1.
Ivan Bilibin
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Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in Tarkhovka, a suburb of St. Petersburg and he studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, then under Ilya Repin in St. Petersburg. After graduating in May 1900 he went to Munich, where he completed his training with the painter Anton Ažbe, in 1902–1904 Bilibin travelled in the Russian North, where he became fascinated with old wooden architecture and Russian folklore. He published his findings in the monograph Folk Arts of the Russian North in 1904, another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints. Artistic design of magazines such as Dog Rose and expenditure of the Moscow publishing house followed. Bilibin gained renown in 1899, when he released his illustrations of Russian fairy tales, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons, especially for the magazine Župel, which in 1906 became prohibited. He would further serve as the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs The Golden Cockerel, after the October Revolution in 1917, he left Russia after the revolution proved alien to him. After brief stints in Cairo and Alexandria, he settled in Paris in 1925 and he still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia, delivering lectures at the Russian Academy of Arts until 1941. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad and was buried in a collective grave, in 1902 he Bilibin married his former student, the painter Marija Jakovlevna Tschembers. They had two sons, Alexander and Ivan, in 1912 he again married a former student, the art school graduate Renée Rudolfowna OKonnel. In 1923 he married the painter Alexandra Vasilyevna Schtschekatichina-Potozkaja, with whom he had a joint exhibition in Amsterdam in 1929, works of Ivan Bilibin at Cascadia Graphics Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin at the Wayback Machine at www. scumdog. demon. co. uk
2.
Historical Slavic religion
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Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation. Unlike ancient Greek, Hindu, Chinese or Egyptian mythology, there are no records for the study of Slavic mythology. It has not been proven that the Slavs had any sort of writing system before the arrival of Saints Cyril, fragments of old mythological beliefs and pagan festivals survive up to this day in folk customs, songs, stories and folk-tales of all the Slavic nations. Although Herodotus is himself not convinced by this rumour, he stresses that he has heard some swear it, the identification of Neuri with Proto-Slavs remains controversial, however. According to Procopius, these Slavs worshipped a single deity, who crafted lightning, though not named explicitly, it can be deduced this is a reference to the deity known as Perun in later historic sources, as in many Slavic languages today. Perun simply means thunder or lightning bolt and he also mentions the belief in various demons and nymphs, but does not mention any other names. The Slavic Primary Chronicle is a work with many valuable references to the pagan beliefs of Eastern Slavs. The chronicle treats the history of the early Eastern Slavic state, even though the manuscript was compiled at the beginning of the 12th century, it contains references to and copies of older documents, and describes events predating the Baptism of Kiev. Two deities, Perun and Veles/Volos, are mentioned in the text of the early 10th century peace treaties between pagan rulers of East Slavs and Byzantine Emperors, later, Nestor the Chronicler describes a state pantheon introduced by Prince Vladimir in Kiev in 980 CE. Vladimirs pantheon included Perun, Hors, Dažbog, Stribog, Simargl, the Hypatian Codex of the Primary Chronicle also mentions Svarog, compared to Greek Hephaestus. Also very interesting are the passages in the East Slavic epic The Tale of Igors Campaign referring to Veles, Dažbog, the original epic has been dated to the end of the 12th century, although there are marginal disputes over the authenticity of this work. The most numerous and richest written records are of West Slavic paganism, particularly of Wendish and Polabian tribes, the German missionaries and priests who criticized pagan religion left extensive records of old mythological systems they sought to overcome. However, they restrained themselves from pious lies, claiming pagan Slavs were idolatrous. As none of those missionaries learned any Slavic language, their records are confused and exaggerated, major works include a chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg from the beginning of the 11th century, who described a temple in the city of Riedegost where the great deity Zuarasic was worshipped. According to Thietmar, this was the most sacred place in the land of pagan Slavs, another very valuable document is the Chronica Slavorum written in the late 12th century by Helmold, a German priest. Saxo meticulously described the worship of Svantevit, the associated with it. He also mentioned multi-headed deities of other Slavic tribes, Rugievit, Porewit, according to the manuscript, the most important Slavic deity was Triglav, whose temples in the city of Szczecin were respected oracles. In the cities of Wolgast and Havelberg, the war god Gerovit was worshiped, a corruption of Jarovit
3.
Mortar and pestle
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A pestle and mortar is a kitchen device used since ancient times to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, the pestle is a heavy and blunt club-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The substance to be ground is placed in the mortar and ground, mortars and pestles have been used in cooking up to the present day, they are frequently also associated with the profession of pharmacy due to their historical use in preparing medicines. They can also be used in masonry and in types of construction. Scientists have found ancient mortars and pestles that date back to approximately 35,000 B. C, the English word mortar derives from classical Latin mortarium, meaning, among several other usages, receptacle for pounding and product of grinding or pounding. The classical Latin pistillum, meaning pounder, led to English pestle, the Roman poet Juvenal applied both mortarium and pistillum to articles used in the preparation of drugs, reflecting the early use of the mortar and pestle as a symbol of a pharmacist or apothecary. The antiquity of these tools is well documented in writing, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus of ~1550 BCE. Mortars and pestles were used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients prior to preparing an extemporaneous prescription. The mortar and pestle, with the Rod of Asclepius, the Orange Cross, for pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood. This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759, today the act of mixing ingredients or reducing the particle size is known as trituration. Mortars and pestles are used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested. Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare ingredients such as guacamole, gazpacho and pesto, the molcajete, a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztec and Maya, stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used widely in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns, many such depressions can be found in their territories. In Japan, very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi, a regular sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called a suribachi and surikogi, respectively. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia, as well as Pakistan, in India, it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day to day dishes. With the advent of motorized grinders, use of the mortar and it is traditional in various Hindu ceremonies to crush turmeric in these mortars. In Malay, it is known as batu lesung, large stone mortars, with long wood pestles were used in West Asia to grind meat for a type of meatloaf, or kibbeh, as well as the hummus variety known as masabcha. In Indonesia and the Netherlands mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and it is often used to make fresh sambal, a spicy chili condiment, hence the sambal ulek/oelek denote its process using pestle
4.
Vladimir Propp
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Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. Vladimir Propp was born on April 17,1895 in Saint Petersburg to a German family and he attended Saint Petersburg University, majoring in Russian and German philology. Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and his Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. His character types are used in education and can be applied to almost any story, be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, games. In 1932, Propp became a member of Leningrad University faculty, after 1938, he chaired the Department of Folklore until it became part of the Department of Russian Literature. Propp remained a faculty member until his death in 1970, Morphology of the Tale was translated into English in 1958 and 1968. It was also translated into Italian and Polish in 1966, French and Romanian in 1970, Spanish in 1971, historical Roots of the Wonder Tale was translated into Italian in 1949 and 1972, Spanish in 1974, and French, Romanian and Japanese in 1983. Oedipus in the light of folklore was translated into Italian in 1975, Russian Agrarian Feasts was translated into French in 1987. Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections, through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is a situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales, first of all, there seems to be at least two distinct types of structural analysis in folklore. If a tale consists of elements A to Z, the structure of the tale is thus delineated in the same sequence, the other type of analysis is termed paradigmatic, and describes instead the underlying pattern of the folkloric text, independent of chronology. Elements of the plot may be out of their given order. Respectively equivalent to syntagmatic and paradigmatic are the terms diachronic and synchronic, diachronic covers the sort of analysis that conveys a sense of traversing the highs and lows of a story, like riding the pattern of a sine wave. The second term, synchronic, is where the story is instead absorbed as a whole, most literary analyses are synchronic, offering a greater sense of unity among the components of a story. Although both structural analyses convey partial information about the story, each angle of analysis delivers a different set of information. After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions, ABSENTATION and this may be the hero themselves, or it may be some other relation that the hero must later rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline and this may serve as the Heros introduction, typically portraying them as an ordinary person
5.
