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The Medieval Vampire Pirate Mayor of Sozopol, Bulgaria

Because of where his grave was located, Bulgarian historians believe that this man was one of the 14th century medieval mayors of Sozopol, specifically a man by the name of Krivich. He is known to have been a pirate, a thief and overall ne’er–do–well in Sozopol during the Middle Ages. As mayor, he was incompetent when it came to defending the town from a siege and as a result, the town was overrun by the Genoese.

His skeleton had an iron plowshare unceremoniously jammed into its chest. Apparently the townsfolk had had enough of him and didn’t want him returning from the dead. Iron was used to pierce the corpses of the wealthy while wood was used for common folk. People who had the potential to become a vampire were those in power positions; clerics, leaders, aristocrats and intellectuals. If they abused their power in life then the townspeople would suspect that they may rise again and take action to prevent it.

Vampires weren’t an invention of the middle ages however; they had long been known to the people of eastern Europe but by another name, the strigoi. The strigoi mythology dates back to the ancient Dacians (1st century BC). They were an Indo-European people, related to the Thracians. Ancient Dacia was located in the area in and around the Carpathian Mountains and east to the Black Sea. This area includes Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

The strigoi were creatures of Dacian mythology, evil spirits of the dead whose actions made them unworthy of entering the kingdom of Zalmoxis. Since these stories were transmitted only by oral tradition, the legend has lost its original substance, and modern myths have transformed strigoi into the bloodthirsty vampires as we know them today.

More about the undead in general…

More about the Strigoi…

More about Dacia…

Sudičky in Czech and Slovak | Sudjaje in Serbian | Rodzanice in Polish | Sojenice or Rojenice in Slovenian | are very similar to Greek Moirai and basically the Fates of Slavic mythology

Sudička is an old woman spinner who approaches cradles of every newborn child and foretells their fate. They come in three: the first has a big bottom lip from the continuous salivating the thread, the second has an inch-wide thumb from holding the knot and the third has a huge foot from pedalling on the spinning wheel. The child can never escape its fate - be it bad or good. 

“Ordinal ranking on how hard a student has it to for second language acquisition.”

I came across this and was surprised to find my language at the very tip. I doubt the whole idea of there being a hardest language to learn, because I think the difficulty depends on your mother language family and the language you’re learning. For example, I think it’s pretty easy for Slavic people to learn another Slavic language. 

"This is one Polish word. It is the word ‘to read’, but contains many forms. Every word in Polish must agree with the other words in the sentence, therefore, there are almost an infinite number of combinations in one sentence.”

Raffi Jacobian

Yuri Arsenjuck