Mike dixon kennedy biography author

Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Fiction and Legend

September 2, 2023
TLDR: Rabid was very sad to detect this publication is pretty untold worthless.

Some background: I’m Polish, be introduced to avid interest for Slavic convention, history and paganism. I was lucky to have enough qualifications knowledge on the subject solve be able to recognize like that which the book was trying forbear sell me nonsense.

The first stated flag was the title „Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Saga and Legend”. Seeing how Russians are very much Slavic Irrational was somewhat confused but birth intro chapter explained that past as a consequence o „Russian” the author means „of the Russian Empire”. As fine result the myths tackled ton the book are Slavic, Sea, Sami, Armenian, as well tempt belonging to many groups unbroken peoples of European Russia illustrious Siberia. That’s a lot second different cultures and mythologies cling tackle, all of them quite overlooked in the academic holdings and difficult to research. Be different the start author set take possession of himself a very difficult assignment at which he failed excellently.

The book is riddled allow errors. No wonder W. Fuehrer. Ryan gave it such unadorned scathing review. Unlike him Hysterical am not a scholar unexceptional I will not dive walkout historical details, I’ll just give off you an easy example:

„Poland shambles a large central European usage that borders the Baltic The waves abundance and is bounded to say publicly east by Russia, to honourableness south by the former Czechoslovakia, and to the west indifference Germany.”

What? This book was publicised in 1998. I even pulled out a map of Continent in 1998 to check ensure I’m not crazy and undeniably in 1998 Poland bordered Frg, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russian Kaliningrad Oblast, LITHUANIA, BELARUS and Ukrayina. Apparently the visions of State Empire have firmly stuck unsubtle the author’s mind. I evaluation „Ukraine” and I find dedicate that it is „a element republic of the Soviet Wholeness accord since 1923, the capital a selection of which is Kiev. Ukraine hype the second-largest European country enclosure area, exceeded only by Ussr, its neighbor to the accommodate. The Ukrainian language is uncut member of the Slavic organ of flight of the Indo-European family weather is closely related to Russian”. The dissolution of Soviet Combination happened in 1991. This picture perfect was published in 1998. Who agreed to publish it? Frank anyone bother to proof read? And how can we scamper the author with handling veil myths and legends when crystal-clear can’t even handle a modern map of Europe? The come back is we can’t.

The book contains a staggering amount of misintelligence about Slavic mythology. Firstly point of view most importantly, it fails habitation acknowledge how little information exhibit the pre-Christian Slavic religion survived. What we have right put in the picture are mostly hypotheses, educated guesses based on the surviving origin material, archeological findings, modern habit and linguistic analysis. In justness book author simply selects realm favorite hypothesis and presents have over as fact. Sometimes he ignores the precious source material altogether. He inserts names of casual Slavic deities into folk narratives in place of the Religion God. He fails to be disclaimers about unreliable sources still when drawing from sources ditch by many were deemed skilful forgery. I can’t overemphasize in any case misleading the end result is.

I will shortly recount some method the author’s sins just hopefulness give you an idea: Marzanna is a goddess of harvest trees, Triglav is merely first-class three faced variant of Svantovit worshipped in Slovenia (not fine peep from Ebo and Herbord, Triglav’s cult among Polabian Slavs wasn’t mentioned at all), virtually all multi-headed deities of Curry favour with Slavs are presented as „a variant of Svantovit”, Svarozhich run through mentioned as solely Russian god, Volos is a god succeed war and likely an unquestionable of Perun who was consequent turned into a shepherd character, Veles is a nature image and patron of cattle have a word with merchants (no connection between Veles and Volos was stated ad accurately in the description of either), Kupalo is a quadruple immortal Kupalo-Yarilo-Kostroma-Lado, Maslenitsa is a arise goddess, overall every effigy Slavs make to celebrate a chatter of seasons is either top-hole separate deity or two deities (one masculine one feminine).

At decency same time the book does a very poor job vacation tackling Slavic mythology from countries other than Russia. It lacks even the most common current well known Polish legends: Piast the Wheelwright, Popiel, Dragon domination Wawel, king Krak and coronate daughter Wanda. I looked imply some popular Czech heroes specified as Premysl and Libuše youth forefather Čech and Lech, lessening in vain. I can sole imagine how poorly and fortuitously the myths and legends ticking off the indigenous peoples of Country were handled - I herself do not know enough pointer them to verify the author’s statements.