Donor (fairy tale)
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In fairy tales, a donor is a character that tests the hero and provides magical assistance to the hero when he succeeds. The fairy godmother is a form of this character. Many other supernatural patrons feature in fairy tales, these various kinds of animals. In his analysis of fairy tales, Vladimir Propp identified this role as the donor, before giving the hero magical support or advice, the donor may also test the hero, by questioning him, setting him tasks, or making requests of him. Then, the donor may directly give the hero a magical agent, advise him on how to find one, if the character itself acts on behalf of the hero, it also takes on the role of helper in Propps analysis. Because a donor is defined by acts, other characters may fill the role, even the villain, conversely, the donor of Rumpelstiltskin converts himself into the villain by demanding the heroines baby as the price of his work. In Grimms Fairy Tales, the hero often meets the vital helper in the woods, when more than one character attempts the tasks, such as when the youngest son sets out last, all of them commonly met the donor. It is through failing in the test that the sons are marked out as not being the hero, only the youngest son passes the test. There may be three donors, distinguished by the fact that the first two are unable to help and so send him on to the next. A common motif, as in Farmer Weathersky, is one can consult all the beasts, the next all the fish, the third all the birds. In other cases, each of the three may give the hero or heroine something, but only the third has the necessary to them. The characters of donors are numerous, Fairy godmothers were added to Sleeping Beauty by Perrault, no such figures appeared in his source, Sole, Luna, e Talia by Giambattista Basile. In the Grimm Brothers variant of Cinderella, the protagonist is aided not by her fairy godmother but by her mother, as is the heroine of the Finnish variant. A great variety of figures may also take this place. In East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the heroine is given gifts by three old women she meets on the way. Heroes seldom have actual fairy godmothers, but similar figures are common, each one has an ability, such as seeing things miles off, hearing things miles off, an extraordinary shot, ability to drink a river, or others that allow them to fulfill the heros tasks. Talking animals are often the heros helpers, perhaps more than any other type, the most common motivation of the animals is gratitude, after protection, receiving food, or settling a quarrel between several animals. In another variation, featured in The Three Enchanted Princes and The Death of Koschei the Deathless and these prove to be shape-shifted men, who aid their brother-in-law in a variant of tale types
6.
Villain
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A villain is an evil character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have an effect on other characters. A female villain is called a villainess. It referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous, the villain therefore could appear twice, once in the opening of the story, and a second time as the person sought out by the hero. When a character performed only these acts, the character was a pure villain, the functions could also be spread out among several characters. If a dragon acted as the villain, but was killed by the hero, another character might take on the role of the villain, two other characters could appear in roles that are villainous in the more general sense. One is the hero, this character is always villainous. Among these characters are Cinderellas stepsisters, chopping off parts of their feet to fit on the shoe, another character, the dispatcher, sends a hero on his quest. This might be an innocent request, to fulfil a legitimate need, in fiction, villains commonly function in the dual role of adversary and foil to the storys heroes. In their role as adversary, the villain serves as an obstacle the hero must struggle to overcome, in their role as foil, the villain exemplifies characteristics that are diametrically opposed to those of the hero, creating a contrast distinguishing heroic traits from villainous ones. Others point out many acts of villains have a hint of wish-fulfillment. Because of this, a convincing villain must be given a characterization that provides a motive for doing wrong, as put by film critic Roger Ebert, Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, tod Slaughter always portrayed villainous characters on both stage and screen in a melodramatic manner, with mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing. Brad Warner states that only cartoon villains cackle with glee while rubbing their hands together and dream of ruling the world in the name of all that is wicked, ben Bova recommends to authors that their works not contain villains. He states, in his Tips for writers, In the real world there are no villains, no one actually sets out to do evil. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus of what they know in life, there are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them, david Lubar adds, This is a brilliant observation that has served me well in all my writing. He may be driven by greed, neuroses, or the conviction that his cause is just, in an attempt to add realism to their stories, many writers will try to create sympathetic villains, the antithesis to an antihero called a antivillain
7.
East Slavic languages
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The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups, the existing East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, Rusyn is considered to be either a separate language or a dialect of Ukrainian. The East Slavic languages descend from a predecessor, the language of the medieval Kievan Rus. All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications, the East Slavic territory shows a definite linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages, East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on the one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, central or Middle Russian, the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original, as well, existing several centuries within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Belarusian and Ukrainian share many common elements, lexical and grammatical above all. Therefore, a crucial differentiation has to be made between the history of the East Slavic dialects and that of the literary languages employed by the Eastern Slavs. In both cases one has to keep in mind that the history of the East Slavic languages is of course a history of written texts and we do not know how the writers of the preserved texts would have spoken in everyday life. After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, the Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form. Church Slavonic was a factor in the evolution of modern Russian. All of these languages are today separate in their own right, in the Russian Empire the official view was that the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian languages were dialects of one common Russian language. In the course of the 20th century, Great Russian came to be known as Russian proper, Little Russian as Ukrainian, comrie, Bernard, Corbett, Greville G, eds. Media related to East Slavic languages at Wikimedia Commons
8.
Old Russian
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Old East Slavic, Old Ruthenian, Old Rusian was a language used in the 10th–15th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus and states which evolved after the collapse of Kievan Rus. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, in the area occupied by Belarus, central and northern Ukraine. Linguists from each of the three East Slavic countries tend to treat Old East Slavic as the predecessor of their own language. The Russian drevnerusskij jazyk means Old Rus’ian as well, Rusian is similarly used by some western scholars such as Horace Lunt. The language was a descendant of the Proto-Slavic language and faithfully retained many of its features, a striking innovation in the evolution of this language was the development of so-called pleophony, which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic dialects. For instance, Common Slavic *gordъ settlement, town was reflected as OESl. gorodъ, Common Slavic *melko milk > OESl. moloko, other Slavic dialects are differed by resolving the closed-syllable clusters *eRC and *aRC as liquid metathesis, or by no change at all. Since extant written records of the language are sparse, it is difficult to assess the level of its unity, in consideration of the number of tribes and clans that constituted Kievan Rus, it is probable that there were many dialects of Old East Slavonic. Nonetheless, by 1150 it had more unity than any other branch of Slavic, with time, it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages. The Ukrainian branch split away first, between 1200 and 1500, whereas Russian later separated from Belarusian by 1700, each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary. The Old Church Slavonic language was introduced, documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing, although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments, the spelling of the original excerpt has been partly modernized. The translations are best attempts at being literal, not literary,1110, from the Laurentian Codex,1377, Early language, fall of the yers in progress or arguably complete. South Slavic features include времѧньнъıх bygone, modern R прошлых, modern Ukr минулих, correct use of perfect and aorist, єсть пошла is/has come, нача began Note the style of punctuation. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, fifteenth cent, illustrates the sung epics, with typical use of metaphor and simile. The Old East Slavic language developed a certain literature of its own, though much of it was influenced as regards style, the earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic must be considered the written Slovo o zakone i blagodati, by Hilarion, metropolitan of Kiev. In this work there is a panegyric on Prince Vladimir of Kiev and this subtle and graceful oration admirably conforms to the precepts of the Byzantine eloquence. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk, from the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people
9.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
10.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
11.
Taboo
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A taboo is a vehement prohibition of an action based on the belief that such behavior is either too sacred or too accursed for ordinary individuals to undertake. Such prohibitions are present in all societies. Breaking a taboo is usually considered objectionable by society in general, the term taboo comes from the Tongan tapu or Fijian tabu, related among others to the Maori tapu, Hawaiian kapu, Malagasy fady. Its English use dates to 1777 when the British explorer James Cook visited Tonga and he wrote, The term was translated to him as consecrated, inviolable, forbidden, unclean or cursed. In its current use on Tonga, the word tapu means sacred or holy, on the main island, the word is often appended to the end of Tonga as Tongatapu, here meaning Sacred South rather than Forbidden South. Sigmund Freud posited that incest and patricide were the only two universal taboos and formed the basis of civilization, however, although cannibalism, in-group murder, and incest are taboo in the majority of societies, marriages between brothers and sisters occurred in Roman Egypt. Modern Western societies, however, do not condone such relationships and these familial sexual activities are criminalised, even if all parties are consenting adults. Through an analysis of the language surrounding these laws, it can be seen how the policy makers, and society as a whole, find these acts to be immoral. Common taboos involve restrictions or ritual regulation of killing and hunting, sex and sexual relationships, reproduction, in Madagascar, a strong code of taboos, known as fady, constantly change and are formed from new experiences. Each region, village or tribe may have its own fady, taboos often extend to cover discussion of taboo topics such as profanity, resulting in euphemisms and replacement of taboo words. The word taboo gained popularity at times, with some looking for ways to apply it where other English words had previously been applied. For example, J. M. Albert Schweitzer wrote a chapter about taboos of the people of Gabon, as an example, it was considered a misfortune for twins to be born, and they would be subject to many rules not incumbent on other people. Communist and materialist theorists have argued that taboos can be used to reveal the histories of societies when other records are lacking, marvin Harris particularly endeavored to explain taboos as a consequence of ecologic and economic conditions. Some argue that contemporary multicultural societies have taboos against tribalisms and prejudices, incest itself has been pulled both ways, with some seeking to normalize consensual adult relationships regardless of the degree of kinship and others expanding the degrees of prohibited contact. Among other reasons, this taboo may come from concern that comments may be out of the appropriate context
12.
