The Baba Yaga and dappled others

"Do you arrive from a doughty deed or do you strive for a doughty deed?"

This is the question a strange and formidable old woman asks in an old Russian fairy tale. "Doughty" means intrepid, dauntless--that is, brave and persistent. The question is so phrased as to leave no room for the person being asked to be doing anything but performing heroic acts. And who is this hero that is being asked? Hercules? Achilles? Siegfried? Kullervo?

Nah, not at all. It's a girl who has struck out into the forest to find her beloved after her sisters played a trick that wounded him and made him flee--well, fly, actually, since he's sometimes a falcon. This is the story called "The Feather of Finist" or "Bright-hawk's Feather," and the old woman figures prominently again and again in traditional Russian and Slavic lore.

She goes by the name of Baba Yaga, and like Morgan le Fay, she's imbued with strange, numinous powers. She's cryptic, tricky, sometimes working for the good of the hero, sometimes not, and always somehow "in the know." After reading a few of these tales, you get the sense that you'd be an idiot not to do exactly what she tells you to do, regardless of whether you understand it. She's obviously not Russian because she objects to how Russians smell, and she complains about how the Russians are encroaching on what she calls "the free world." Time and again, Baba Yaga is found on a trek into dense, dark forest before the trees thin out and we come to a deep blue ocean.

There are many theories using Russian and Slavic terminology to explain the quixotic name of Baba Yaga. But what if the actual person who inspired such a character originally named herself, and when she did she wasn't using Russian or Slavic but rather her own tongue?

Female Sami deities 

These three have to do with pregnancy and childbirth:

Uksahkka ("Door Wife"): midwife helper of newborns and protector of menstruating women and of children from illnesses and other dangers. In homes she stood near the door.
Sarahkka: a well-respected goddess who molds an unborn baby's body around a soul. She also helps the mother give birth and sat near the hearth. Drinks were offered to her by women, who also ate a special gruel in her honor. Similar to Artemis/Diana.
Juksahkka ("Bow Woman"): goddess who can make an unborn child male; also an instructor of boys. She lived near the entrance of the home. In some ways reminiscent of Athena/Minerva.

Then there is Yambe-Akka or Jabme-akka the Sami Goddess of the Underworld. Her name means 'The Old Woman of the Dead'.

Finally, there are Beaivi, the sun, and her daughter, both of whom are discussed in the decorative arts post.

You may have noticed that the top four of these end in the same word: Ahkka or Akka, meaning wife, woman, female deity/spirit. Together, they were worshipped as the Akka--the combined feminine force in nature as it is interpreted by the Sami. These female spirits appear in both Sami shamanism and Finnish mythology. Worship of the akka was common and took the form of sacrifices, pleas for help and various rituals. Some Sámi believed the akka lived under their tents.

"Minister" in Sami language is baahpa. Click the word to hear it pronounced. It's very, very close to Baba.

When the original Baba Yaga was explaining what she was, could she have used Samigiella: Baahpa-Akka to designate herself as a minister of the Akka, that is, a female Sami shaman (Northern Sami: noaidi, Lule Sami: noajdde, Southern Sami: nåejttie, Skolt Sami: nōjjd, Ter Sami: niojte, Kildin Sami: noojd/nuojd)? Or might that be how other Sami described her to foreigners: the sage woman?

Bába means "midwife" in modern Hungarian, and originally they were wise old women, later equated with witches as Christianity became widespread.)

Heeeeeeeeeere's Baba!

Party animal, frightful hag, capital Bad-a**, and man's best foe--this is Baba Yaga taking a chest-high left peeler with the insane bottom turn and a righteous tube before kick-out. Let's get to know this woman better.

Over the river and through the dark, dismal forest, to Baba's House we go...

Left below is a rendering of Baba Yaga's dwelling, the infamous revolving hen's leg house. Below right is a Sami storehouse, the comparison of which is variously made elsewhere, so no sense in rehashing. More here.

