In anticipation of the latest Netflix series based on Andrzej Sapkowski's books, a stormy discussion began about the Slavic character presented in it. The witcher Geralt, being our export product, is associated as the quintessence of Polish folk culture. How much Slavicness really is in the story we love?
Slavic deities
One might expect that the Witcher universe is full of our native Slavic deities. But nothing could be more wrong. This may be due to the fact that specific characters related to the characters' beliefs are extremely rare in the story itself. The only goddess of the Slavic pantheon named by name that can be found in Andrzej Sapkowski's books is Żywia, mentioned in the collection The Last Wish :
Where it feeds, the earth blooms and gives birth, and every creature breeds abundantly, such is its power. All peoples sacrifice her fruitfulness in the vain hope that she will visit their realm, not someone else's, of Zywia. Because they also say that one day Zywia will finally settle down among this people who will stand out above the others, but these are just women's fairy tales.
Żywia is one of the oldest Slavic deities. Inseparable from the forces of nature, it was the personification of fertility and life. In the world of The Witcher we meet her as a young, fair-haired woman that walks around the world on summer days, and where it passes, the soil becomes fertile.
Żywia was a Slavic goddess who walked on the ground and left a harvest behind herself.
Cult of nature
The cult of nature is a theme that appears in all known beliefs and customs. One of its strongest manifestations is the sanctity of the forest. No wonder then that the forest had a special and magical place in the Slavic world as well. From medieval sources we learn that in the center of the forest sanctuaries of the Slavs there was a sprawling oak which was considered a divine abode. We do not know for sure whether such sanctuaries were dedicated to one god or more. Sacred statues were also stored in tree hollows. It is known, however, that it was the oak that occupied a special place in the Slavic world and was considered the tree of Perun. Connecting this tree with the god of thunder is common in the beliefs of the Indo-European peoples. Oak is a symbol and focal point of the world and the cosmos, it symbolizes life and the regenerating forces of nature.
Fire was also very important in the culture of the Slavs, identified with the god Swarożyc or Perun. The latter was worshiped by burning a sacred fire supported by oak wood in his temple in Novgorod. The eternal flame was supposed to provide protection against all dangers.
In modern fantasy, nature worship is very often associated with a form of spirituality. In Sapkowski's house, we find two communities that are associated with the forest and care for them. One of them is Brokilon dryads . They live in a forest, the most important point of which is the Oak Place. The second group is the druids - priests worshiping the oaks. The center of their worship is located in a clearing by the holy oak, called the Place of Friendship.
The cult of the holy fire that protects its followers can also be found in books about the Witcher Geralt. In the section The Sword of Destiny we can read about the town of Novigrad (how similar in name to Novgorod). There is a temple in which the "Eternal Fire" burns to protect the entire city.
Perun
Slavic funeral rituals
In the world I am analyzing, we can also find some analogies to some Slavic customs. This is especially true of funeral rituals and the worship of the dead. We learn that as a result of neglecting the burial, the dead could return to the world of the living to torment them, demanding that appropriate rituals be performed, such as a dignified funeral or all-soul feast. A reference to these customs can be found in the volume The Baptism of Fire which describes Saovine's night. Then the souls returned to the world of the living and tried to get to their families' homes. To appease them, groats and honey were sprinkled with vodka on the threshold.
The Witchers! Wandering basilisk killers! Hawkers Dragons and Drowners!
The main activity of witchers was killing monsters that threatened people. And although we do not know analogies in the Slavic world to such warriors, the set of beasts with which Geralt of Rivia encountered during his adventures is much closer to us. Some of them were transferred almost literally, others served as ideas that were later developed for the purposes of the book's plot.
Already in the first story, "The Witcher", we meet a striga - one of the demonic of the Slavic pantheon. In the case of the world created by Sapkowski, it is an adaptation of the ideas of our native folk beliefs. So let's take a closer look at it.
Striga in Gwent:The Witcher Card Game
The Slavic Striga was a female demon (its male counterpart was the striga), who got up from the grave at night to feed on people. People with two souls became strigoi. After the death of one, the other revived the body of the deceased and turned it into a bloodthirsty demon. A lean, muscular body, a pale face with red eyes, two rows of sharp teeth and claws - this is how our ancestors imagined this demon.
The Striga could of course be defeated in at least two ways. The brave could lie facedown in her lair until dawn, while the cautious ones could burn the monster while it slept soundly. According to the tales of Podhale, there could have been a third way - the striga had to be caught with a belt from her pants . We can imagine, however, that hunting a demon with falling underwear was not very practical.
In Sapkowski's work, the striga is a figure that arises from the improper intercourse of a brother with his sister and therefore, as a fruit of impurity, remains under the influence of charm. It was, however, a striga, not just any, because it was born of the incestuous relationship between King Foltest and his sister Adda. Therefore, with all the methods mentioned in the story, it was decided to disenchant the king's daughter. Our native ways of defeating this demon were listed:burning it, cutting off the head with a spade, piercing with an aspen stake. Ultimately, however, the witcher spent the whole night in the crypt to be able to lift the curse on the princess.