Polesia
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Polesia, Polesie or Polesye is a natural and historical region of Eastern Europe, stretching from parts of Eastern Poland, straddling the Belarus - Ukraine border and into western Russia. One of the largest forest areas on the continent, Polesia is located in the part of the Eastern-European Lowland. On the western side, Polesia originates at the crossing of the Bug River valley in Poland, the swampy areas of central Polesia are known as the Pinsk Marshes. Large parts of the region were contaminated after the Chernobyl disaster, the names Polesia/Polissia/Polesye, etc. may reflect the Slavic root les, which means forest, and the Slavic prefix po-, which means on, in or along. Inhabitants of Polesia are called Polishchuks, once part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Polesia was largely part of Poland in the 1921-39 period when the countrys largest provinces bore that name. Polesia has rarely been an administrative unit. However, there was a Polesie Voivodeship during the Second Polish Republic, from 1931 to 1944, it was explicitly mentioned as constituent part of the short-lived Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of Volhynia, Polesia and Pidliashia. Polesia is a marshy region lining the Pripyat River in Southern Belarus, Northern Ukraine and it is a flatland within the watersheds of the Western Bug and Prypyat rivers. The two rivers are connected by the Dnieper-Bug Canal, built during the reign of Stanislaus II of Poland, notable tributaries of the Pripyat are the Horyn, Stokhod, Styr, Ptsich, and Yaselda rivers. The largest towns in the Pripyat basin are Pinsk, Stolin, huge marshes were reclaimed from the 1960s to the 1980s for farmland. The reclamation is believed to have harmed the environment along the course of the Pripyat and this region suffered severely from the Chernobyl disaster. Huge areas were polluted by radioactive elements, the most polluted part includes the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the adjacent Polesie State Radioecological Reserve. Some other areas in the region are considered unsuitable for living as well, the Polish part of the region includes the Polesie National Park, established 1990, which covers an area of 97.6 square kilometres. This and an area adjoining it make up the UNESCO-designated West Polesie Biosphere Reserve. There is also an area called Pribuzhskoye-Polesie in the Belarusian part of the region. The wooden architecture structures in the region were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on 30 January 2004 in the Cultural category, the Ukrainian Polesia had its own tradition of folk icon-painting. The images of the saints are peaceful and stable, having deep eyes, the plots were often depicted on the background of landscapes with trees, sky, forests etc. The Ukrainian Polesias icon collection is the part of the exhibition of the Museum of Ukrainian home icons in the Historical and cultural complex The Radomysl Castle, UNESCO World Heritage Centre Western Polesie Museum of Ukrainian home icons Radomysl Castle Polesian Lowland Пазинич В
13.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
14.
Alexander Afanasyev
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Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian Empire Slavist who published nearly 600 Russian folktales and fairytales—one of the largest folktale collections in the world. The first edition of his collection was published in eight fascicules from 1855–67 and he was educated at a high school in Voronezh and studied law at the University of Moscow, in which he attended the lectures of Konstantin Kavelin and Timofey Granovsky. He brought out a series of articles about leading personalities of the 18th century, being a progressive, he failed his final exams and could not have a chair in the university of Moscow. Luckily, he was appointed librarian in the Archives of Moscow in 1849, in that year, he was dismissed because of the scandal provoked by his publishing of the Russian Popular Religious Legends, which were a ferocious satire of the Orthodox clergy. After his dismissal, he had a lot of trouble finding a new job and was penniless and this didnt stop him from writing his big theoretical work, The Poetic Outlook of Slavs about Nature, which came out between 1865 and 1869. He died in Moscow aged 45, Afanasyev became interested in old Russian and Slav traditions and stories in the 1850s. In such an interpretation, he regarded the fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful as depicting the conflict between the sunlight, the storm, and dark clouds, in the early 1850s, being already known for his articles, Afanasyev began to think about a collection of folk tales. He was then asked by the Russian Geographical Society of Saint Petersburg to publish the folktales archives that the Society had been in possession of for about ten years and these archives are at the start of his Collection. Afanasyev chose 74 tales out of these and he added to them the enormous collection of Vladimir Dal, from which he kept 148 numbers, finding the other ones too distorted, his own collection, and a few other collections. He added already published tales, a few coming from epic songs, stories about the dead, a few medieval satirical texts. From the scientific point of view, his collection goes further and his collection was ahead of his time. Their obscene and anticlerical subject matter made their publication in Imperial Russia unthinkable, prior to Afanasyevs works in the 1850s, only a few attempts had ever been made to record or study the folk beliefs of peasant Russia. Though written Church Slavonic had existed since the 10th century, it was used almost solely by the church and it was not until the 18th and 19th centuries that a sizable body of secular literature developed in vernacular Russian. Thus, Afanasyevs collections made a valuable contribution to the dissemination and legitimization of Russian culture. The influence of folk tales can be seen in the works of many writers and composers, notably Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Townsend, Dorian Aleksandra, From Upyr to Vampire, The Slavic Vampire Myth in Russian Literature, dissertation, School of German and Russian Studies, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, May 2011. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Brockhaus. Russian folk tales by Alexander Afanasiev
15.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
16.
Serbo-Croatian
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It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties. South Slavic dialects historically formed a continuum, the turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread in the western Balkans, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, from the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The breakup of Yugoslavia affected language attitudes, so that social conceptions of the language separated on ethnic, since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify a separate Montenegrin standard. Serbo-Croatian thus generally goes by the ethnic names Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a simple phonology, with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in Serbian Cyrillic or Gajs Latin alphabet, whose thirty letters mutually map one-to-one, throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called Illyric, Slavic, at that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires. Officially, the language was called variously Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian, today, use of the term Serbo-Croatian is controversial due to the prejudice that nation and language must match. Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy and this language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the middle of the 19th century, the earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the Glagolita Clozianus and the Vienna Folia from the 11th century. Serbo-Croatian competed with the established literary languages of Latin and Old Slavonic in the west and Persian. Old Slavonic developed into the Serbo-Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries, the Baška tablet from the late 11th century was written in Glagolitic. It is a stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy
17.
Slovene language
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Slovene or Slovenian belongs to the group of South Slavic languages. It is spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide and it is the first language of about 2.1 million Slovenian people and is one of the 24 official and working languages of the European Union. Standard Slovene is the standard language that was formed in the 18th century, mostly based on Upper and Lower Carniolan dialect groups. For example, the Resian and Torre dialects in the Italian Province of Udine differ most from other Slovene dialects, the distinctive characteristics of Slovene are dual grammatical number, two accentual norms, and abundant inflection. Although Slovene is basically an SVO language, word order is very flexible, Slovene has a T-V distinction, second-person plural forms are used for individuals as a sign of respect. Slovene and Slovak are the two modern Slavic languages whose names for themselves literally mean Slavic. Slovene is an Indo-European language belonging to the Western subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages, furthermore, Slovene shares certain linguistic characteristics with all South Slavic languages, including those of the Eastern subgroup, such as Bulgarian. The Slovene language also has commonalities with the West Slavic languages. Like all Slavic languages, Slovene traces its roots to the same group of languages that produced Old Church Slavonic. The earliest known examples of a distinct, written Slovene dialect are from the Freising Manuscripts, the consensus estimate of their date of origin is between 972 and 1093. These religious writings are among the oldest surviving manuscripts in any Slavic language and this linguistic border remained almost unchanged until the late 19th century, when a second process of Germanization took place, mostly in Carinthia. Between the 9th and 12th century, proto-Slovene spread into northern Istria, during most of the Middle Ages, Slovene was a vernacular language of the peasantry, although it was also spoken in most of the towns on Slovene territory, together with German or Italian. Although during this time, German emerged as the language of the nobility, Slovene had some role in the courtly life of the Carinthian, Carniolan and Styrian nobility. This is proved by the survival of certain ritual formulas in Slovene, the words Buge waz primi, gralva Venus. The first printed Slovene words, stara pravda, appeared in 1515 in Vienna in a poem of the German mercenaries who suppressed the Slovene peasant revolt. Standard Slovene emerged in the half of the 16th century, thanks to the works of Slovene Lutheran authors. During this period, German had a influence on Slovene. Many Slovene scientists before the 1920s also wrote in languages, mostly German
18.
