Detail map

Russia

4 entries in 4 subareas: 2 at grade A, 2 at grade B. The points fall where the entry was collected, not where the story is set. Hover a point to see the subarea, click it to open the entry.

The Russian North: the provinces of Arkhangelsk, Olonets and Vologda, the Onega basin and Russian Karelia, where the dated attestations and the shepherds' pacts are located; Dal's lexical and proverbial material is given as Great Russian in general, without localisation; cognates in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland

BLeshyRussia — The Russian North: the provinces of Arkhangelsk, Olonets and Vologda, the Onega basin and Russian Karelia, where the dated attestations and the shepherds' pacts are located; Dal's lexical and proverbial material is given as Great Russian in general, without localisation; cognates in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland

Russia, with denser documentation in the Russian North (Arkhangelsk, Olonets, Vologda) and in the central regions

ADomovojRussia — Russia, with denser documentation in the Russian North (Arkhangelsk, Olonets, Vologda) and in the central regions

Eastern Slavia, with a differentiated distribution: Polesia and Ukraine agrarian in character, the Russian North aquatic

ARusalkaRussia — Eastern Slavia, with a differentiated distribution: Polesia and Ukraine agrarian in character, the Russian North aquatic

East Slavic area: European Russia, with Afanasyev's variants concentrated in the central and southern Great Russian provinces and in the Russian North; lexical cognates in Poland (jędza) and Bohemia (jezinka)

BBaba YagaRussia — East Slavic area: European Russia, with Afanasyev's variants concentrated in the central and southern Great Russian provinces and in the Russian North; lexical cognates in Poland (jędza) and Bohemia (jezinka)

The entries, in brief

The folklore of Russia documented in this atlas: Domovoj, Rusalka, Baba Yaga and Leshy. Every entry is placed on the map at the point where it was collected or attested — not where the story is set — and carries its declared grade of documentation (2 at grade A, 2 at grade B), with the sources it comes from. The 4 subareas are not an administrative division: folklore lives in cultural areas, which rarely coincide with state borders.

Domovoj A
Spirit of the house and of the family, not of the locality. He shows himself as a hoary, hairy old man with shining eyes, or as a cat, a dog, a bear or a snake, or in the likeness of a dead member of the family or of the living…

Rusalka A
The appearance varies a great deal according to the region: very pale little girls with green hair and long arms, naked young women with light brown hair, in the south girls in white shifts with garlands. One trait is constant,…

Baba Yaga B
In the Russian variants collected in the nineteenth century she is an old woman living alone deep in the forest, in an izba that stands on hen's legs and turns round at the right formula; around it, in some texts, a fence of…

Leshy B
He is not one demon among others: he is the master of a stretch of forest, and that stretch has boundaries, which other leshies dispute. Dal' in 1863-1866 already gives him complete: he sings at full voice without words, claps…

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