Baba's Decor

Below is another intrepid hero, this one named Vasilisa, coming to grips with Baba's choice of lighting.

Below is a depiction of a Sami dwelling in the film The Cuckoo. The yellow circle highlights three reindeer skulls. The red circle highlights the hen-legged storehouse. The blue circle indicates the little door slanting back into which a person on entering descends. All of these are characteristics of Baba Yaga's legendary abode. How easily these dwellings might suggest the fabulous and terrible to a visitor unfamiliar with Sami ways.

Here is the skull of a reindeer without the antlers. Beside it, another Sami dwelling.

The skulls on the poles in the story of Finist's feather are said to be human. Skulls did historically (still do) adorn many a nordic forest dwelling, whether of Sami or other people. Typically, they are from reindeer and/or bear. If you read this article about the ritual surrounding the Sami bear hunt, you will get a sense of how elaborate and exceedingly careful and reverent is the Sami's relation to the bear. Though I'll link this video, I don't actually recommend it (Brownbear hunting and the Sami traditions and mythology) except as a quick, albeit clumsy, overview of that relationship. In the video the bear skull beside the woman (above left) does a weird, unnatural floating movement when the camera moves. I suspect it was not originally there but rather got doctored into the film at a later date. Superimposing the bear skull may have been the only way to get this woman to sit and joik beside a thing so powerful in her belief system. The scene is obviously terribly contrived. True to their reverence for the bear, the Sami appear to adhere to the tradition of burying its entire skeleton in a lifelike position. Whether that is true for all Sami tribes, I don't know. 

The Finns on the other hand apparently hung the skulls on pine posts. Below is an explanation of Finnish belief and tradition regarding the bear skull:

Kallohonka (Finnish) is pine, which bears skulls placed the feast after. Bear's bones are buried under the oak tree. The skulls are usually placed in the middle of the tree to look to the east. Together, the tree may have several bear skulls. The kallohoka may have stood for the world's wood (Maailmanpuu) symbol--that is, the tree of life--and raising the skull onto the tree is thought to return the bear to the sky, from which it was born.

Below is an excerpt from Notes on the Finnish Tradition by Anssi Alhonen:

The belief that spiritual power is received from the dead is very apparent in the Finnish tradition. A Tietäjä, for example, might drink from a human skull in order to gain excellent memory, or use other rituals related to the dead to gain the increased mental powers which would help him in his work. Most importantly, the tietäjä always drew his power from the underworld before doing healing.

All of this skull imagery to be found in the landscape of Fennoscandia may have melded inside the imagination with another item that certainly would have held the fire that Vasilisa is after in the fairy tale. These to an already-spooked mind might appear a charnel aglow. 

Sauna rocks

I still greatly doubt it, but having put forth these speculations, I'll admit a real Baba or two may have gone for the gold on this one. After all, nothing says "Go away" like a human skull used as a lamp. In a future post called The Beauties of Bad Press, I'll explain the reason it might have been to Baba's advantage to cultivate terror and distaste. 

Go, Baba, go!--Baba's wheels

Here we have Baba Yaga again depicted flying in her mortar, this time with a broom instead of a pestle. 

Beside her is a Voynich woman sitting in a similar bucket-like contraption. Beside them is a woman paddling a coracle, which is a small one-person boat shaped like a mortar with a paddle for its pestle. Coracles are very well known throughout the British Isles. 

Albert Edelfelt's painting of Finnish girls in their boat

The question is, did the Sami or other nordic peoples have coracles or anything like them? The Kvens were said to have small, fast boats. Kvenland, Pohjala, Karelia--these are lands with great stretches of forests heavily brocaded with lakes and waterways. It would make sense for boats to be the main form of transport, but how big they were and whether they resembled the coracle waits for more research.

Pohjola-River by Antti Sorva

Now you see her...