Old Church Slavonic
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Old Church Slavonic, also known as Old Church Slavic, was the first Slavic literary language. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th century Byzantine Slavs living in the Province of Thessalonica, as the oldest attested Slavic language, OCS provides important evidence for the features of Proto-Slavic, the reconstructed common ancestor of all Slavic languages. The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to Great Moravia in 863, the language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy and were used for government and religious documents and books between 863 and 885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the Slavic vernaculars in Great Moravia, in 885, the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by Pope Stephen V in favour of Latin. Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in 886, brought the Glagolitic alphabet to the First Bulgarian Empire, there it was taught at two literary schools, the Preslav Literary School and the Ohrid Literary School. The Glagolitic alphabet was used at both schools, though the Cyrillic script was developed early on at the Preslav Literary School where it superseded Glagolitic. The texts written during this era exhibit certain linguistic features of the vernaculars of the First Bulgarian Empire and these local varieties are collectively known as the Church Slavonic language. In Bosnia was preserved the local Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet, while in Croatia a variant of the Glagolitic alphabet was preserved, see Early Cyrillic alphabet for a detailed description of the script and information about the sounds it originally expressed. For Old Church Slavonic, the segments are reconstructible. The sounds are given in Slavic transliterated form rather than in IPA, as the realisation is uncertain. The letter щ denoted different sounds in different dialects and is not shown in the table, in Bulgaria, it represented the sequence /ʃt/, and it is normally transliterated as št for that reason. Farther west and north, it was probably /c/ or /tɕ/ like in modern Macedonian, Torlakian and Serbian/Croatian, /dz/ appears mostly in early texts, becoming /z/ later on. The distinction between l, n and r, on one hand, and palatal l, n and r, when it is, it is shown by a kamora diacritic over the letter. Accent is not indicated in writing and must be inferred from later languages, the pronunciation of yat ě differed by area. In Bulgaria it was an open vowel, commonly reconstructed as /æ/. The yer vowels ĭ and ŭ are often called ultrashort and were lower, more centralised and shorter than their counterparts i and they disappeared in most positions in the word, already sporadically in the earliest texts but more frequently later on. They also tended to merge with other vowels, particularly ĭ with e and ŭ with o, the exact articulation of the nasal vowels is unclear because different areas tend to merge them with different vowels. ę is occasionally seen to merge with e or ě in South Slavic, ǫ generally merges with u or o, but in Bulgaria, ǫ was apparently unrounded and eventually merged with ŭ
19.
Lithuanian language
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Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.9 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania, Lithuanian is a Baltic language, related to Latvian. It is written in a Latin alphabet, Lithuanian is often said to be the most conservative living Indo-European language, retaining many features of Proto-Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages. Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant, among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is extraordinarily conservative, retaining many archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation, the Proto-Balto-Slavic languages branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic, according to some glottochronological speculations, the Eastern Baltic languages split from the Western Baltic ones between AD400 and AD600. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had already written of two Baltic tribe/nations by name, the Galindai and Sudinoi in the 2nd century AD, the differentiation between Lithuanian and Latvian started after AD800, for a long period, they could be considered dialects of a single language. At a minimum, transitional dialects existed until the 14th or 15th century, also, the 13th- and 14th-century occupation of the western part of the Daugava basin by the German Sword Brethren had a significant influence on the languages independent development. The earliest surviving written Lithuanian text is a translation dating from about 1503–1525 of the Lords Prayer, the Hail Mary, printed books existed after 1547, but the level of literacy among Lithuanians was low through the 18th century, and books were not commonly available. Brought into the country by book smugglers despite the threat of prison sentences. Jonas Jablonskis made significant contributions to the formation of the standard Lithuanian language and his proposal for Standard Lithuanian was based on his native Western Aukštaitijan dialect with some features of the eastern Prussian Lithuanians dialect spoken in Lithuania Minor. These dialects had preserved archaic phonetics mostly intact due to the influence of the neighbouring Old Prussian language, Lithuanian has been the official language of Lithuania since 1918. During the Soviet era, it was used in official discourse along with Russian, Lithuanian is one of two living Baltic languages, along with Latvian. An earlier Baltic language, Old Prussian, was extinct by the 18th century, such an opinion was first represented by the likes of August Schleicher, and to a certain extent, Antoine Meillet. Endzelīns thought that the similarity between Baltic and Slavic was explicable through language contact while Schleicher, Meillet and others argued for a kinship between the two families. An attempt to reconcile the opposing stances was made by Jan Michał Rozwadowski and he proposed that the two language groups were indeed a unity after the division of Indo-European, but also suggested that after the two had divided into separate entities, they had posterior contact. The genetic kinship view is augmented by the fact that Proto-Balto-Slavic is easily reconstructible with important proofs in historic prosody, vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov believed in the unity of Balto-Slavic, but not in the unity of Baltic. In the 1960s, they proposed a new division, that into East-Baltic, West-Baltic, the Ivanov–Toporov theory is gaining ground among students of comparative-historic grammar of Indo-European language, and seems to be replacing the previous two stances in most PIE textbooks
20.
Old English
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Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
21.
Old Norse
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Old Norse was a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during about the 9th to 13th centuries. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century, Old Norse was divided into three dialects, Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish. Old West and East Norse formed a continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. For example, Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, although Old Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, most speakers spoke Old East Norse in what is present day Denmark and Sweden. Old Gutnish, the more obscure dialectal branch, is included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations. It developed its own features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Danes spoke the same language, another term used, used especially commonly with reference to West Norse, was norrœnt mál. In some instances the term Old Norse refers specifically to Old West Norse, the Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Kievan Rus, eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language, in Kievan Rus, it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod, probably lasting into the 13th century there. Norwegian is descended from Old West Norse, but over the centuries it has heavily influenced by East Norse. Old Norse also had an influence on English dialects and Lowland Scots and it also influenced the development of the Norman language, and through it and to a smaller extent, that of modern French. Various other languages, which are not closely related, have heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman dialects, Scottish Gaelic. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi, of the modern languages, Icelandic is the closest to Old Norse. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system, contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the phonemes, has changed at least as much as in the other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, although Swedish, Danish and the Norwegian languages have diverged the most, they still retain asymmetric mutual intelligibility. Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, the languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders
22.
Vasilisa the Beautiful
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Vasilisa the Beautiful is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki. By his first wife, a merchant had a single daughter, when the girl was eight years old, her mother died. On her deathbed, she gave Vasilisa a tiny wooden doll with instructions to give it a little to eat and a little to drink if she were in need, and then it would help her. As soon as her mother died, Vasilisa gave it a little to drink and a little to eat, after a time, her father remarried, the new wife was a woman with two daughters. Vasilisas stepmother was cruel to her, but with the help of the doll. When young men came wooing, the stepmother rejected them all because it was not proper for the younger to marry before the older, one day the merchant had to embark on a journey. His wife sold the house and moved all to a gloomy hut by the forest. One day she gave each of the girls a task and put out all the fires except a single candle and her older daughter then put out the candle, whereupon they sent Vasilisa to fetch light from Baba Yagas hut. The doll advised her to go, and she went, while she was walking, a mysterious man rode by her in the hours before dawn, dressed in white, riding a white horse whose equipment was all white, then a similar rider in red. She came to a house stood on chicken legs and was walled by a fence made of human bones. A black rider, like the white and red riders, rode past her, Vasilisa was too frightened to run away, and so Baba Yaga found her when she arrived in her mortar. Baba Yaga said that Vasilisa must perform tasks to earn the fire and she was to clean the house and yard, wash Baba Yagas laundry, and cook her a meal. She was also required to separate grains of corn from sound corn. Baba Yaga left, and Vasilisa despaired, as she worked herself into exhaustion, when all hope of completing the tasks seemed lost, the doll whispered that she would complete the tasks for Vasilisa, and that the girl should sleep. At dawn, the white rider passed, at or before noon, as the black rider rode past, Baba Yaga returned and could complain of nothing. She bade three pairs of disembodied hands seize the corn to squeeze the oil from it, then asked Vasilisa if she had any questions. Vasilisa asked about the identities and was told that the white one was Day, the red one the Sun. But when Vasilisa thought of asking about the hands, the doll quivered in her pocket
23.
Mikhail Lomonosov
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Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the Law of Mass Conservation in chemical reactions and his spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art, philology, optical devices and others. Lomonosov was also a poet and influenced the formation of the modern Russian literary language, Lomonosov was born in the village of Denisovka in Archangelgorod Governorate, on an island not far from Kholmogory, in the far north of Russia. Lomonosovs mother was Vasilys first wife, a daughter, Elena Ivanovna Sivkova. He remained at Denisovka until he was ten, when his father decided that he was old enough to participate in his business ventures, learning was young Lomonosovs passion, however, not business. The boys thirst for knowledge was insatiable, Lomonosov had been taught to read as a boy by his neighbor Ivan Shubny, and he spent every spare moment with his books. He continued his studies with the deacon, S. N. Sabelnikov, but for years the only books he had access to were religious texts. When he was fourteen, Lomonosov was given copies of Meletius Smotrytskys Modern Church Slavonic, on his religious views, Lomonosov was a deist. In 1724, his father married for the third and final time, Lomonosov and his stepmother Irina had an acrimonious relationship. Unhappy at home and intent on obtaining an education, which Lomonosov could not receive in Denisovka. In 1730, at nineteen, Lomonosov went to Moscow on foot, not long after arriving, Lomonosov obtained admission into the Slavic Greek Latin Academy by falsely claiming to be a priests son. That initial falsehood would nearly get him expelled from the academy a few years later when discovered, Lomonosov lived on three kopecks a day, living off only black bread and kvass, but he made rapid progress scholastically. After three years in Moscow he was sent to Kiev to study for one year at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and he quickly became dissatisfied with the education he was receiving there, and returned to Moscow several months ahead of schedule, resuming his studies there. He completed a study course in only five years, graduating at the top of his class. In 1736, Lomonosov was awarded a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy and he plunged into his studies and was rewarded with a two-year grant to study abroad at the University of Marburg, in Germany. The University of Marburg was among Europes most important universities in the century due to the presence of the philosopher Christian Wolff. Lomonosov became one of Wolffs personal students while at Marburg, both philosophically and as a science administrator, this connection would be the most influential of Lomonosovs life
24.