Slavic source of inspiration
One of the creatures that inspire the author's imagination is kikimora . According to Slavic beliefs, it was a malicious creature that appeared in cursed houses. These included those that were unknowingly built on the grave and those that someone deliberately cast a spell on.
Kikimore was imagined as an ugly old woman dressed in ragged rags. She often chose a dark attic, basement or a cellar for her headquarters, and then made life difficult for the members of the household through noises, nightmares or screams. She could drive animals mad, plucked feathers from birds, and her screech heralded misfortune. Getting rid of her wasn't easy. There is a story in which a desperate family had to leave their home, and at night a Gypsy came to him with a trained bear, who injured the grandmother so badly that she ran away into the forest. In the world of the witcher, the kikimore is something completely different . This swamp monster that threatens humans was gifted with a spider-like black body, fangs and glassy eyes with vertical pupils.
Our Slavic vampire, or bath, also became the inspiration for the hero of the story , although in his case we can talk about a collection of all sorts of stories about vampires that are known in history. Our native night creature was slightly different from how we see a vampire today. He was a dead man who rose from the grave to feed on people's blood and harass them. He was like a man, though bigger and stronger, his skin turning red with the blood he had drunk. He had claws and fangs, and rarely some bodily deformation. His special abilities included the ability to fly, turn into an animal, and even completely disappear. He could hypnotize his victims and even put them to sleep. To annihilate a vampire, the body of a suspect of vampirism was turned face down, limbs tied, and head cut off . You could also pierce his heart with an aspen stake, his skull with a steel nail or simply burn it.
In Sapkowski's world, we meet a vampire in the form of Regis, who joins Geralt's team. At first glance, we can say that this essence corresponds to more contemporary literary and film images. However, although the figure of the vampire itself was drawn from sources other than our native folklore, the same idea of what he is in the village consciousness of the world presented in the books is closer to us. In the volume The Baptism of Fire Regis tells about how the villagers tried to kill him one time:
The peasants almost beat me up, fortunately they did not know how to do it ... They pierced me with stakes, chopped off my head, poured holy water on me and buried me.
The Slavic pedigree also has a rusalka . It is a female demon arising from a prematurely deceased woman. According to the story, the fairies were beautiful women, rousing children and luring imprudent men walking in the wrong places at the wrong time. The unfortunate man caught in the trap of charm was lured into the rushes, where he could be drowned or tickled to death. Rusalka celebrated in the woods on the day of Pentecost. At that time, work was forbidden, the population played by the fire, and the men carried a wormwood leaf in their pockets for protection.
Rusalka
In Sapkowski's world, rusalkas constitute a separate species of magical creatures, which generally corresponds to Slavic imaginations. However, we do not get to know them better, because they are wild and inaccessible and do not maintain much contact with people.
The books also mention other members of our Slavic bestiary, including nightjar, leszy, drowned, mammoth, goblin, poverty, werewolf, wij, baba yaga, basilisk and elves pissing in milk . However, they are only part of the very extensive and inspiring background of the story, not most of it.
We will also find here many motifs that Slavic mythology shares with others. Apart from the aforementioned vampire, the most important things to mention here are the dragon and the Wild Hunt theme, which in themselves deserve a much broader interpretation and analysis.
While waiting for the upcoming series based on Andrzej Sapkowski's cult books, let's remember that the world created in them was inspired by many mythologies and stories from our cultural circle. In addition to our native folklore, we will find here stories from the circle of Nordic cultures, a story about the Little Mermaid adapted for the needs of the story, we will be accompanied by unicorns, elves, dwarves, wizards and many others. The variety of inspiration is also underlined by the mottos of the individual chapters taken from the Book of Genesis, from John R. R. Tolkien, Edgar Allan Poe and Friedrich Nietzsche, just to mention a few.
So if, led by the Polish film adaptation or the setting of world-famous games, we expect that the emerging series should be Slavic, then we should prepare for a slight disappointment in this topic. The amount of our native folklore in the adaptation should not, however, take away our pride in Slavicness, and in the wonderful story of the witcher Geralt, our export citizen known all over the world.
Bibliography:
- K. Kajkowski, Slavic sacred groves in Pomerania in the early Middle Ages, "Our Pomerania", No. 11. 2009, pp. 25-38.
- A. Sapkowski, The Baptism of Fire, Warsaw 1996.
- J. Tyszkiewicz, Oak in the culture of early medieval Slavs, in:Historical geography of Poland in the Middle Ages, Warsaw 2003.
- P. Zaborowski, Slavic mythology in the series about the witcher, in:R. Dudzuński, A. Flammy, K. Kowalczyk, J, Płoszaj (ed.), Wiedźmin, a hero of the mass imagination, Wrocław 2015, pp. 21-32.
- P. Zych, W. Vargas, Slavic Bestiary. A thing about elves, aquariums and rusalkas, Olasznica 2014.
- P. Zych, W. Vargas, Slavic Bestiary. Part two. A thing about business, caddies and self-eaters, Łódź 2017.