The Flying Dutchman effect is when a ship at sea appears to fly. When such a mirage changes shape to where it is not even recognizable, it is called a Fata Morgana. A Fata Morgana is most commonly seen in polar regions, especially over large sheets of ice which have a uniform low temperature. It can however be observed in almost any area. In polar regions the Fata Morgana phenomenon is observed on relatively cold days, however in deserts, over oceans, and over lakes, a Fata Morgana can be observed on hot days. Here is an example:

Fata Morgana is an Italian phrase derived from the vulgar Latin for "fairy" and the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their death.

So here we have a natural phenomenon named after a legendary witch who knew and took advantage of it to trick her enemies. She may not have been the only witch to do so. Baba Yaga manages to speed off in her little container looking as if she were flying.

Just before Baba Yaga arrives at her dwelling, goes the story, the trees rustle. Perhaps it's not Baba Yaga's arrival upsetting the trees but rather some headwind  or evening breeze she's taking advantage of to ride home on. 

Baba's Way

A large part of this sort of magic, it would seem, is about propitiousness. It's about knowing intimately one's environment and taking such brilliant advantage of its rhythms and secrets that one appears to command nature when in fact one simply knows the whens, wheres, and hows. In this way, concentrating on exactly what is, these early practitioners of native wisdom could be viewed as having more in common with the rudiments of science than with religion. I'll discuss the reason for all the smoke and mirrors in the future Beauties of Bad Press post.

Baba's Not Alone

This (the red-head to the right) is a famous rendering of Louhi, the Witch of the North, mistress of Pohjola, who features prominently in Finland's national epic, The Kalevala. It is a story about a culture's pride but also, like the Russian fairy tales, about the meeting and merger of various cultures in northern Europe. Like Baba Yaga, Louhi is old, ugly, exacting, and expert at flying. Neither Finnish nor Russian, she rules Pohjola, a dark and misty north land of forest and lake. She has three beautiful daughters and one son, and the old man Väinämöinen, is a Finn (deity) trying to marry one of her daughters. She's not making it easy for him.

The central task she gives him is to make the Sampo, a magical contraption that can grind out abundance. Brushing aside for the moment the myth's fantastic overtones, Louhi's demand makes perfect sense. The crux of the question any mother would want answered is this: Do you have the technology, old man, to keep my daughter alive during the winter? Väinämöinen's stance is antagonistic, then, because his future mother-in-law is challenging his know-how. During particularly harsh times, the Sami make what they call bark bread or starvation bread. Harvested from the inner bark of Scots pine, this flour prevented tapeworms and afforded vitamin C to ward scurvy. This was a landscape that demanded heartiness for survival. Health freed people up to make more of their surroundings than merely putting their minds to day-to-day subsistence.

Thus, health itself created its own magical abundance, Women may have done the bark gathering, but men were probably in charge of fashioning a mill that could grind the inner bark of Scots pine. Throughout the Kalevala, the type of heroic deeds most highly praised is far less brute strength or divine breeding than wits and use of technology. In this way the Kalevala differs markedly from its Greek, Roman, or Norse literary cousins.

Sami duodji (handicrafts) are ornamental and highly functional

Let's look at some other women-in-the-know in this area. A vǫlva or völva (Old Norse and Icelandic respectively (the same word, except that the second letter evolved from ǫ to ö); plural vǫlvur (O.N.), völvur (Icel.), sometimes anglicized vala; also spákona or spækona) is a shamanic seeress in Norse paganism, and a recurring motif in Norse mythology. Here's a scary priestess from the History Channel's Vikings series speaking the all-important words, "Put the body on the bench." More here.

Episode 6 of Season 1

Here's a modern interpretation of a viking volva spelling a guy's future with runes.

And here is a video on the whispering witches of Poland.

Finally, here is a site on north Scotland's Orkney Islands, known as the Witches' Haven, and below three spaewives, the "Weird Sisters" from Shakespeare's MacBeth.