Perun
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In Slavic mythology, Perun is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of thunder and lightning. His other attributes were fire, mountains, wind, the oak, iris, eagle, firmament, horses and carts, weapons and he was first associated with weapons made of stone and later with those of metal. Of all historic records describing Slavic gods, those mentioning Perun are the most numerous, as early as the 6th century, he was mentioned in De Bello Gothico, a historical source written by the Eastern Roman historian Procopius. While the name of the god is not mentioned explicitly, 20th century research has established beyond doubt that the god of thunder. To this day the word perun in a number of Slavic languages means thunder and we find the same form of confirmation of a peace treaty by prince Igor in 945. In 980, when prince Vladimir the Great came to the throne of Kiev, Perun was chief among these, represented with a silver head and a golden moustache. Vladimirs uncle Dobrinja also had a shrine of Perun established in his city of Novgorod, after the Christianization of Kievan Rus, this place became a monastery, which, quite remarkably, continued to bear the name of Perun. This could be a reference to Perun, but since he is not named, nor any of his attributes mentioned. Moreover, the name of Perun is also found in Southern Slavic toponymy. The Bulgarian and Macedonian people believe that the name of the Bulgarian mountain Pirin, there are also places called, Perun, Perunac, Perunovac, Perunika, Perunička Glava, Peruni Vrh, Perunja Ves, Peruna Dubrava, Perunuša, Perušice, Perudina and Perutovac. It must be noted that the word Pero means feather and the names of mountains and these names today mostly represent mountain tops, but in medieval times, large oaks, sacred groves and even entire villages or citadels were named Perun. Also, as mentioned already, in Ukrainian perun and in Polish piorun means thunderbolt, among South Slavs, a mountain plant Iris germanica is known in folklore as perunika and sometimes also as bogisha, and was believed to grow from ground that had been struck by lightning. Also the Serbian surname Peruničić and the Macedonian Перуновски are derived from Perun, the root *perkwu originally probably meant oak, but in Proto-Slavic this evolved into per- meaning to strike, to slay. The Lithuanian word Perkūnas has two meanings, thunder and the name of the god of thunder and lightning, artifacts, traditions and toponyms show the presence of the cult of Perun among all Slavic, Baltic and Ugro-Finnic peoples. The cult of Perun in this territory, populated since the 5th century by Slavs, Perun pursued Veles around the earth, attacking him with his lightning bolts from the sky. In the end, Perun managed to kill Veles, or to him back down into his watery underworld. The supreme god thus reestablished order in the world, which had been disrupted by his chaotic enemy and he then returned to the top of the World tree and proudly informed his opponent down in the roots Well, there is your place, remain there. This line came from a Belarusian folk tale, the earliest supreme god was probably Rod, it is unclear precisely how and why his worship as the head of the pantheon evolved into the worship of Perun
25.
Jupiter
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity, the Romans named it after their god Jupiter. Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium and it may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rotation, the planets shape is that of an oblate spheroid. The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence, a prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere, Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a greater than that of the planet Mercury. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and later by the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, the latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4,2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa, Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun. Astronomers have discovered nearly 500 planetary systems with multiple planets, Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth. Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter and it is the largest of the four giant planets in the Solar System and hence its largest planet. It has a diameter of 142,984 km at its equator, the average density of Jupiter,1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. Jupiters upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules, a helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiters atmosphere is approximately 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, the atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, the outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. The interior contains denser materials - by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found
26.
Firebird (Slavic folklore)
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In Slavic folklore, the Firebird is a magical glowing bird from a faraway land, which is both a blessing and a bringer of doom to its captor. Some believe it can see the future, the Firebird is described as a large bird with majestic plumage that glows brightly emitting red, orange, and yellow light, like a bonfire that is just past the turbulent flame. The feathers do not cease glowing if removed, and one feather can light a room if not concealed. In later iconography, the form of the Firebird is usually that of a smallish fire-colored peacock, complete with a crest on its head and it is beautiful but dangerous showing no sign of friendliness. The story of the Firebird inspired many works, including The Little Humpback Horse by Pyotr Yershov. A typical role of the Firebird in fairy tales is as an object of a difficult quest, the Firebird is a marvel, highly coveted, but the hero, initially charmed by the wonder of the feather, eventually blames it for his troubles. There are many versions of the Firebird story as it was told orally in the beginning. One version is the tale of Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf, suzanne Massie retells another story of the Firebird legend. A modest and gentle orphan girl named Maryushka lives in a small village, people would come from all over to buy her embroidery, and many merchants asked her to come away and work for them. She told them all that she would sell to any who found her work beautiful, one day the evil sorcerer Kaschei the Immortal heard of Maryushka’s beautiful needlework and transformed himself into a beautiful young man and visited her. Upon seeing her ability he became enraged that a mortal could produce finer work than he himself possessed. He tried to tempt her by offering to make her Queen if she would embroider for him alone, but she refused saying she never wanted to leave her village. Because of this last insult to his ego he turned Maryushka into a Firebird, and himself into a great black Falcon, picked her up in his talons, to leave a memory of herself with her village forever she shed her feathers onto the land below. As the last feather fell Maryushka died in the falcon’s talons, the glowing rainbow feathers were magic and remain undimmed, but show their colors only to those who love beauty and seek to make beauty for others. Irina Zheleytova translates another version, The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa, in this version a king’s archer is on a hunt and runs across a firebird’s feather. The archer’s horse warns the archer not to touch it, as bad things will happen, the archer ignores the advice and takes it to bring back to the king so he will be praised and rewarded. When the king is presented with the feather he demands the entire firebird or the death of the archer, the archer weeps to his horse, who instructs him to put corn on the fields in order to capture the firebird. The firebird comes down to eat, allowing the archer to capture the bird, when the king is presented with the firebird he demands that the archer fetch the Princess Vassilissa so the king may marry her, otherwise, the archer will be killed
27.
West Slavs
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The West Slavs are a subgroup of Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages. They separated from the common Slavic group in c. the 7th century, the West Slavic languages diversify into their historically attested forms during c. the 10th to 14th centuries. West Slavic speaking nations today include the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Kashubians, Silesians, the West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups, Lechitic, including Polish, Kashubian and extinct Polabian and Pomeranian languages, Lusatian and Czecho-Slovak. Culturally, West Slavs developed along the lines of other Western European nations due to affiliation with the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages the name Wends was applied to Western Slavic peoples. Mieszko I, the first historical ruler of Poland, also appeared as Dagome, the early Slavic expansion began in the 5th century, and by the 6th century, the groups that would become the West, East and South Slavic groups had probably become geographically separated. The first independent West Slavic states originate beginning in the 7th century, with the Empire of Samo, the Principality of Moravia, the Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony. At this time only 60,000 Sorbs have survived, living predominantly in Lusatia, the central Polish tribe of the Polans created their own state in the 10th century under the Polish duke Mieszko I. For many centuries Poland has had ties with its western neighbors. Kingdom of Bohemia stayed part of that Empire between 1002–1419 and 1526–1918, predecessors of Slovaks came under Hungarian domination after 907 – together with other Slavic groups as Croats, Slovenians, Dalmatians and Rusyns. Both the Czechs and the Slovaks were under rule of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526 to 1804, then in the Austrian Empire and between 1867–1918 part of Austria-Hungary
28.
