What was the Slavic peoples’ notion of death, and how did it shape the way they saw the Rusalka - the spirit associated with water, death and fertility.
“Neither woman nor fairy can I be,
I cannot die, I cannot live!”
- Dvořák’s Rusalka Opera
Rusalkas are believed to belong to the realm of the unclean dead - the spirits of those who had an unnatural death.
Many Slavic peoples distinguished between a “good” and a “bad” death. Depending on how a person died and what kind of funeral they got determined what would happen to them after death. Having a “good” death meant someone died naturally, at a later point in their life, and had reconciled with the world. They became ancestors who dwelled somewhere far away, out of this world, and could come back to the world of the living when they were ritually invited on important holidays, in time of remembrance.7
Those with a “bad” death, on the other hand, died unnaturally, untimely, suddenly, violently or accidentally, and could not pass to the world of the ancestors. Their body was either lost and didn’t have a burial, or if it was found, it was seen as “unclean” and was therefore buried in liminal places: at crossroads, boundary strips between fields, alongside roads, in the woods, or thrown in swaps or rivers.
The Folklore gathered in the 19th century tells us that the requirements for becoming a rusalka after death are any of the following:
- Being unbaptized
- Being young and unmarried
- Being betrothed and dying before your wedding
- Being pregnant out of wedlock
- Drowning by accident or otherwise
“In the vicinity of the Dnieper the peasants believe that the wild-fires which are sometimes seen at night flickering above graves, or around the tumuli called Kurgans, or in woods and swampy places, are lighted by the Rusalkas, who wish thereby to allure incautious travellers to their ruin ; but in many places these wandering " Wills o' the Wisp " are regarded as being the souls of unbaptized children, and so small Rusalkas themselves.” - Songs of the Russian people
Once a woman was believed to have become a rusalka, her family did not count on her assistance,5 but the community very much did. In fact they placed one of the most important parts of their lives in the hands of these spirits - the fertility of their crops. This will be the subject of my next video.
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