The AS wyrd is represented in English and Scots by “weird,” e.g., “he maun dree his weird” (suffer his destiny). Some link with Teutonic Fate-goddesses is therefore to be found in the “three weird sisters” of our earlier literature. Holinshed relates that three women “in straunge and ferly apparell, resembling creatures of an elder world,” met Macbeth and Banquo and foretold their destinies. “These women were either the weird sisters, that is the goddesses of destinie, or else some nimphs or feiries, endued with knowledge or prophecie by their Nicromanticall science.” They are Shakespeare’s witches or weird sisters, the Fatae or Parcae of Boece’s History. A story of “The weird Sisters” is mentioned in The Complaynt of Scotland, but it is now unknown, and the additions to Warner’s Albion’s England (106 A.D.) speak of “the weird elves,” as Spenser has “three fatal Impes” in his Ruines of Time, and Chaucer “the fatal sustrin” (sisters), akin to “the weird lady of the woods” in Percy’s ballad, who prophesied from a cave about Lord Albert’s child, then stole him away and nurtured him.
Whatever the ultimate origin of the Norns and similar dispensers of destiny may have been, they had human counterparts in actual prophetesses or magic-wielders, like the old Scots “spae-wife,” who foretold an infant’s future, or the Norse Spakona or Volva. In some references to these it is not easy to say where the human aspect ends and the supernatural begins. As Grimm says: “prophesying, inspiring and boon-bestowing women were always supposed to pass through the country, knocking at the houses of those whom they would bless,” and “tales of travelling gifting sorceresses were much in vogue all through the Middle Ages.” In the story of Nornagest the Norns are called Volor and Spakonur, and are said to travel through the land. In Viga-Glums-saga a Volva or spae-wife called Oddibjorg goes about the land, prophesying and telling stories, her prophecies depending on the kind of entertainment which she receives. Quite possibly the supernatural Norns were a reflection of such actual women who claimed and were believed to possess powers of prophecy and even of influence on human destiny. Excerpted from EDDIC MYTHOLOGY by John Arnott MacCulloch

Conclusion

Legend tells us over and over that at one point, Europe was brimming with women trying to read, interpret, and share knowledge of the world around them. I am not saying that all the women depicted in the Voynich manuscript were Sami. Maybe not a single one was. But look at how close part of Sapmi is to a region called Pohjanmaa (Swedish: Österbotten, English: Ostrobothnia), which some have connected to Pohjola, this fabled northern land of lakes, forest, and women.

Lappi (Sapmi) showing Pohjanmaa just to the south

I'd go so far as to say the ancient wisdom of sauna, the use of herbs during childbirth, and the chanting during the gathering of plants and the labor and delivery, all of which can be found in the Voynich may well have origins either in the Sami or a sister culture not so far from them that has since vanished from history, leaving only whispers.

The Beauties of Bad Press

Slings, Arrows, and Glories 

In the post called Baba Yaga and Dappled Others, I talked about the lore throughout northern Europe of these frightful, knowledgeable hags notorious for using trickery and scare tactics. Russian damsels encounter them holed up in strange abodes deep in the forest and have to get over their fear of these women and accept help from them in order to proceed on their quest for love and happiness. Finland's national hero Väinämöinen reckons with such a force when he wants to marry a daughter of one of them. Check them out. Wouldn't you like to bide a wee and have a cuppa, dearie?

Louhi

Baba Yaga

Riding the Smear Campaign

In the Kalevala, Pohjola is the dark and mysterious northland that is ruled by an "evil" witch. Adam von Bremen says that “In the ocean there are also many other islands, all full of cruel savages, and, therefore, the seafarer avoid them. Likewise, told amazons in the Baltic sea at these beaches, which is why they call it the land of women.” 

In standard history's eyes, a forbidding and forever cold land run by women, where men can get fooled and poisoned, would be seen more as a tragic wasteland to shun than anything to illuminate, laud, or spend much time writing about. It is anti-history. What we can learn of it we must glean from remnant warnings and anathema. The rest could have quite literally gone up in smoke.

Let's return for a moment to Kvenland as it might have been during the centuries leading up to the time of the Voynich manuscript--the 15th century. The map below shows migrations of tribes through Karelia. The Finnish–Novgorodian wars were a series of conflicts between Finnic tribes in eastern Fennoscandia and the Republic of Novgorod from the 11th or 12th century to early 13th century. The wars' effect on the Finns' society contributed to the eventual Swedish conquest of Finland in 1249.

And just to the south, in the Baltic states, similar dynamics were playing out.

Let's say you are a woman of advanced age leading your people. Given how other tribes will see you, you can be either dismissed or feared. Let's say the stakes are these: if you are dismissed then people will invade your land, take your resources, attack your sons, and carry off your daughters. Welcome to history.

A recent study completed at the University of Eastern Finland suggests that persons captured during raids into areas which today constitute parts of Finland, the Russian Karelia and the Baltic Countries ended up being sold on these remote trade routes. There was a particular demand for blonde girls and boys who were seen as exotic luxury items, and it was financially beneficial to transport them to the far-away markets. The study by Professor Jukka Korpela was published as a General Article in Russian History (1/2014), which is a leading journal addressing the history of Russia.

Looked at another way, the LEAST mysterious manuscript in the world.

In this land awash with various tribes at war with one another and ever under the threat of conquest, people learned to live by their wits, as so many legends both Sami and otherwise exemplify. Trickery was part of survival, whether it was to lead the enemy off a cliff, which is a common device in Sami lore, or whether it was to poison the water, as the women in Kvenland were reported to have done.

Albert Edelfelt's painting of Finnish girls in their boat

Below is a particularly manly Louhi speaking with a pair of not-so-happy-with-her Finnish heroes.

During the time when people actually had to figure out what to do about such women, or the women who practiced venerating and emulating such iconic feminine forces, here is Reginald Scot in 1584 detailing some of their purported supernatural powers:

“[Witches] can raise and suppresse lightning and thunder, raine and haile, clouds and winds, tempests and earthquakes. Others doo write, that they can pull downe the moone and the starres. Some write that with wishing they can send needles into the livers of their enimies. Some that they can transferre corne in the blade from one place to another. Some, that they can cure diseases supernaturallie, flie in the aire, and danse with divels. Some write, that they can plaie the part of Succubus, and contract themselves to Incubus; and so yoong prophets are upon them begotten, &c. Some say they can transubstantiate themselves and others, and take the forms and shapes of asses, woolves, ferrets, cowes, apes, horsses, dogs, &c. Some say they can keepe divels and spirits in the likenesse of todes and cats.”  The Discoverie of Witchcraft  

It's funny stuff to us, now, but back then, people did actually believe all this sorcery was real. They put old shoes in the attic to ward off evil. They said their prayers as if the Devil were camping on their doorstep. To this day, the images born of this dark age live on in our imaginations.

Whatever damage the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th centuries gave to Western thought, yet it did demand a rational mind that questioned reactions born of ignorance and fear. By the early 1800s, at least in Europe, executions for witchcraft had come to an end, but this was only after the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

That said, look what this Swedish king did as early as the 14th century (Translation by Pauli Kruhse):

The Letter of Protection by King Birger Magnusson for womankind in Karelia on Oct. 1, 1316.

The original parchment letter was until the end of 19th century kept in the Viipuri (Viborg) city archives. Now it has been moved to the National Archives in Helsinki. The backside of the document contains a writing: Privilege to womankind, wives widows maidens, in Viborg and the whole of Karelia given by King Birger Anno 1316 and similarly confirmed by King Albrecht Anno 1360.

All who will see this letter, we Birger, by the grace of God King of the Swedes and the goths, Salute wishing eternal Salvation in Lord. Through this note we will for both those to come as well for those living now, following the advice and consent of the Noble men Gentlemen Canute Jonsson, the judge (lagman) of the ostrogoths, Thor Kætilsson, and Johannes Brunckow, our high chancellor (drots) and other members of our council, firmly pass a statute, to be obeyed as a law, that all wives and women who live subjected to our castle of Vyborg or in the land of Karelia be they married, widows, nuns or virgins, shall enjoy peace and security like in our realm Sweden herself for both in property and person, so that our royal punishment will most severely meet the transgressors. Therefore all and everyone are strictly prohibited from burdening the foregoing wives and women with any kind of injustice or molesting, or inflicting on them any kind of corporal violence, if he wants in our kingdom to avoid the punishment, which is what is in our Swedish realm told in the due law. Date Yninge Anno Domini 1316, on the first of October.

(Seal)

At least by the year 1316, Karelia became quite officially a land of women.

Now let's return to a scene from the Voynich manuscript.

Aside from the fact that they're female, they don't at all look like Baba Yaga or Louhi, capable of working all this nasty preternatural mischief. Many scholars indeed ignore the Voynich women's obvious middle and advanced ages and pronounce them all that idyllic, vapid, cavorting, innocuous, sexually provocative creature, the nymph. Yet look how the older two appear to be brilliantly living up to the saying, "Nothing gets in the way of a postmenopausal woman." What if these are then, in fact, our Baba Yaga and Louhi? This could be how they saw themselves, not at all vicious hags but powerful women coming together and doing something cool with nature. Under attack from invading tribes, these women may not have had much choice in using trickery and making themselves out to be fiercely destructive forces. They could have been defending their land, their people, their freedom, their way of life, and their sons and daughters. Bad press would seem then a mixed blessing. On the one hand, people would hesitate to mess with you or your loved ones. After all, Adam von Bremen warns: AVOID THESE ISLES. On the other hand, eventually those same people could get organized enough to burn you. 

The profound dark cast on the significance of the Voynich manuscript and by extension the society which engendered it does not need a conspiracy in order to have transpired. It needed merely an all too common blind spot regarding women. Put that into the equation and all interpretation can become amazingly skewed, the obvious obscured and the obscure subsumed under more familiar endeavor.  

The rise and fall of great men, as of nations, are often involved in an obscurity, which the unaided powers of the brightest intellect cannot remove. As a dense, black cloud, covering the sun, shrouds all nature in gloom, till a gleam, darting from behind, not only gilds the edge, but illuminates and cheers the whole scene; so Revelation throws a clear light on the dark page of man’s story, by which the Divine Hand is seen reducing confusion to order, and introducing men and measures to promote ‘peace on earth, and goodwill toward men.’ 

This quote is taken from a preface written in 1858 by the Reverend Joseph Bosworth of Christ Church, Oxford. The passage introduces King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendium History of the World by Orosius. Every word screams teleology, hubris, and agenda. It is the same skewed perspective that made Pythagoras declare:

There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.

Here is a 19th c. depiction of the Norse sea goddess, Ran, surrounded by her water nymphs or wave girls.

The crone looks to be performing a similar ritual as those in the Voynich, and the girls are doing the same thing--watching and learning. Distilled into supernatural beings, these figures reside only in mythology. As figments of pure fancy far removed from the days when such women entered, here and there, the annals of history, they are romanticized. Distance allows them to be thus circumscribed back into certain discourses--as icons in art and literature. Thus emptied of their own meaning, they become merely vehicles for carrying others' meaning.

This phenomenon, called cultural cannibalism, leaves little left to piece together. Because of cultural cannibalism, the pieces that do survive rarely make sense within the context of history as we know it, which is Bosworth's and von Bremen's history. When a find is unearthed, it can cause an upset in how we think of our story, challenging our presumptions to an uncomfortable degree. Controversy inevitably follows on the heels of that cognitive dissonance.

Such is the world of the Voynich manuscript, a mystery with a thousand conflicting theories. It is one of the greatest anomalies the world has ever stumbled upon.