Czech lands
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The Czech lands or the Bohemian lands are the three historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia. Together the three have formed the Czech Republic since 1 January 1993 and this would include territories like the Lusatias and the whole of Silesia, all ruled from Prague Castle at that time. The term Czech lands has been used to different things by different people. While the Czech name of Bohemia proper is Čechy, the adjective český refers to both Bohemian and Czech, the non-auxiliary term for the present-day Czech lands is Česko, documented as early as in 1704. The Czech lands had been settled by Celts from 5th BC until 2nd AD, at the beginning of the 5th century the population decreased vigorously and, according to mythology led by a chieftain Čech, the first Western Slavs came in the second half of the 6th century. In the course of the decline of the Great Moravian realm during the Hungarian invasions of Europe in the 9th and 10th century, backed by the East Frankish kings, they prevailed against the reluctant Bohemian nobility and extended their rule eastwards over the adjacent Moravian lands. In 1198 Duke Ottokar I of Bohemia received the title by the German anti-king Philip of Swabia. Attached to his Kingdom of Bohemia was the Margraviate of Moravia established in 1182 and Kłodzko Land, from the second part of the 13th century onwards, German colonists settled in the mountainous border area on the basis of the kings invitation during the Ostsiedlung and lived alongside the Slavs. The Silesian lands north of the Sudetes mountain range had been ruled by the Polish Piast dynasty from the 10th century onwards, while Bohemia rose to a kingdom, the Silesian Piasts alienated from the fragmenting Kingdom of Poland. King John had also acquired the lands of Bautzen and Görlitz in 1319 and 1329. In 1367 Emperor Charles IV also purchased the former March of Lusatia in the northwest, however, in 1742 the Habsburg queen Maria Theresa lost the bulk of Silesia to Prussia upon the First Silesian War, part of the War of the Austrian Succession. The coat of arms of the Czech Republic incorporates those of the three integral Czech lands, Bohemia proper, Moravia and Czech Silesia, the arms of Bohemia originated with the Bohemian kingdom, like those of Moravia with the Moravian margraviate. The arms of Czech Silesia originated as those of all of the region of Silesia. Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Pánek, Jaroslav, Tůma Oldřich, a History of the Czech lands
29.
Baba Roga
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In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga /ˈbɑːbə jəˈɡɑː/ is a supernatural being who appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking witch. Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, Baba Yaga may help or hinder those that encounter or seek her out. She sometimes plays a role, and also has associations with forest wildlife. According to Vladimir Propps folktale morphology, Baba Yaga commonly appears as either a donor or villain, andreas Johns identifies Baba Yaga as one of the most memorable and distinctive figures in Slavic European folklore, and observes that she is enigmatic and often exhibits striking ambiguity. Variations of the name Baba Yaga are found in the languages of the Eastern Slavic peoples, the first element, baba, is transparently a babble word, meaning woman, or, specifically, old woman. The same word is used for both grandmother and old woman in general in Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian and Serbo-Croatian languages. In modern Russian, the word бабушка babushka derives from it, Baba may also have a pejorative connotation in modern Ukrainian and Russian, both for women as well as for an unmanly, timid, or characterless man. In Polish, the term is considered to be pejorative, meaning vicious or ugly woman, in Czech both of those meanings apply. Similarly to other terms in Slavic languages, baba may be employed outside of kinship. For example, in variety of Slavic languages and dialects, the word baba may be applied to animals, natural phenomena. This function extends to various geographic features, in the Polesia region of Ukraine, the plural баби baby may refer to an autumn funeral feast. These associations have led to a variety of theories on the figure of Baba Yaga, the element may appear as a means of glossing the second element, yaga, with a familiar component. Additionally, baba may have also applied as a means of distinguishing Baba Yaga from a male counterpart. While a variety of etymologies have been proposed for the element of the name, Yaga, it remains far more etymologically problematic. For example, in the 19th century, Alexander Afanasyev proposed the derivation of Proto-Slavic *ǫžь and this etymology has subsequently been explored by other scholars in the 20th century. Related terms to the element of the name, Yaga, appear in various Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian jeza, Slovenian jeza, Old Czech jězě, modern Czech jezinka. The term appears in Old Church Slavonic as jęza or jędza, in other Indo-European languages the element iaga has been linked to Lithuanian engti, ingti and ingas, Old English inca, and Old Norse ekki. The first clear reference to Baba Yaga occurs in 1755, Mikhail V. Lomonosovs Rossiiskaya grammatika, in Lomonosovs grammar, Baba Yaga is mentioned twice among other figures largely from Slavic tradition
30.
Croatia
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Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a sovereign state between Central Europe, Southeast Europe, and the Mediterranean. Its capital city is Zagreb, which one of the countrys primary subdivisions. Croatia covers 56,594 square kilometres and has diverse, mostly continental, Croatias Adriatic Sea coast contains more than a thousand islands. The countrys population is 4.28 million, most of whom are Croats, the Croats arrived in the area of present-day Croatia during the early part of the 7th century AD. They organised the state into two duchies by the 9th century, tomislav became the first king by 925, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom. The Kingdom of Croatia retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of Kings Petar Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir, Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest, the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg to the Croatian throne. In 1918, after World War I, Croatia was included in the unrecognized State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs which seceded from Austria-Hungary, a fascist Croatian puppet state backed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany existed during World War II. After the war, Croatia became a member and a federal constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991 Croatia declared independence, which came wholly into effect on 8 October of the same year, the Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully during the four years following the declaration. A unitary state, Croatia is a republic governed under a parliamentary system, the International Monetary Fund classified Croatia as an emerging and developing economy, and the World Bank identified it as a high-income economy. Croatia is a member of the European Union, United Nations, the Council of Europe, NATO, the World Trade Organization, the service sector dominates Croatias economy, followed by the industrial sector and agriculture. Tourism is a significant source of revenue during the summer, with Croatia ranked the 18th most popular tourist destination in the world, the state controls a part of the economy, with substantial government expenditure. The European Union is Croatias most important trading partner, since 2000, the Croatian government constantly invests in infrastructure, especially transport routes and facilities along the Pan-European corridors. Internal sources produce a significant portion of energy in Croatia, the rest is imported, the origin of the name is uncertain, but is thought to be a Gothic or Indo-Aryan term assigned to a Slavic tribe. The oldest preserved record of the Croatian ethnonym *xъrvatъ is of variable stem, the first attestation of the Latin term is attributed to a charter of Duke Trpimir from the year 852. The original is lost, and just a 1568 copy is preserved—leading to doubts over the authenticity of the claim, the oldest preserved stone inscription is the 9th-century Branimir Inscription, where Duke Branimir is styled as Dux Cruatorvm. The inscription is not believed to be dated accurately, but is likely to be from during the period of 879–892, the area known as Croatia today was inhabited throughout the prehistoric period
31.
Perchta
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Perchta or Berchta, also commonly known as Percht and other variations, was once known as a goddess in Alpine paganism in the Upper German regions of the Alps. Her name may mean the one and is probably related to the name Berchtentag. Eugen Mogk provides an etymology, attributing the origin of the name Perchta to the Old High German verb pergan. Perchta is often identified as stemming from the same Germanic goddess as Holda, Grimm says Perchta or Berchta was known precisely in those Upper German regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria. According to Erika Timm, Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and pre-Germanic, probably Celtic, in Baden, Swabia, Switzerland and Slovenian regions, she was often called Frau Faste or Pehta or Kvaternica, in Slovene. Elsewhere she was known as Posterli, Quatemberca and Fronfastenweiber, in southern Austria, in Carinthia among the Slovenes, a male form of Perchta was known as Quantembermann, in German, or Kvaternik, in Slovene. Grimm thought that her male counterpart or equivalent is Berchtold, regional variations of the name include Berigl, Berchtlmuada, Perhta-Baba, Zlobna Pehta, Bechtrababa, Sampa, Stampa, Lutzl, Zamperin, Pudelfrau, Zampermuatta and Rauweib. In some descriptions, Perchta has two forms, she may appear either as beautiful and white as snow like her name, or as elderly, in many old descriptions, Bertha had one large foot, sometimes called a goose foot or swan foot. Grimm thought the strange foot symbolized her being a higher being who could shapeshift to animal form. In the Tyrol she appears as old woman with a very wrinkled face, bright lively eyes. Initially, Perchta was the upholder of cultural taboos, such as the prohibition against spinning on holidays, in the folklore of Bavaria and Austria, Perchta was said to roam the countryside at midwinter, and to enter homes during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. She would know whether the children and young servants of the household had behaved well, if they had, they might find a small silver coin next day, in a shoe or pail. If they had not, she would slit their bellies open, remove stomach and guts and she was particularly concerned to see that girls had spun the whole of their allotted portion of flax or wool during the year. She would also slit peoples bellies open and stuff them with if they ate something on the night of her feast day other than the traditional meal of fish. Later canonical and church documents characterized Perchta as synonymous with other leading spirits, Holda, Diana, Herodias, Richella. Grimm thought Holda is her equivalent while the Weisse Frauen may derive directly from Berchta in her white form. The word Perchten is plural for Perchta, and this has become the name of her entourage, as well as the name of animal masks worn in parades, in the 16th century, the Perchten took two forms, Some are beautiful and bright, known as the Schönperchten. These come during the Twelve Nights and festivals to bring luck, the other form is the Schiachperchten who have fangs, tusks and horse tails which are used to drive out demons and ghosts
32.
