine Arden’s trilogies see Studia Mythologica Slavica 24 (2021): 13–32). Alternative Slavic fantasy is defined as fantastika (speculative fiction) created by English-language writers on the basis of real or assumed Slavic folklore, separate from Slavic fantasy per se. The focus of the current part is the logic of interaction between Slavic and/or quasi-Slavic folk plots and characters with Russian and Ukrainian history of the 19th–20th centuries in Evelin Skye’s dilogy and Catherynne Valente’s and Orson Scott Card’s novels.

Chaga, koshchey and living shereshyrs

Kostyantyn Rakhno — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The article looks at the interpretation of an episode in the Tale of Igor’s Campaign, a famous anonymous medieval epic poem. The episode is the author’s address to Vsevolod Yuryevich, the militarily powerful Grand Prince of Vladimir. The image of Vsevolod is exaggerated. Similar to the ancient Persian kings, he is credited with the ability to chastise the Volga and the Don rivers, then occupied by the Polovtsian people. At the same time, the names of a female slave (chaga) and a male slave (koshchey) are used, most likely of Iranian origin. The North Iranian myth also portrays Vsevolod’s vassals, the sons of Prince Gleb Rostislavich of Ryazan, as living arrows (shereshyrs) for the huge ballista (tir-i-charkh) used in the East. Parallels of this image can be traced in the Nart epic of the Ossetians, where the invulnerable Nart Batraz acts as an arrow from such a weapon.

Folklore Elements in the Contemporary Novel Óštrigéca by Marjan Tomšič

Vladka Tucovič Sturman — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The paper discusses the use of folkloric elements, more specifically supernatural beings and elements of folk medicine and Christianity in a contemporary Slovene novel Óštrigéca (1991) by Marjan Tomšič. The novel is part of the writer's Istrian opus and is generally considered as the one that placed the region of Slovene Istria on the Slovene literary map and introduced dialectal and folkloric elements into contemporary Slovene literature. The study was conducted using the interdisciplinary approach with the method of literary and folkloric analysis.

Belenus, Cybele, and Attis: Echoes of their Cults through the Centuries

Marjeta Šašel Kos — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

There are two interesting cases of the worship of Roman period deities in the north-eastern Italian and Pannonian regions, which in one way or another seem to have survived through the early medieval to modern times. The first is the cult of Belenus, the well-known Celtic and most notably Norican and Aquileian god. The second case is that of Cybele and Attis, the so-called eastern deities, whose cult became highly influential in the mentioned areas – as well as elsewhere – in the second and third centuries AD. Interestingly, a deity called “holy Belin” was documented in the second half of the 19th century in the area of Tolmin in Slovenia (the hinterland of Aquileia), as a traditional folk belief. In Pannonia, traces of the cult of Cybele and Attis seem to have survived from antiquity in Prekmurje and Porabje (Slovenia, Hungary), reflected in the unusual and still existing custom of the “wedding with a pine-tree”.

Who’s Afraid of the Goddess? Leopard’s Tale, Menopausal Syndrome: Terms of Debate within Archaeology

Arianna Carta — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This article presents an insight into archaeological disputes around female Neolithic figurines, starting with a historical overview of main academic interpretations of the figurines. Furthermore, it introduces feminist approaches in archaeology related to figurines, showing how androcentric bias has undermined theories and methodologies. Çatalhöyük case-study serves as an example of contrasting narratives. The article argues that academic devaluation of Marija Gimbutas’ work within contemporary archaeology can be considered a litmus test which show the pervasiveness of gender bias in this disciplinary field. Among peculiar arguments against Gimbutas’ theories, there are: menopause syndrome, gynocentric agenda, and reverse sexism, all of which show how the archaeologists have focused on personal attacks rather than on serious academic discussion. In the end, all those rhetoric strategies have shifted scholars’ attention from the main issue which is rarely addressed: why is it that the Neolithic period is dominated by female figurines?

Emily Lyle (ed.), Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Tradition

Tok Thompson — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Juan Antonio Álvarez-Pedrosa (ur.), Sources of Slavic Pre-Christian religion

Andrej Pleterski — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Nemanja Radulović in Smiljana Đorđević Belić (Ur.), Disenchantment, Re-Enchantment, and Folklore Genres

Manca Račič — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Monika Kropej Telban, Pripovedno izročilo: razvoj in raziskovanje

Rok Mrvič — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The lives of Otto of Bamberg in clerical texts and legends

Ivan F. Obraztsov — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

How do We Know the Ancient Slavs also Knew Gnomons?

Tomislav Bilić — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

I will attempt to demonstrate that the ‘sacred triangles based on the solar angle’ hypothesis cannot be regarded as a serious scientific proposition because it seems uncorroborated by any solid evidence. It is more an example of circular reasoning, which entails supporting the idea that the ancient Slavs knew about the obliquity of the ecliptic by pointing to the purported existence of ‘sacred triangles’, while also proving the existence of these ‘sacred triangles’ by demonstrating the ancient Slavs were familiar with the value for the obliquity. Certain structures portrayed as gnomons in ancient Slavic contexts are shown to have been overzealously interpreted by modern scholars. This is revealed in a detailed analysis of several of these ‘gnomons’. Finally, it is observed that the ‘sacred triangles’ scholarship engages with neither the modern history of science nor modern studies of myth, the very disciplines that could provide the scholars involved with a better perspective on the subjects to which they are so passionately committed.

Kako vemo, da so stari Slovani poznali gnomone?

Andrej Pleterski — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Upright pillars are also part of the mythical landscape of the ancient Slavs. The fact that a column was used as a gnomon can be inferred from the existence of the effects of its action found in the landscape: the cardinal directions, the azimuths of sunrise and sunset significant for the date, an angle corresponding to the obliquity of the ecliptic. The alleged circular argument that triangles define an angle and the same angle defines the same triangles is a Bilić construct and mathematically impossible, since we cannot define a triangle with only one angle. However, even if the astronomical knowledge of the ancient Slavs in the present were really justified by a purely circular argument (which is not the case), it does not mean that the ancient Slavs had no astronomical knowledge.