Year Without a Summer

The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer (also the Poverty Year and Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death) because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.72–1.26 °F). This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.

Evidence suggests that the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in April in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). This eruption was the largest eruption in at least 1,300 years (after the hypothesized eruption causing the extreme weather events of 535–536), and perhaps exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines.

Medieval records tell us that Slavs had a god called Radegast without other details. Interestingly, a lion headed idol with the duck on his head, found in 18th c. in the lake Tollensesee near Prillwitz, Mecklenburg, Germany, has inscription that says "Radegast"...

Finding of these idols was a big event in Europe at the time and initially researchers accepted their authenticity. But this was challenged in the mid-nineteenth century. The idols were alleged to be "clumsy bronze replicas of other idols unrelated to Slavs"...

Considering that there is no Perun or Veles in sight, no wonder that these idols were dismissed as non Slavic...But knowing what we know about the symbolism of Bull and Lion and how this two animals are related to Slavic, especially Serbian, mythology, I would beg to disagree...

Summer, the growing season, starts in Bull (Taurus) and ends in Lion (Leo). The Lion headed figure has bull on his chest because the Leo sun, the old sun contains bull Taurus sun, the young sun. The old Sun is the young sun in its heart...

Also it is the lion that kills the bull. The Leo is the end of summer, the death of summer. Also it is the beginning of autumn, the harvesting season, and this is when the bull gets slaughtered, killed, as a sacrifice for the good harvest...

In my post "Radegast", I identified the lion headed deity as Beli, Belen, Belenos, Belbog (Bel + Bog = White + God)...The god of the white part of the year...  

The white part of the year which starts on Bealtine in Gaelic calendar (Djurdjevdan in Serbian calendar) and ends on Samhain in Gaelic calendar (Djurdjic in Serbian calendar). You can read more about this in my post "Two Georges"...

This deity is opposed by Chernunos, Chernbog (Chern + Bog = Darkness + God), the god of the other, dark half of the year Samhain (Djurdjic) to Bealtaine (Djurdjevdan)...

I remembered seeing this idol for the first time and immediately asking: what the hell was a duck doing on its head? Knowing what I know now, I am certain that he has a duck on his head because ducks, which are migratory birds announce the beginning of the white part of the year...

They return to Europe and have ducklings at the end of April, just before the beginning of summer, which starts on the 6th of May. Duck is the Radegost,Radegast (Rad Gost = Welcome Guest). This is an euphemism for the herald of the return of summer...

Slavs believed that at the end of autumn, migratory birds fly to Irij, the "otherworld", the land of the dead. The sun went there with them, which is why winters are cold and dark... 

Slavs counted the beginning of summer from the day when the migratory birds returned from Irij. They even called summer "leto" which probably comes from "let" (flight). Basically the time between the arrival and departure of migratory birds. You can read more about Slavic migratory bird worship in my post "Leto"...

For Slavs, the most imprtant of all migratory birds was swallow. Swallow is considered to be "the herald of spring" by many peoples, like Ancient Greeks for instance. You can read more about this in my post "Herald of spring"

Bur for Slavs, swallow was also the bringer of luck and abundance. And protector of mankind. One South Slavic legend says that swallow "saved human race during the great flood" when it fought and defeated "the great snake". You can read more about the Slavic swallow folklore in my post "Swallows"...

Another Serbian legend says that once there were three suns, but dragon ate two. It would have eaten all three, if it wasn't for a swallow who managed to hide the last, third one, under her wing. This is why today we only have one sun...

There is also a version in which a snake devours the other two suns...In Slavic mythology dragon was considered to be "a very old snake". I wrote about "snake (dragon) vs Sun" Slavic folklore in my post "The enemy of the sun" 

In my post "Three suns" I postulated that "three suns" are description of perihelium, an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of two bright spots on each side of the Sun, mostly at sunrise or sunset, which are most prominent and striking during the winter. 

I then proposed that the swallow saving only one sun from a dragon is a description of the disappearance of the perihelion phenomenon in the spring...

It gets warmer and snakes come out right at the time when the "other two suns disappear". Fortunately, swallows come back from the south at the same time, right on time to save the last, third sun from the snake (dragon)...

In the same article I also asked a question: why does the legend says that "once there were thee suns"? Does it mean that once there were always three suns in the sky? How could that be possible?

I suggested that maybe this is the memory of the last ice age, when because of the freezing cold, the three suns rose and set every day, year round. When Europe warmed again, the perihelion stoped being every day event, two extra suns disappeared, leaving behind only one, our sun

Now here is the question that I didn't ask at that time: What happened with snakes and migratory birds during the ice age?

Depending how sudden the onset of the last ice age was (apparently very sudden), snakes either slithered down south or died from cold. When the land thowed and warmed, they probably slithered back up north...Eating the two suns in process. 🙂

But what about the migratory birds, like swallows? European swallows spend the winter in Africa south of the Sahara, in Arabia and in the Indian sub-continent. But they don't mate there during the winter. They only mate in Europe, during the summer...

So if one day summer never came, what happened with swallows? I alsways presumed that migratory patterns of birds are ancient and unchanging. But imagine you are a swallow, flying back from Africa, Arabia, India to Europe and finding it covered in ice. What do you do?

Go on and die from freezing and starvation? Are these migratory patterns so strongly encoded into birds that they would have indeed continued on into frozen Europe and all died?

If so who are today's European swallows? Did some African, Arabian and Indian swallows just decide one day to go up north to Europe toe check it out, because they heard it was neat?

Or did swallows turn back when they saw the frozen wasteland that was once their home? And if so did they find themselves flying back south wandering: now what? And what if the same thing happened year after year again and again?

How long before they stopped trying to go back to Europe? And if they did stop, why did they start flying up north to Europe again? Tourism? I woneder if anyone thought about this? What do you think? But boy were Slavs happy to see them again...