Holda
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In Germanic legends, Frau Holda was the protectress of agriculture and womens crafts. Holda, Holle, Huld, and Hulda may be cognate of the Scandinavian creature known as the huldra, Jacob Grimm made an attempt to establish her as a Germanic goddess. From German hold, Middle High German hulde, Old High German huldī, cognate with Danish and Swedish huld, Icelandic hollur, Middle English hold, holde, Old English hold, from Proto-Germanic hulþaz, from Proto-Indo-European *kel-. The name Hludana is found in five Latin inscriptions, three from the lower Rhine, one from Münstereifel and one from Beetgum, Frisia all dating from 197 AD-235 AD, many attempts have been made to interpret this name. Frau Holdas festival is in the middle of winter, the time when humans retreat indoors from the cold, Holdas connection to the spirit world through the magic of spinning and weaving has associated her with witchcraft in Catholic German folklore. She was considered to ride with witches on distaffs, which resemble the brooms that witches are thought to ride. Likewise, Holda was often identified with Diana in old church documents, as early as the beginning of the eleventh century she appears to have been known as the leader of women and female nocturnal spirits, which in common parlance are called Hulden from Holda. These women would leave their houses in spirit, going out through closed doors in the silence of the night and they would travel vast distances through the sky, to great feasts, or to battles amongst the clouds. The ninth century Canon Episcopi censors women who claim to have ridden with a “crowd of demons. If you have performed participation in this unbelief, you are required to do penance for one year on designated fast-days. ”Later canonical and church documents make her synonymous with Diana, Herodias, Bertha, Richella and Abundia. A 16th-century fable recorded by Erasmus Alberus speaks of “an army of women” with sickles in hand sent by Frau Hulda. Thomas Reinesius in the 17th century speaks of Werra of the Voigtland, vivid visual descriptions of her may allude to a popular costumed portrayal, perhaps as part of a seasonal festival or holiday drama. Lotte Motz and Carlo Ginzburg both conclude that she is pre-Christian in origin, based on comparison with other similar figures. The most famous account of Holda was collected by the Brothers Grimm, huldra Perchta Diana Wild Hunt Grimm, Jacob. Deutsche Mythologie, From English released version Grimms Teutonic Mythology, Available online by Northvegr © 2004-2007
33.
Pantheon Books
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Pantheon Books is an American book publishing imprint with editorial independence. It is part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, the current editor-in-chief at Pantheon Books is Dan Frank. In addition to classics, international fiction, and trade paperbacks and it has published many critically acclaimed graphic novels and comics collections, including Ice Haven, La Perdida, Read Yourself RAW, Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers, and Black Hole. Many of its comics publications are high-quality collected editions of works originally serialized by other such as Fantagraphics Books. Pantheon Books was founded in 1942 in New York City by Helen and Kurt Wolff who had come to the United States to escape fascism, Pantheon is currently part of Bertelsmann. When Random House bought Alfred A. Knopf in 1960, the front page of the New York Times reported that the merger united two of the nations most celebrated publishers of quality writing. The following year, Random House would buy Pantheon, which would be moved into the Knopf Publishing Group, also in 1961, Pantheon hired Andre Schiffrin as executive editor of Pantheon Books. By the late 1960s, Pantheon started to bring American writers such as Noam Chomsky, James Loewen, in 1965, RCA bought Random House. Throughout the 1970s, Pantheon continued to publish intellectual and often leftist works of fiction and nonfiction without a profit-and-loss sheet in sight, in other words, Pantheon editors prided themselves on subsidizing the cost of publishing less commercially successful works with the profits from more commercially successful books. In 1980, RCA sold Random House to Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. in early 2009, long-time Pantheon publisher Janice Goldklang was laid off as part of a general restructuring of Random House and its publishing divisions. Pantheon and Random House, which at the time was owned by SI Newhouse, were plagued with throughout the late 1980s. In December 1989, Alberto Vitale, a banker, replaced Robert L. Berstein as chairman. In February 1990, Schiffrin was asked to resign after he refused to reduce the number of titles published or to trim Pantheons 30-member staff. In the week following the protests,40 Random House editors and publishers signed a statement that defended the changes at Pantheon, stating, like Pantheon. We have never experienced it, nor do we believe that Pantheon has ever experienced it and we would not tolerate censorship of any form, and we are offended by any suggestion to the contrary. But, unlike Pantheon, we have preserved our independence and the independence of our authors by supporting the integrity of our publishing programs with fiscal responsibility, another supporter of Schiffrins termination wrote that the protests and resignations were a hilarious specimen of people intoxicated by self-importance. It also is a study of the descent of intellectuals leftism into burlesque. In 1998, Random House made news again when it was bought by Bertelsmann, the Authors Guild approached the Fair Trade Commission, arguing that the $1
34.
Peter Lang (publisher)
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Peter Lang is an academic publisher specializing in the humanities and social sciences. It has its headquarters in Pieterlen and Bern, Switzerland, with offices in Brussels, Frankfurt am Main, New York City, Dublin, Oxford, Vienna, and Warsaw. Peter Lang publishes over 1,800 academic titles annually, both in print and digital formats, with a backlist of over 55,000 books and it has its complete online journals collection available on Ingentaconnect and distributes its digital textbooks globally through Kortext. Peter Lang publishes monographs, edited volumes and doctoral dissertations, in the SENSE ranking of academic publishers it is categorized as a level C publisher. The company specializes in the following subject areas, The company was founded in Frankfurt am Main in 1970 by Swiss editor Peter Lang. It started as a publisher specialising in PhD theses and similar academic works
35.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
36.
Chernobog
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The only historical sources, which are Christian ones, interpret him as a dark, accursed god, but it is questionable how important or malicious he was really considered to be by ancient Slavs. The name is attested only among West Slavic tribes of the 12th century, older scholarship assumed him to be the counterpart of Belobog. Helmold wrote that, The Slavs, too, have a strange delusion, hence, also, in their language they call the bad god Diabol, or Zcerneboch, that is, the black god. On the basis of this inscription, many modern mythographers assumed that, if the god was Chernobog. However, the name of Belobog is not mentioned by Helmold anywhere in his Chronica, svetovid may serve as the opposite deity. A veneration of this deity perhaps survived in folklore of several Slavic nations, in some South Slavic vernaculars, there exists the phrase do zla boga, used as an attribute to express something which is exceedingly negative. Chernobog has made appearances in various media, as Chernabog, he features in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Disneys Fantasia, as a gigantic black gargoyle like creature who summons other ghosts and demons. In an interview, Walt Disney referred to him as Satan himself, deems Taylor likewise refers to him as such in the film. This version of Chernobog appears throughout the Kingdom Hearts series, as well as an appearance on the season of Once Upon a Time. Chernobog appeared in the Marvel Comics series Thor and he was slain by a villain, a powerful god-killer. Chernobogs flying steed helps Thor fight back, Chernobog is mentioned in several books in the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. Specifically the Russian Volvh is dedicated to Chernobog, tchernobog is the final boss in the video games Blood and Blood II, The Chosen. Czernobog is a character in Neil Gaimans novel American Gods, in Pacific Rim, there is a Russian mech, Cherno Alpha, named after Chernobog
37.
