Veles might be regarded as the Slavic equivalent of Hades or Satan. He rules darkness and wet areas like swamps, wetlands and caves. He is king of the underworld. But if that sounds rather grim, hold on a moment: he is also the god of music and of poetry. It makes sense that a god of the underworld is called a ‘shepherd of souls’, but Veles also controls animals and livestock and is the god of wealth. As a result of the layering of Christianity within Slavic tradition, he has come to be thought of as the Devil, but since when was a mere devil also the progenitor of music, poetry and animals?
The Slavic Myths- Introduction (Noah Charney, Svetlana Slapšak)
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The oldest documents written by Slavs are in a language called Old Church Slavonic and date to around the 9th century. They refer to the people as Slovĕne (related to, but not to be confused with, Slovenes from modern Slovenia, where both authors of this book live). The term derives from slovo, a word that means ‘word’, and refers to a group of people who speak the same language. This contrasts interestingly with the old Slavic word for Germans, nemets, which approximately meant ‘mute or mumbling’ – essentially, ‘people the Slavs couldn’t understand’.
The Slavic Myths- Introduction (Noah Charney, Svetlana Slapšak)
'The Vampyre' lived on, turned into a hit stage play and innumerable spinoffs and alternative versions, but always largely maintaining the idea of the vampire as aristocrat. In short, the popular literary form of the vampire has always been based on Lord Byron himself, a serial 'devourer' of women. The sexual aspect of vampires as incubi – men who come to your bedside in the night and suck on you, ingesting your bodily fluid – seemed to hold great appeal for Victorian readers.
Some say it was the first trend in literature that was truly for the girls & the gays
Grisha tradition of burning their dead stems from otkazat'sya belief in vampires?
Excerpt uses "vampire" and "werewolf" interchangeably.
All the villagers gather with hawthorn stakes (for he only fears a hawthorn stake – a saying goes ‘let him find hawthorn and madder on his way’, because hawthorn grows above madder), and then they open the coffin. If they find a man who did not decompose, they run the stakes through him, throw the remains into a fire and let it burn. They say that sometimes they’ll find a werewolf who grew fat, bloated and rubicund with human blood (a saying goes ‘red as a vampire’). A werewolf might visit his wife, especially if she is pretty and young, to sleep with her and they also say that a child conceived with a werewolf would be born without bones. In times of hunger, a werewolf is often seen around mills, wheat and corn reserves.
The Slavic Myths- Vampires (Noah Charney, Svetlana Slapšak) quoting Vuk Karadžić, Srpski rječnik
What if thanks to their connection to the Making, it takes longer for the decomposition to settle, so Grisha burn their dead to prevent desecration and suspicion of vampirism? Especially since that might implicate the deceased's family.
Peter’s death in 1725 was followed by the sudden deaths of nine other people over the course of eight days – each of whom had appeared ill for less than a single day. Several of the victims claimed before dying that Peter had appeared in their rooms and choked them. His wife, too, claimed that he had visited her after his death and requested his shoes. She moved to another village to escape him, but Peter’s son then claimed that he had returned to his house and demanded food. The son had refused, and soon afterwards he became Peter’s next victim.
The Slavic Myths- Vampires (Noah Charney, Svetlana Slapšak)
Again- this aspect of the myth is shared with Slavic "werewolf"
‘But what happened to the village? Where is the rest of your family?’
She looked like she was crying but shed no tears.
‘It is horrible,’ she began. ‘And it is Father’s fault.’
‘You mean that Gorča lives?’
‘Oh, no,’ she continued. ‘He is well and truly buried. A stake driven through his heart. But he drained the blood of Đorđe’s son, as you will recall.’
‘Yes, I’m so sorry. We buried him the day I left.’
‘Indeed. So you can imagine our surprise when he came back the next night, crying at the window, calling to his mother, saying he was cold and wanted to come in. This was before Đorđe returned from the forest, where he had chased our father. You cannot blame the child’s mother. She may have seen him buried with her own eyes, but it was only hours earlier. We all thought that he had been deemed dead prematurely and, most horribly, buried alive. But he had managed to burst out of his coffin and clear the earth above him. So, of course, she invited him in. No sooner did he cross the threshold than he attacked her and drained her blood. Petar managed to scare him off and he fled to the woods, running on all fours. His mother was buried soon afterwards. For a while.’
The Slavic Myths-At Stake (Noah Charney, Svetlana Slapšak)
Better to burn the corpse immediately, than risk both the trauma of watching one's beloved's remains dragged out of their grave AND face the angry mob, who believes they're banishing future threat.
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"An ancient cosmological myth in Serbia says that the whole world sits upon a hawthorn tree, which is constantly being bitten by a black dog. When the dog bites deeply into the tree, the tree starts to fall; this is the origin of earthquakes. But, as a later Christian addition to this myth explains, Saint Peter then shakes his stick and the hawthorn tree is once again set upright, ending the earthquake."
You can really tell which myths originated from adults not knowing how to answer children's questions and just making something up on the spot
As someone who was always too much of a feminist to have any affection for rural wedding traditions, I must admit I'm kind of obsessed with the approach they took here. That's some 4D chess guyboss gaslight gatekeep shit right there.
(chapter from Slovenology by Noah Charney)
Text below:
How Much for One Wife?
The final step before I could enter the church and wed my beloved was the barantanje ("bah-rahn-than-yay," the haggling). I had to buy my bride from the villagers — easier said than done, when I had to negotiate in Slovene.
I didn't like the sound of this "wife-buying" business from the start. Having to buy your wife brings to mind mail order catalogues and, of course, prompts the sticky question: exactly how much is she worth? 12.99 USD per pound? That was the cost of the outstanding illegal smoked pork provided by the neighbor — the one who had been laughing maniacally throughout my šranga. It's an awkward idea to fit a price to the love of your life, but it's even weirder when you're also expected to argue the price down.
At least my future wife didn't seem to mind being considered a tradable commodity. So if tradition called for me to buy my wife, then darn it, buy her I would. But not before driving down the price. The trick was to convince the villagers to cut me a deal without belittling the bride in the process and risking that she might shave my pine tree when we got home.
My best men and I developed a strategy. I had brought a Lonely Planet guide to Slovenia with me that morning, and I began the negotiations by stating that, according to my guidebook, the villagers were obliged to pay the groom in order for him to take the bride off their hands. In my opening gambit, I said firmly that I would not marry her for less than 300 EUR.
The best defense is a good offense, and this had the desired effect. Normally the groom is meant to squirm and argue about the sorry state of the village pavement or the odd odors from the fertilized corn fields or the fact that farmers are always laughing maniacally at nothing in particular, and thereby lower the price. But grooms regularly pay around 1000 EUR, despite their protestations. I insisted that my guidebook explained the tradition very clearly: the villagers were expected to pay me. When they tried to convince me that it was the other way around, I had two Slovene wedding guests step forward and say that everywhere else in Slovenia the villagers pay the groom — this local village must have had it backwards for the past few centuries.
My ploy wasn't going to work forever, but it did sow confusion among my challengers. In the end I relented and gave them the sum I'd intended to pay all along —exactly 300 EUR, plus another 12 that I found in my trousers. Not a bad price, considering that I was acquiring the woman of my dreams (and only 2.36 USD per pound, if you're keeping score).
The barantanje completed, and a not-insignificant portion of my wife's grandmother's homemade schnapps (first prize in this year's village tasting competition!), I was carried in victory up to the church, in the very cart which I had so recently filled with hay. Since I had survived the šranga, albeit a little tipsy, a little sweaty, and covered in a lot of sawdust, the wedding could proceed.
While finding true love and maintaining a happy marriage are certainly tricky, getting married in this modern era can be all too easy. We just pop down to city hall, or drive to Vegas on the spur of the moment to be married by someone dressed as Elvis. Gone are the days of earning a girl's hand through valiance, chivalry, and attrition: of the future King Charles I of England galloping incognito across bandit-strewn 17th century Europe to woo the Infanta of Spain, of slaying minotaurs and climbing through fields of poisoned thorns. While I'm not sure how well I would do if it came to minotaur-slaying, I am grateful that I could prove my love through sweat and feats of manliness, both to the villagers, who would finally accept me as one of their own, and to my beautiful wife.
Lots of people say that they would "do anything for love." But there, on that alpine hillside, with a sharpened scythe in my hand and a freshly-shorn pine tree at my feet, I can truly say that I did.