Deities of Slavic religion
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Since Ukrainian independence in 1991, she has undergone a fakeloric metamorphosis, and today is identified as a combination of the hearth-mother and the rusalka. This metamorphosis has its roots in the late 1980s, as several Ukrainian writers sought to personify their vision of an ideal Ukrainian woman, consequently, Berehynia today also has a place in Ukrainian nationalism, feminism, and neopaganism. In 2001, a column with a monument to Berehynia on top, as a protector of Kiev, was erected at Maidan Nezalezhnosti in the center of the city, kievs historic protector Archangel Michael older monument is located just across at the same square. Goddess of the Orange Revolution by Marian J. Rubchak, compares Berehynia with Yulia Tymoshenko, oksana Kis Who is protected by Berehynia, or Matriarchy as a mens invention, Zerkalo Nedeli, April 26 - May 6,2005
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Kresnik (deity)
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Kresnik is a Slavic god associated with fire, the summer solstice, and storms. His mythical home, a mountain at the top of the world. Kresnik was worshiped among the Slavic population of the eastern Alps and he is probably the same deity as Svarožič, son of the Slavic sun god, Svarog, described as having golden hair and golden hands. He gradually evolved into a Slovenian national hero who lives on a mountain, sometimes as a deer with golden antlers. He became known as a king with strong magic, yet still a farmer. The name of Kresnik has no clear etymology, connections with Russian Khors and Indian Krishna have been proposed in the past. As Mikhailov has shown, the name of Kresnik could be derived from Balto-Slavic linguistic heritage, festival of Kresze is known among Balts, for Mikhailov there are three possible connections with the root *krês, Sun, Solstice or blow. Kresnik is the son of the creator deity, ruler of heaven. Kresnik is described as having hair and golden hands or arms. He was born either with horse earlaps, horse hooves, or a birthmark shaped like hooves, connected to sun and fire, he travels the sky on his golden chariot, armed with thunderbolt, axe, hammer, club, or sword. Like Hercules, Kresnik performed twelve great deeds, sometimes he is helped by his brother Trot or his four-eyed dog. His chthonic opponent steals his property, cattle, or wife-sister, rain or wheat falls from the sky after such combat. In most tales, his wife is his sister, a goddess of spring named Alenčica, Marjetica, Vesina, or any number of variations. In some versions, Kresnik also has a lover who is the daughter of a snake deity, his perpetual enemy. The comparative mythology showed that this demigod perhaps originated from the Iranian god Yima and his double, on the other side, Kresnik is a storm god and so shares many common features with the Slavic god Perun. Some characteristics even connect him with Slavic hero Yarilo/Jarovit, many correlations with Mithra and Indra exist, too. Kresnik is a very diverse deity with many different faces depending on the location of the myth, Kresnik gradually evolved into a Slovenian national hero who lives on a golden mountain, sometimes as a deer with golden antlers. As a human, he is a great king skilled with magic, in some tales he even fights off the dog-headed Mongols as a peasant youth
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Lada (mythology)
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Lada or Lado is the name of a Slavic deity of harmony, merriment, youth, love and beauty. The word Lado appears in many Slavic and Baltic wedding and folk songs, particularly those sung during Ivan Kupala and its meaning, if indeed it has any, is unclear. Certe non venit ad summum bonum nisi quod bonum, croatian ethnologist Vitomir Belaj studied a great number of songs of summer festivities from various Slavic nations. Belaj identified this lost god as Jarilo, a major Slavic deity of vegetation, harvest, the Proto-Slavic *ladъ means pretty, nice, order. The following Serbian Lado-song recorded in Nikola Begovićs Srpske narodne pjesme iz Like i Banije, Vid slept in a meadow Lado is beautiful. Fair elf-maids were waking him Lado is beautiful and your house is on sale, Lado is beautiful. Your mother is dying, Lado is beautiful, then answers young Vid Lado is beautiful. Lado. you are lying fair elf-maids, Lado is beautiful, Lado. neither is my mother dying, Lado is beautiful. Lado. neither is my house on sale, Lado is beautiful, Lado. but my lover serves another. Lada is one of the deities, in order of some modern pagans feast their seasonal holidays. Sometimes the goddess attracted attention of the modern artists
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Marzanna
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She is an ancient goddess associated with winters death and rebirth and dreams. In Slavic rites the death of the Goddess Marzanna at the end winter, becomes the rebirth of Spring of the Goddess Kostroma, Lada, some medieval Christian sources such as the Czech 9th century Mater Verborum compare her to the Greek goddess Hecate, associating her with sorcery. 15th century Polish chronicler Jan Długosz likened her in his Annales to Ceres, in modern times the rituals associated with Marzanna have lost their sacred character and are a pastime – an occasion to have fun and celebrate the beginning of spring. The tradition is celebrated around the spring equinox. Usually schoolchildren and young participate in the celebrations alongside local folklore groups. A procession consisting of men, women and children carries handmade Marzanna to the nearest river, the participants sing traditional songs and throw effigies of Marzanna into the water. Sometimes the effigies are first set on fire, or their clothes are torn, on the journey back to the village the focus falls on the copses, adorned with ribbons and blown egg shells. The procession, still singing, returns to the village, in some locations, the beginning of spring is then celebrated with a feast. Marzannas name most likely comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *mar-, *mor-, the Slovak form of the theonym – Mamuriena – suggests that the goddess may have originally been connected to the Roman god of war Mars. The connection to Mars is supported by, among others, Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov, other theories claim her name is derived from the same Indo-European root as Latin mors death and Russian mor pestilence. Some authors also likened her to mare, a spirit in Germanic and Slavic folklore, associated with nightmares. In Belarusian, Polish, Ukrainian and in some Russian dialects the word mara means phantom, vision, hallucination. Similar to burning witches in some European countries or Holika Dahan in India, in terms of the season when its celebrated - at the end of winter, start of spring - and the evil character involved. The tradition of burning or drowning an effigy of Marzanna to celebrate the end of winter is a custom that survives in the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania. In the past, the festival was held on the fourth Sunday of Lent, in the 20th century the date 21 March was fixed. The rite involves preparing an effigy in female clothing, and either setting it on fire or drowning in a river and this is often performed during a field trip by children in kindergarten and primary schools. The effigy, often made by the themselves, can range in size from a puppet to a life-size dummy. This ritual represents the end of the days of winter, the victory over death
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Mokosh
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Mokoš is a Slavic goddess mentioned in the Primary Chronicle, protector of womens work and womens destiny. She watches over spinning and weaving, shearing of sheep, Mokosh is the Great Mother, Mat Zemlya. Mokoš was the female deity whose idol was erected by Vladimir the Great in his Kiev sanctuary along with statues of other major gods. According to Max Vasmer, her name is derived from the root as Slavic words mokry, wet. She may have originated in the northern Finno-Ugric tribes of the Vogul, Mokoš was one of the most popular Slavic deities and the great earth Mother Goddess of East Slavs and Eastern Polans. She is a wanderer and a spinner and her consorts are probably both the god of thunder Perun and his opponent Veles. In saying, the former Katičić follows Ivanov and Toporov without further corroborating their claim, Katičić also points to the possibility that as goddess Vela she is the consort of Veles, and might even be interpreted as another form of the polymorph god Veles himself. Mokosh is also the mother of the twin siblings Jarilo and Morana, archeological evidence of Mokosh dates back to the 7th century BC. As late as the 19th century, she was worshipped as a force of fertility, worshipers prayed to Mokosh-stones or breast-shaped boulders that held power over the land and its people. In Eastern Europe, Mokosh is still popular as a life giving force. She shows up in embroidery, represented as a woman with uplifted hands, sometimes she is shown with male sexual organs, as the deity in charge of male potency. A the key myth in Slavic mythology, is the battle between the thunder god Perun and his opponent the god Veles. Some authors and the original researchers Ivanov and Toporov believe, the abduction of Mokosh causes the struggle, according to Boris Rybakov, in his 1987 work Paganism of Ancient Rus, Mokosh is represented on one of the sides of the Zbruch Idol. During Christianization of Kievan Rus there were issued against worshipping Mokoš. She was replaced by the cult of the Virgin Mary and St. Paraskevia, kikimora Mat Zemlya Moksha Mokshas tribe Moksha language
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Radegast (god)
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Radegast, also Radigost, Redigast, Riedegost or Radogost is an old, well-documented, god of Slavic mythology. Even myths concerning him were constructed based on folk customs of sacred hospitality. Similar customs, however, are known in many Indo-European mythologies without a deity associated explicitly with them. This view could be supported by the political role Radegast temple played in the life of West Slavic tribes, according to some literary sources he is also the god of war, night, fire and the evening sky. He likes to invite to the banquets, is black and is armed with a spear. Mt. Radegast is mentioned by Adam of Bremen in his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum as the deity worshipped in the Lutician city of Radgosc, likewise, Helmold in his Chronica Slavorum wrote of Radegast as a Lutician god. According to Adam of Bremen, Johannes Scotus, Bishop of Mecklenburg, was sacrificed to that god on 10 November 1066, according to Slavic legends, Radegast was beloved by Hors, described as the beautiful young goddess of the moon. However he ignored her, unlike the god of the wind Stribog, Stribog secretly stole Radegasts cloak and towards morning he sneaked into Hors chamber, where she let him seduce her and got her pregnant. Radegast was outraged, but not because of Hors rather for the stolen coat and she begged for mercy for her newborn girl and suggested that she could be a goddess of autumn, but the main god Svarog disagreed and the dispute was not settled. As a result, this season does not have a goddess, the original statue once found on Mt. Radhošť, sculpted in 1929 by Albin Polasek, is now located in Frenstats Town Hall. When the statue was moved to the mountain in 1931, the truck became stuck in a steep turn, a second cast by Albin Polasek stands in the center of Pragues Zoo. The granite version, now found on Mt. Radhošť, is a recent copy funded by the Radegast Beer Company in 1998. More information and sculptures of Radegast can be viewed at The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, the name Radhošť itself is supposed to be a Czech transcription of Radegast. Radagast the Brown is a character in J. R. R. Tolkiens Middle-earth legendarium. He is one of the wizards and lives among animals, Radigost is also the name of a Russian black metal band formed in 1994, as well as Radogost being the name of a folk metal band from Poland formed in 2006. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum
