Wheat wreath

Harvest, 1902 painting by Serbian painter Nadežda Petrović

In Labor, northern Croatia, when the last sheaf of wheat was cut, it was thrown as high up as possible in the air with these words: "God give us bread as tall as this". 

Then a wreath was made from the sheaf and wild flowers and was placed on the head of the most beautiful harvest girl. She would then take it to the field owner's house. What this girl looked like can be seen on this picture from Ukraine where they had similar ritual.

In Ukraine it was important that the girl was also a virgin. This is in accordance with many other Slavic fertility rituals which directly link female fertility and Earth fertility. Earth being "Virgin mother" is here represented by human virgin....

I Labor, the rest of the female harvesters would walk along with the girl carrying the wheat wreath singing:

We are going home, praying to god
God mighty, Bright Sun
Are you at home our lords
We are bringing you a present, a wheat wreath...

Once the procession arrived to the field owner's house, the girl would give him the wreath and in return she would get some change. Then everyone was given vine which they drink in front of the house before going in for dinner.

What this procession of harvest girls from the field into the village probably looked like in Croatia, can be seen on this 1910 painting by polish Alfred Wierusz-Kowalski entitled "Dożynki", which is what this end of harvest ritual was called in Poland.

The wreath was the central feature of most celebrations associated with dożynki, as it symbolised a rich harvest, the prospect of wealth and the power of new life vested in the grain gathered during the Summer. 

In many regions the grain from the wreath was the first batch of grain to be threshed. It was then set aside for next year's sowing and was the fist grain to be sawn. Reenactment of the threshing of the last sheaf grain, Ukraine.

The wheat wreath was also a symbol of sun, solar year and neverending cycle of death and rebirth (sawing, growing, harvesting, sawing...)

Considering that the ritual was found in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe, this was obviously once a Pan-Slavic harvest ritual...

Source for Croatian ritual:

"JUGOSLOVJENSKA ŽETVA - Običaji i obredi s uporedbama" by Ivo T. Franić

Source for East Slavic (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian) ritual

Dozinki (Wikipedia article)

Log cabin

When someone says log cabin, people immediately think of Scandinavia, because everyone knows that log cabins were invented by Scandinavians and that Scandinavians are the best at making them. But what if I told you that log cabins were a late cultural import into Scandinavia from the Slavic lands south and east of the Baltic sea?

The origin of these types of buildings can be traced to Pomeranian culture of the the late bronze age and early iron age, which developed from Lusatian culture. One of the best examples of the Pomeranian wooden architecture is the fortified town of Biskupin. Biskupin was an Iron Age fortified settlement in north-central (Wielkopolska) Poland (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship). When first discovered it was thought to be early evidence of Slavic settlement but archaeologists later confirmed it belonged to the Biskupin group of the Lusatian culture.

There are two settlement periods at Biskupin, which was located in the middle of a lake but is now situated on a peninsula, that follow each other without hiatus. Both settlements were laid out on a rectangular grid with eleven streets that are three meters wide. The older settlement from early Iron Age was established on a slightly wet island of over 2 hectares and consisted of ca. 100 oak and pine log-houses that are of similar layout and measure ca. 8 x 10 m each.They consisted of two chambers and an open entrance-area.These houses were designed to accommodate 10 to 12 persons. An open hearth was located in the centre of the biggest room. There are no larger houses that could indicate social stratification. Because of the damp, boggy ground the streets were covered with wooden planks. This is the reconstruction of one of the log cabins from Biskupin that can be seen in the Biskupin open air museum.

The settlement was surrounded by a tall wooden wall, or palisade, set on a rampart made up of both wood and earth. The rampart was constructed of oak trunks that form boxes filled with earth. The rampart is more than 450 m long and accompanied by a wooden breakwater in the lake. 6000–8000 m³ of wood have been used in the construction of the rampart.

The settlement at Biskupin belongs to the Hallstatt C and D periods (early Iron Age, 800-650 BC and 650-475 BC). However, dendrochronological analysis provided more accurate dating. It proved that oak wood used in the construction of the settlement was cut down between 747-722 B.C. Over half of the wood used was cut during the winter of 738/737 B.C.

What is very interesting is that the tradition of building dwellings and fortifications from logs was during the early Iron age found only in Pomeranian culture south of Baltic sea and not in Jutland or in Scandinavia.

The tradition of building log cabins was continued by the Central European Celts. This is a reconstruction of a Celtic house in Havranok, Slovakia.

The Havránok hill fort was an important religious, economic, and political center of the Púchov culture (300 BCE - 180 CE), in which the dominant Celtic tribe of Cotini mingled with the older people of the Lusatian (Pomeranian) culture.

In the early medieval period we find that the tradition of building dwellings and fortifications from logs was still exclusively found among Slavs living in the same area of the old Pomeranian Culture, south of Baltic sea, and further east, but not in Jutland and not in Scandinavia. As a matter of fact, the similarity between the Iron age Pomeranian log dwellings and fortifications, and Medieaval Slavic Pomeranian log dwellings and fortifications is so striking, that when Biskupin was originally discovered, it was presumed that it was a Medieval Slavic fort. Only carbon dating showed that Biskupin was in fact 1000 years older.

Here is an example of a typical Medieval Slavic fort: Chotěbuz - Podobora:

Slavs built both square semi-subterranean (sunk in) dwellings with heating devices in a corner and ground dwellings. They also used both log only and log frame with wattle doub construction technique.

Here are the reconstructions of completely sunken and semi sunken Medieval Slavic hut from Slovakia based on the actual discovered huts remains dated to the 6th - 7th century AD:

And this is what these types of houses looked like inside. Please note a built stone oven in the corner:

And here is a reconstruction of a Medieval Slavic surface log cabin, based on archaeological finds from Staré Město ("Old Town"), a town in the Zlín Region of the Czech Republic, again dated to the 6th - 7th century AD.

The same building technique using logs was unknown in Scandinavia until the 11th century, the time of the closest cooperation and intermixing between the Norse and the Slavs. This all indicates that log cabins and fortifications are a Slavic cultural import into Scandinavia.

When looking at the introduction of the joint timber houses in the Germanic areas of the Baltic, we have to look at the Jutland and other Danish areas of the southern Scandinavia separately from the Northern areas of Scandinavia. These two areas were politically and culturally separate and were linked to different Slavic tribal group. The Danes were politically and culturally linked with the Western Slavs (Polabians, Obodrites, Serbs, Poles) and the Norse and Swedes were politically and culturally linked with the Eastern Slavs (Rus). There is no wander then that in these two areas of Scandinavia we find two different types of the joint timber construction techniques.

In the Danish controlled areas, the earliest constructions of lying and crossing logs were found in the fortification rampart of Danevirke in southern Jutland, built in the 8th and 9th centuries. A similar technique has been found in a few houses in Haithabu (Hedeby) near Danevirke in the 9th century and in a well in Kaupang in Norway in the beginning of the 9th century. The type of wood used was oak which was cut lengthwise to get appropriate dimensions. The logs had a rectangular section, and the joints had both an upper and a lower notch that were rectangular. In Wollin and Gdansk (Poland), there were also joint timber houses made of oak wood, mostly built of round logs, but occasionally also of rectangular ones. The woodworking skills needed to build these houses were so advanced that they must have been developed somewhere else and then brought to Jutland. This points to the technological import from the South Baltic Western Slavic territories (today Germany and Poland) where joint timber houses were also constructed from oak wood for millenniums. The same types of rectangular oak profiled log houses were also built by Serbs in the Balkans and are still built today.

Here is an example of the advanced joint timber houses from Serbia. You can see that the oak logs were longitudinally split into beams (thick planks) which are then joined together using deep rectangular joins.

This is another house from Serbia which shows even more complicated rectangular log construction technique. This technique combines the wooden frame made out of thick square profile oak logs and thinner horizontal wooden beams (thick planks). The wooden beams with external joins are inserted into the internal joins on the vertical holding beams.

In the Norse and Swedish controlled areas, the earliest joint timber houses were found in Trondheim, Sigtuna and Olso. They all seem to be built around 1000 AD. Before that time all houses built in these areas of Scandinavia were framework buildings with wattle and daub. The woodworking skills needed to build these houses were also very advanced and again the only explanation for a sudden appearance of such advanced woodworking technology is that it must have been developed somewhere else and then brought to Scandinavia. One of the explanations is that this house building technology was perhaps developed in the Scandinavian countryside before the first towns were built. But we did not find any trace of houses built in this way anywhere in the countryside before they appeared in the above mentioned towns. I would say that this is more likely a sign that people who had long experience of using this technique came and settled in the area and built a town there. And people who did have such know-how at that time were Slavs of the old Russian kingdom. The joint timber houses from Staraya Ladoga, and Novgorod, which were built using the same material (pine logs) and the same design and technology (round joints on one or both sides) were built at least as early as the 8th century AD. As I said already East Slavs south and east of the Baltic sea were building these types of houses, from various types of wood since at least the 6th century AD. Norse had extensive political, economic and cultural contacts with the East Slavs in the old Russia for at least two centuries before the first joint timber houses (log cabins) appeared in Scandinavia. It is quite possible that some of the Slavs from the Old Russia settled in Scandinavia and it is them who brought their traditional home building technology with them.

In the work entitled: "About the Introduction of Joint Timber Building in Scandinavia", Karin Rosberg from Uppsala university argues this is exactly what happened.

In the intro to the paper Karin says that the issue of the introduction of joint timber building is old in both Norway and Sweden. Former Swedish researchers, such as Boëthius, Erixon, and Lundberg, have been very uncertain about this, and Lundberg believed it was introduced as early as during the Vendel Period, i. e. 550-800 AD. A few decades later, Hauglid in Norway assumed, with some caution, that it was introduced by king Harald Hårdråde in the middle of the 11th century.

She then proceeds to explain where and when the earliest joint timber houses and other structures were built, after which she describes similarities and differences between the Slavic and Scandinavian joint timber techniques for building houses. Finally this is what the author of this work thinks about the reason why the Scandinavians adopted joint timber building so late (1000 AD), even though they were for centuries in contact with Slavs who built the joint timber houses and fortifications?

"As I said before, joint timber building has very good heat qualities, which is needed in the Scandinavian climate. Accordingly, one would expect the Scandinavians to be quick to adopt a solid building technique which would also save much work with wood cutting for heating. And they did so at last, and the heat qualities were certainly an essential reason for joint timber building dominating in Scandinavia for about 900 years. But they did not adopt it until such a long time had passed as 200 years. Why? I suggest the reason for the delay was cultural. The Scandinavians readily adopted foreign dress fashion and consumer goods, but not so readily foreign housing. They probably had much of their identity in the houses, especially in their dwellings. The house shows who is the owner, and for the Vikings an old family was important. So a traditional Viking long house could be associated with an old and impressing family. In addition, for the Vikings their house was a sacred place and had a religious dimension. Such things made the housing more conservative than other cultural features. There are theories, expressed by Rapoport, about socio-cultural factors having a considerable impact on house form, and about house form having a considerable degree of constancy due to culturally linked aspects. These theories point in the same direction as my suggestion. Towards the end of the 10th century, the cultural difference between the Scandinavian and Slavic peoples decreased. (My comment: This happened due to a long period of political cooperation and cultural and physical mixing (intermarrying) between the Scandinavians and the Slavs. This eventually lead to the large Slavic settlement in Scandinavia and equally large Scandinavian settlement in the Slavic countries). Eventually they both—or at least parts of them—converted to Christianity. All this probably made the Scandinavians more ready to adopt the Slavic joint timber house building tradition. "

But once the Scandinavians did start making log cabins, they made them their own, to the point when today everyone thinks that joint timber log cabins are a native Scandinavian tradition. So much so that today even Slavs believe that they borrowed the technology for building their own joint timber log cabins from Scandinavians. Funny how things like this happen.

The below picture shows a typical joint timber log cabin from Scandinavia (Stockholm). Please note that it uses the same horizontal beam joining constriction technique like the first hose from Serbia that I showed above.

If anyone has any additional info on the development of the joint timber log cabins please let me know. 

As old as a tree

My son found some dead flies lying on the windowsill yesterday. He asked my wife what killed all these flies and she told him that flies only live for a few days and then they die "of old age". 


This made me think of trees which can live for hundreds and even thousands of years. To trees we probably look as short lived as the fruit flies look to us. Generations of people are born, live and die during the lifetime of a tree. People can live a long time, some can live a very long time, but even these longest human lives are just blips in lives of trees. 

I think that this is why the word for "ancient, primeval" in Slavic languages is "drevan". It comes from the same root that gave us the word "drvo, drevo, derevo" meaning tree. So "drevan" would then literally mean "as old as a tree"...

I love my language... :)

Fireflies

Fireflies light up the Midsummer night. This is just one of many amazing photos of fireflies taken by the Japanese photographer Yuki Karo. You can find them on his photo blog here. 

In the Balkans, fireflies come out around the time of the summer solstice. South Slavic words for firefly are "svitac", "svitnjak", "svijetnjak", "svitaljka", "cvitnjak", "kris", "krijes", "kres", "kresnica"...These are also the names used for fires and torches which are lit up on the shortest night of the year, as part of the Slavic summer solstice celebrations...

Happy Summer Solstice

Forest - the shushing place

In Serbian there are many words for forest. The most common word is "šuma". I love this word. It shows how old the Serbian language is and how rooted in nature it is. In Serbian word "šum" means rustling noise, shushing "šššš" "sh" noise, like the noise made by leaves blown and rustled by wind. The same sound is made by animals walking on fallen leaves or moving through the bushes in the undergrowth. 

Here is the sound I am talking about:

1. Light wind rustling sound 
2. Strong wind rustling sound
3. Animals walking on fallen leaves
4. Animals moving through the bushes in the undergrowth

All these sounds are made by leaves, eather on trees or on the ground. The sound is in Serbian called "šum" and the action of making this sound is "šumoriti, šumeti" but also "šuškati" and place where this sound is most heard is called "šuma", the place that makes "šum", the "šu" sound. So word šuma comes from šu + ima = shishing + has = what has a shushing sound, forest or just from šum - a = the shushing place. This is a great example of how words developed from natural sounds.

What is very interesting is that in Armenian "xshum" or "hshum" is the word which means the noise the leaves make when rustled by the wind and the word "ashun" means autumn, the time when dry leaves fall on the ground, the "shushiest" time of the year. 

Central Serbia was until the end of the 19th century covered with ancient oak forest, one of the last ancient oak forests left in Europe. Because of this, the whole area was called "Šumadija" meaning the land of forests.

Oaks

Have you ever wondered why oak trees and oak groves were considered sacred in the past? In the next couple of posts I will talk about oaks, acorns, and people who worshiped Oaks and ate acorns. I hope you will enjoy the story.

I will start with Oaks.

Oaks are the most widespread trees in the world. They belong to the family Fagaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. This plant family also includes beeches, chestnuts, and chinquapins. Fagaceae are woody trees and shrubs whose nut is enclosed in a shell-like casing. The Fagaceae family originated in Asia, first appearing in the fossil record during the Early Cretaceous, more than 100 million years ago. Subsequent radiation toward Europe and North America produced geographic dispersion as well as divergence of genera. The extinct genus Dryophyllum, one of the earliest known Fagaceae, is believed to be the ancestor of modern oaks.

Based on molecular genetics analysis, the genus Quercus is estimated to have separated from Castanea about 60 million years ago. Oaks first appear in the fossil record in North America during the Paleogene between 55 to 50 million years ago. Most interspecific separations occurred within the Quercus species between 22 and three million years ago. During this period, oaks became the most dominant tree type in the Fagaceae family.

Depending on the classification scheme, there are somewhere between 450 and 600 oak species; one of the chief points of confusion is the taxonomic status of many hybrid oaks. North America contains the largest number of oak species, with approximately 90 occurring in the United States. Mexico has 160 species, of which 109 are endemic. The second greatest center of oak diversity is China, which contains approximately 100 species. However all the oaks can be divided into two broad sub groups: white oaks and red and black oaks.

The white oaks of Europe, Asia and North America. Acorns mature in 6 months and taste sweet or slightly bitter; The inside of an acorn shell is hairless. The bark is light in color, gray to light gray. The leaves mostly lack a bristle on their lobe tips, which are usually rounded.

The red and black oaks of Europe Americas and Asia. Acorns mature in 18 months and taste bitter to very bitter. The inside of the acorn's shell can be hairless but is in most cases woolly. The bark darker in color. Its leaves typically have sharp lobe tips, with bristles at the lobe tip.

The greatest concentrations of oaks are between subtropical and middle-temperate climate regimes. Further north than this, conifer species typically become dominant; further south, oaks cannot successfully compete with taller trees of tropical rainforests with respect to sunlight, and in some cases due to intolerance to high rainfall combined with high temperatures. Many oaks occur as top level canopy species, but an equally large number are shrubs or sub-canopy level associates.

In Europe, fossil pollen evidence indicates that during the last Glacial Maximum (20 000 years ago), oak species were confined to three main Pleistocene refugia in southern Europe, in Iberia, Italy and the Balkans, and it is believed that oak started to emerge from these refugia as the ice caps began to retreat at the beginning of the Holocene, 12 000 years ago. Since then oak trees have been an important element of the vegetation of much of Europe. The common presence of oaks in forests throughout prehistory is evidenced by the numerous charcoal fragments found within the archaeological record of most prehistoric cultures. In the Boreal period, 9000 - 7500 years ago, mixed oak forests increasingly dominated the forest landscape. Mixed forests expanded from the floodplains into their current range and then gradually transformed to acidophilous (acid loving) oak forests. A new type of forest, in which beech and fir were the dominant species, spread and became dominant in the Subboreal period, late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, 5700–2600 years ago. However, the process of the degradation of mixed oak forest and the spread of modern forest communities did not happen everywhere at the same time and with the same effect. For instance in Central Serbia, ancient oak forests survived until the 19th century giving the place its name "Šumadija" meaning the land of forests.

There is a strong association between human civilisations and oaks, beginning at least 30,000 years ago in Europe and Asia, and 14,000 years ago in North America. The reason for this is that oak is one of the most useful trees in the world.

Oak trees are hardwoods which means that they are strong and hard yet easy to work with. In addition, oak wood is one of the most dense naturally occurring materials, while high content of tannin makes it resistant to both fungal diseases and insects. Because of all these properties, oak wood has been used since ancient times for general construction purposes as roundwood for pillars and split for planks for flooring and furniture. Oak is also used to make shingles for traditional roof construction. In Slavic countries Oak has been the main wood used for house and furniture building since neolithic times. This is an example of a traditional house from Montenegro which contains storage for animals, carts, and tools on the ground level and living spaces on the upper level for the family. The ground level walls are constructed using stones and two wooden reinforcing bands made from oak for stabilisation as well as portions made with oak timber and planking. The upper level walls are constructed using oak timber frame with wattle and daub covered with a plaster material. The covered exterior stair and gallery are typically found in the region. The roofing is framed with oak wooden rafters and purlins and covered with oak wooden shingles (šindra)

Because of its toughness and water and rot resistance, oak has also been used to make agricultural tools like ploughs (19 century Serbia):

 
as well as waggons (20th century Croatia).

 
White oak wood is water and rot resistant but also waterproof and was used for making kitchen utensils such as serving bowls and other liquid containers such as casks, butter churns, bread kneading and washing basins, chopping boards...

For the same reason white oak was used for boat and ship building since the neolithic times. The earliest boats were dugouts made from single oak or linden trunks. In Slavic countries oak dugouts were still being made in the 19th century, like this one from Serbia:

 
Oak wood is extremely good firewood. Dense hardwoods like oak have a higher energy content per cord and so release more heat per firebox load. They also produce long-lasting fires and coal beds. This makes them ideal for domestic heating but also as the source of heat in metallurgy particularly in iron working.

Oak is particularly good for making charcoal. Charcoal is a light black residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from wood, mostly oak. Charcoal is a light black residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from wood, mostly oak. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen. Historically, production of wood charcoal in locations where there is an abundance of wood and dates back to a very ancient period, and generally consists of piling billets of wood on their ends so as to form a conical pile, openings being left at the bottom to admit air, with a central shaft to serve as a flue. The whole pile is covered with turf or moistened clay. The firing is begins at the bottom of the flue, and gradually spreads outwards and upwards. The logs burn very slowly and transform into charcoal in a period of 5 days' burning. The massive production of oak charcoal was a major cause of deforestation, especially in Central Europe. The same traditional method of making oak charcoal is still used in the Balkans. These are burning charcoal piles in Bosnia, present time:

Oak bark is also rich in tannin, and is used by tanners for tanning leather. Tanning is the process of treating skins of animals to produce leather, which is more durable and less susceptible to decomposition. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name (tannin is in turn named after an old German word for oak or fir trees, from which the compound was derived). This picture is showing bark peeling from a cut down oak tree:

Oak apple or oak gall is the common name for a large, round, vaguely apple-like gall (outgrowth) commonly found on many species of oak. Oak apples range in size from 2–5 cm in diameter and are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae. The adult female wasp lays single eggs in developing leaf buds. The wasp larvae feed on the gall tissue resulting from their secretions.Oak galls have been used in the production of ink since at least the time of the Roman Empire. From the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, iron gall ink was the main medium used for writing in the western world.

Oak is also, with beech and birch, a host to one of the most important fungi in the world, Fomes fomentarius. Fomes fomentarius, commonly known as the tinder fungus, false tinder fungus, hoof fungus, tinder conk, tinder polypore or ice man fungus, is a species of fungal plant pathogen found in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. The species produces very large polypore fruit bodies which are shaped like a horse's hoof and vary in colour from a silvery grey to almost black, though they are normally brown. It grows on the side of various species of tree, which it infects through broken bark, causing rot. The species typically continues to live on trees long after they have died, changing from a parasite to a decomposer.

Though inedible, F. fomentarius has traditionally seen use as the main ingredient of amadou, a material used primarily as tinder. Tinder is the material used to catch the spark in primitive fire making and also to transport fire across long distances. Tinder fungus can smolder for days preserving the amber alive.

The 5,000-year-old Ötzi the Iceman carried four pieces of F. fomentarius, concluded to be for use as tinder. It also has medicinal and other uses. F. fomentarius has a circumboreal distribution, being found in both northern and southern Africa, throughout Asia and into eastern North America, and throughout Europe, and is frequently encountered. The species most typically grows upon hardwoods. In northern areas, it is most common on birch, while, in the south, beech is more typical. In the Mediterranean, oak is the typical host.

Mixed oak forests and oak savannahs are also ideal growing ground for numerous edible mushrooms. Some of them grow on fallen trees and stumps, some near the roots, some under the foliage. Different species ripen at different times of the year. Depending on the climate there is at least one type of a mixed oak forest mushrooms that can be harvested pretty much at any time of the year, but the main mushroom season is from late spring to late autumn. Mushrooms would have been one of the main food sources during this time as they are easy to collect and prepare and would by themselves provide enough protein in the diet. The main types of mushrooms which grow on or around oaks are: truffles (tartuf or gomoljača in Serbian), porcini (vrganj in Serbian), lumpy bracket (Jelenovo uvo or hrastov žbunac), Caesar's mushroom (jajčara or rujnica in Serbian), royal bolete (kraljevka in Serbian), the miller or the sweetbread mushroom (brašnjača in Serbian), russula (medena, medenka in Serbian). My favourite is porcini (vrganj in Serbian). Balkans is the home of the giant porcini mushrooms which grow in oak savannahs. Me and my brother used to make a lot of money every year from picking mushrooms in forests. Once when we were 10 and 8, while picking mushrooms with my father on mountain Vlasina in the south east of Serbia, we found a truly giant one which was over half a meter in diameter and over 4 kilos in weight. Unfortunately I don't have any picture of this mushroom, but here are some other giant vrganj (porchini) mushrooms found in Serbia and Croatia:

Oak doesn't lose all the leaves during the winter like other decidious trees. The leaves turn golden but stay on the branches until spring.

In the Balkans at the end of October farmers used to cut the outer branches of young oak trees, specifically grown for this purpose in thickets, and store them in stacks for fodder to feed livestock during the winter. This practise is in English called polarding. Polarding produces "pollard hay", basically dry branches with lots of dry leaves, which are used as livestock feed. The trees are pruned at intervals of two to six years so their leafy material would be most abundant. Apart from oak, ash branches are also cut for this purpose. In Serbian this "pollard hay" is called "lišnjak" or "šuma". The branches are cut and then dried for two days. They are then collected in armloads and brought to the specially prepared stake called "stožina", "stožer" where the armloads of branches are placed around the central stake, leaves towards the stake, in the same way you would place armloads of hay or wheat. As they are laid down, the branches are compressed by standing on them. In the end the top of the stack is covered with fern and hay and thick oak branches with leaves turned outward. This type of fodder is used for feeding sheep and goats during the second part of winter when other animal food like hay is running low. In Croatia Lamb is sacrificed at the beginning of the oak polarding and eaten communally by the men who do the branch cutting. Polarding is considered dangerous, probably because the oak is considered sacred and cutting oaks is activity that brings bad luck. This is a picture of stacked "lišnjak":

The oak inner bark, as well as the inner bark of certain trees like cedar, poplar, linden (basswood, lime), sweet chestnut, willow, elm can be used to make excellent cordage... Tree bark is made up of two portions, the inner bark or phloem (which passes the sugary sap around the tree), and the outer bark, which acts as the waterproof skin of the trunk, protecting from disease and extremes of temperature. The bit that is good for making cordage is the inner bark. It consists of long interwoven fibres that form an interlocking weave. It peels readily from the tree and is easy to work with. Bark from dead limbs provides the best material. The best dead limbs are ones that have been dead for a week or two. Any longer and the bark will have dried out a lot. The inner bark cordage is very strong and durable and it stays flexible without cracking when bent when dry.

Oaks were also used as medicine for millennia. Oak was used to treat bleeding, tumors, swelling and dysentery as well as a diuretic and as an antidote to poison. Snuff made from powdered root was used to treat tuberculosis. The leaves have been employed to promote wound healing. Oak has been used as a Quinine substitute in the treatment of fevers. Tannins provide many of the healing properties of oak. Tannins bind with proteins in tissues, making a barrier resistant to bacterial invasion. Tannins strengthen tissues and blood vessels. They reduce inflammation and irritation, especially of skin and mucus membranes.The plant parts used for healing include the inner bark, root, leaves and acorns. Modern scientific research confirms that oak possesses the following healing properties: astringent, fever reducing, tonic, antiseptic, anti-viral, anti-tumor, and anti-inflammatory actions. In addition, oak has been used to get rid of worms and other parasites.

You can see from all of this that Oak is something of a wonder tree. But the best part is yet to come. Acorns. Oaks produce acorns, a lot of them. Squirrels, deer, wild boar love to eat acorns, sometimes to the point of acorns being 25% of their fall diet.

 
Which makes oak forests ideal hunting grounds for early hunters who hunted with fire hardened spears made from oak or ash like this one.

But people were not going to watch all those animals munching acorns without trying acorns themselves. The rest is history....Acorns have been eaten by humans since at least late Paleolithic times right up to modern times. And I will write about acorns and acorn eaters in my next few posts.

Grange circle

In several of my previous posts I have been talking about sun circles. I talked about their origin in my post about Henges - rondel enclosures. I talked about how they were used as solar observatories for determining the beginning of the lunisolar calendar in my post about Calendars. In my post about Stone circles on mountain Devica, I talked about the solar observatory called Bogovo Gumno from Serbia, and I said that this sun circle can help us understand the purpose of the stone circle complex known as Grange circles from Ireland and the meaning and significance of the term Grange itself. In this post I will finally talk about Grange circle.

Grange stone circle (Lios na Gráinsí or Fort of the Grange) 300m west of Lough Gur in County Limerick, Ireland, is situated beside the Limerick-Kilmallock road, 4 km north of Bruff. Composed of 113 standing stones, the Grange Stone Circle is the largest and finest in Ireland. Seán P. Ó Ríordáin excavated the Grange Stone Circle in 1939. During the excavations he found more than 4,000 shards of pottery, dating from the Early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age, spanning a period of some 2,600 years.

Photo by David Hogwood

Seán P. Ó Ríordáin concluded that the Grange circle was a site of great importance, most likely of a ritual nature, from possibly as far back as the Early Neolithic period.


I believe that Grange circle was originally a threshing floor. I also believe the Grange circle is an example of a threshing floor which was eventually turned into a temple dedicated to the Thundering Sun, the god of weather, god of grain, Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba, Grom Div, the Thunder Giant. 

Threshing floor is a flat, smooth and hard surface used for threshing, a process of separating the grain from the straw and husks. The process of threshing is performed generally by spreading the sheaves on the threshing floor and causing oxen, cattle or horses to tread repeatedly over them. The animals are made to walk in a circle. In order to make the animals walk in circles, a man needs to stand in the center of the pile of grain which is being threshed and restrict and direct the movement of the oxen, cattle or horses using reins or rope. Alternatively a central pole can be erected, to which the animals are tied and then they are urged to walk in circles by a man walking behind them.The threshing floors also usually have walls built around them to prevent the grain from being blown off the threshing surface by the wind. This is done to mark the edge of the threshing circle and to prevent the grain being blown away. This creates a flat shallow pan like circular enclosure with a compacted hard surface and a central pole.

The Grange stone circle comprises a ring of continuous upright stones up to 2.8m high, with a diameter of 45m and backed by an earthen bank 9m wide and about 1.2m tall (the wall). The entrance on the eastern side is paved and flanked by upright stones. Clay has been packed down to a depth of 60 cm across the whole area of the enclosure (compacted hard surface). Its near perfect shape and the discovery of a post hole in the very centre of the enclosure, indicates that the circle was measured out from a central stake with a rope (central pole). Here is the picture of the Grange circle.



This creates a flat shallow pan like circular enclosure with a compacted hard surface and a central pole, a threshing floor, a grange. 

In my post called Bogovo Gumno - God's threshing floor I explained how in the Balkans the threshing floors are linked to solar cereal farming agricultural cults. I explained how they were until very recently used not only for threshing grain but also as solar observatories and as religious ceremonial grounds. 

Agriculture is shaped around the weather. At certain times of the year, certain things had to be done by peasant farmers or crops would not have grown. Farming, in this sense, is  controlled by the weather and the weather is controlled by the Sun and its cycle.

In order to know when certain activity needed to be done, the farmers needed to know the exact date. To determine the exact date, the farmers used threshing floors as a solar observatories.

Grange circle in Ireland was also used as a solar observatory. The stone circle is aligned with the rising sun at the Summer Solstice on the morning of which the sun shines on top of the largest stone in the stone circle known as Crom Dubh's stone casting the shadow directly into the centre of the circle. 

These two amazing pictures are taken from a great photo article about Grange circle by Tom Nelligan, which you can find on "The Standing Stone" blog.

If you are able to determine the exact date of the summer solstice, you are able to determine the beginning of the solar year. And that allows you to use 12 months lunar calendar for calculating time and determining the exact date repeatedly and accurately. Being able to determine the exact date, gives you the power to predict the weather, to predict "the will" of the Sun god. 


And this is why it is important for the cereal farmers to determine the exact date. The cereals can only be sown after the soil thaws and the temperature of the soil reaches certain temperature. The minimum germination soil temperature for wheat, barley and oats is about 5 degrees Celsius but the optimal germination temperature is about 20 degrees Celsius. So the sowing has to be done at the time of the year when the temperature is rising between 5 degrees and 20 degrees Celsius. This is the temperature of the period between the end of March and the end of April. After the cereal germinates, it then takes, depending on the temperature,  approximately 103 days for spring wheat to grow and ripen. This is why the harvest time is the end of July beginning of August.

And this is why it is "the will" of the Sun that people plow and harrow in March, sow in April, and harvest in August.  

Here is the list of the main agricultural activities per month. The dates are most appropriate to central and northern Europe. In southern Europe the growing season is going to be longer and drier and the winter not as harsh. 

Month	work that needed to be done	weather the farmer expected (wanted)
January	mending and making tools, repairing fences	showers, snow
February	carting manure and marl	showers, snow
March	plowing and spreading manure	dry, no severe frosts
April	spring sowing of seeds, harrowing	showers and sunshine
May	digging ditches, first plowing of fallow fields	showers and sunshine
June	hay making, second plowing of fallow field, sheep-shearing	dry weather
July	hay making, sheep-shearing, weeding of crops	dry early, showers later
August	cereal harvesting, threshing	warm, dry weather
September	legumes harvesting and threshing, plowing and pruning fruit trees	showers
October	last plowing of the year	dry, no severe frosts
November	collecting acorns	showers,snow and sunshine
December	mending and making tools, killing animals	showers, show and sunshine

In the above list you can see the list of the agricultural activities and the weather that the farmer expected, wanted. But we all know that the weather we expect and want is not always the weather that we get. Agriculture is extremely sensitive to climatic oscillations. Particularly sensitive to weather changes is grain farming. Grain farming is a long drawn out process which spans over four months from plowing to threshing. During that time the weather can turn bad and the late frost can kill the seeds, the heavy rain or hail in late summer can break the stalks, the drought during the growing season can burn the plants and the crops will be ruined. This means that even if you are able to determine the day of the year and even if you know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done, and even if you do it all right, you are still not guaranteed the bountiful harvest.

If you are a cereal farmer, and if your life depends on grain yield, and if grain yield in turn depends on the weather, and if the weather depends on the Sun, then sun very quickly becomes your God, the God of weather, the God of grain.

In Serbian tradition, Sun is called the "Višnji Bog", the High God, and is perceived as a living being. Sun is born every year in the winter on the winter solstice day. He then grows into a young man Jarilo on the 6th of May. The 6th of May is the day of the strongest vegetative, reproductive power of the sun. This day marks the middle of the growing season. This day also marks the beginning of the summer. Sun then becomes the powerful ruler Vid on the day of the summer solstice, the 21st of June the longest day of the year. This is the end of the growing season and the beginning of the ripening season. The sun then becomes the old man and terrible warrior Perun on the 2nd of August the hottest day of the year. This day marks the end of the summer, the beginning of autumn and the beginning of the harvest season.

These three gods are just different ages, faces of one god, the Sun god, the god of weather, the god of Grain, Dabog, the God that gives. He has three faces (Jarilo, Svarog (fire), Svetovid (light), Perun (thunder)) and this is why he is also Triglav, Trojan, Trinity, Trimurti. 

In his most powerful incarnation, at the end of summer and beginning of autumn, in the middle of the light part of the year, at the beginning of the harvest season, he is becomes the Thundering Sun Ilios, Hromi Daba, Crom Dubh, Grom Div, the Thunder Giant. This thunder giant has many names in many cultures. He is Slavic Perun and Celtic Lugh, Breton luc'h and Cornish lughes, Serbian Luč meaning spark, lightning. The proof that the thunder good represents the cumulative power of the sun, that he is Triglav, Trojan, can be seen from the representations of the Celtic god Lugh. He is represented as three headed, Triglav:

And from the Irish tradition and the fact that Lughnasad and Domhnach Crom Dubh are one and the same, we can conclude that Lugh and Crom Dubh are also one and the same. Lugh is the lightning face of the Thundering Sun, Thunder Giant, Grom Div, Crom Dubh. 

It is to this Three Headed Thunder Giant that the final, the most important prayer is uttered on the threshing floor just before the harvest, on the first (second) of August, Lughnasad, Domhnach Crom Dubh: 

"Please god give us enough grain so that we can survive through the winter".

Then the grain is harvested and threshing starts. The threshing is the moment when the months of hard work and fervent pray are finally supposed to turn into food. Threshing time is the moment when the people will find out whether they will feast or whether they will starve through the winter. The threshing time is also the time of truth. The threshing floor is the place where every year the relationship between the farmers and their God of Grain is tested. If the harvest was bountiful, the Thunder Giant, the God of Weather and the God of Grain did hear the prayers and did receive the sacrifices and was pleased with both and that is why the threshing floor is full of grain. But if the threshing floor is empty, that means that the Thunder Giant, the God of Weather and the God of Grain is angry and displeased and that more prayers and more sacrifices are needed to please him, and maybe next year he will give good weather and the threshing floor will be full of grain. 

The harsher the climate is the and more unpredictable and volatile the weather is, the more and more uncertain the outcome of the harvest becomes and more and more likely are people to starve. This makes people more and more dependent on the apparent "will of the weather god" and more and more desperate. In Europe this eventually lead to the creation of the God of Weather, the God of Grain. And to the conversion of a threshing floors into temples of Grom Div, Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba.

The largest stone in the Grange stone circle is known as Rannach Cruim Duibh which suggests that the circle was associated with the festival of Domhnach Crom Dubh, Lughnassa. Cruim Duibh, Crom Dubh is according to the Irish annals credited with bringing grain to Ireland. The stone is estimated to weigh more than 40 tons and was transported over a distance of three miles. It is very significant that the Crom Dubh stone is cuboid, an obelisk with orthogonal sides. I will talk about that more in one of my next posts.

Next to the massive Crom Dubh stone is a smaller stack of stones said to represent the grain child. I would suggest that the small stack of stones represents a stack of breads like this one:

Bread is the grain child. It is bread that Crom Dubh brought with him. It is bread that people are praying for. It is bread that will be made from the grain threshed on this holy ground, the threshing floor. This is why a representation of a stack of breads was placed next to the Crom Dubh stone.

Here I have to ask a question: What does "Rannach Cruim Duibh" actually mean? The Irish dictionary says that the word "rannach" means apportioning, sharing; open-handed, departmental. Put together with Cruim Duibh, this name is both ungrammatical and 
meaningless. But what if these are just the names for the small stack of stones representing breads and for the big stone representing Crom Dubh? The word "gráinne" in Irish means corn, grain. In Serbian word for food is "hrana" but it is often pronounced as "rana". I believe that the word was originally "grana" and that it comes from times of the first neolithic farmers and which is based on the ancient root "gra" meaning something small round. Word gra is still used in Serbian as a word for legume seeds. I will talk about this in detail in one of my next posts. So "Rannach Cruim Duibh" should really be "Rannach, Hrana, Grana", "Cruim Duibh" meaning "grain, food", "grom div, god". 

Professor Ó Ríordáin postulated that the circle dated from the Late Neolithic and that it was built c. 2,200 B.C. Archaeologist Helen Roche, however, has suggested that the Grange stone circle was constructed in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1000 BCE) on a site that may have been sacred for thousands of years.

I believe that the building date proposed by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin (2200 bc) is much closer to the actual building date. I believe that the Grange circle was contemporary with the Newgrange and that was certainly built between 3200 bc and 2200 bc. However, additions and changes were probably made in the following millenniums as the worship of Crom Dubh persisted in Ireland up until the arrival of Christianity. 

The worship of Crom Dubh or Crom Cruiach, the old Irish god of agriculture, is most closely associated with Tigernmas, sometimes called Tiernmas, the Irish high king who is said to have perished while worshiping this god. Tigernmas is sometimes referred to as the “culture king”, because it is said that he was the one who brought aspects of civilisation to Ireland including the cereal farming, smithing of gold and silver, the dyeing of fabrics, and the making of music and art.

Grain farming arrived in Ireland in the fourth or third millennium bc. The Grange circle, the temple of Crom Dubh, the god of grain was built in the third millennium bc. Metallurgy was brought to Ireland in the third millennium bc. 

There is a well established cultural distribution path Balkans - South Baltic (Pomorje, Pomerania) - Ireland which has been in operation since at least fifth millennium bc. I wrote about this in my posts about henges and in my post about tochars.  

In the 6th millennium bc, in Serbia, mixed together we find highly developed metallurgical Vinča culture and highly developed grain farming Blagotin culture. These two cultures had to be in contact with each other. Vinca houses had grinding stones and bread baking ovens. Is it possible that from the 6th millennium bc, metallurgy and grain farming spread together into Europe from Serbia? And if so did they reach Ireland together, brought by the same people, Fomorians, people from Pomorje, the land by the sea, South Baltic, known today as Pomerania?

If this is the case, then Tigernmas lived in the 3rd or 4th millennium bc. Is it possible that the Irish oral tradition has preserved records of events that happened 5000, 6000 years ago? Is it possible that metallurgy arrived in Ireland earlier than we think, at the same time when grain farming arrived? Or did grain farming arrive in Ireland later than we think, at the same time with metallurgy? Is Crom Dubh 5000 thousand years old deity and is Crom Dubh, Hromi Daba, Grom Div the oldest European God who is still celebrated in Ireland and Serbia? Did Grom Div arrive to Ireland from the Balkans with the first metallurgists to reach Ireland? Did he then in Ireland turn into Crom Dubh over the following milleniums as the meaning of the name was lost? And did he then arrive back to the Balkans with Celts where he finally became Hromi Daba?

Appart from the biggest stone in the circle being called Cruim Duibh, we have another clue that the Grange circle functioned as a temple of Crom Dubh. The Grange circle has a ceremonial entrance. 

This ceremonial entrance is lined with stones in the same way as the Grange circle itself. The very entrance of the circle is marked with two large stones. This great pic is taken from http://irishantiquities.bravehost.com article about Grange circle. 

Originally, I thought that the ceremonial entrance was aligned with the sunrise on Lughnasadh, but I was wrong. 

The ceremonial entrance was made in such a way that it is aligned with the sunrise on Beltine and the sunset on Samhain, the actual Celtic New Year (in Celtic calendar, days start with sunset). Here is a great pic of that sunset by Ken Williams.

This day also marks the end of the harvest. Which means that on that evening, both the people and the God would enter the threshing floor together so that people can pray in the presence of the God and offer him their thanksgiving sacrifices... 

Like bulls. During excavations no structures were found but two hearths; a few un-burnt human bones, some animal bones (mainly cattle), some bronze materials and numerous Neolithic pottery pieces were discovered.


According to an Irish dinsenchas ("place-lore") poem in the 12th century Book of Leinster, Crom Dubh's, Crom Cruach's cult image, consisting of a gold figure surrounded by twelve stone figures, stood on Magh Slécht ("the plain of prostration") in County Cavan. In the 9th century Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick the deity is called Cenn Cruach, and his cult image consists of a central figure covered with gold and silver, surrounded by twelve bronze figures. Jocelin's 12th century Life and Acts of St. Patrick tells much the same story. Here the god is called Cenncroithi, interpreted as "the head of all gods". 

In the Grange circle, twelve large stones have been placed at intervals around the stone ring, each standing directly opposite one of the other 'axial' stones. This corresponds to the 12 lunar months of the solar year. Are these the 12 stones which eventually became 12 stone idols from the Irish legends? In central Serbia, on the first day of threshing, the first sheaf of grain is stuck on top of the stožer, the central pole of the threshing floor, and it stays there until the end of threshing. As I said in my post about threshing floors, I believe that originally the god of grain lived in the stožer, the central pole of the threshing floor. I believe that the cuboid obelisk representation of Crom Dubh is a later development. The sheaf of wheat stuck on top of the stožer central pole is Crom Dubh carrying a sheaf of grain, which eventually became the golden idol of Crom Cruach from the Irish legends. Cruach means a sheaf, a stack of corn, a heap of grain. In Serbian "kruh" mean heap of grain, bread.

Is the Grange circle the temple of Crom Dubh (Cruach) that the Irish annals talk about? Or Is Grange circle just one of many similar holy threshing floors strewn across pre-Christian Ireland?

Grange circle was a threshing floor which was at the same time also a solar observatory and a temple dedicated to Crom Dubh. Crom Dubh was the main god of pre-Christian Ireland and it is not a surprise to find many Grange place names around Ireland. Here is the map showing the distribution of place names with the root gráinsí, gráinsigh, gráinseach, Ghráinseach in Ireland:

What does the word grange mean and where does it come from? Official etymology says that the word grange comes from Irish gráinsí, gráinsigh, gráinseach, Ghráinseach. It is said that it means "granary, monastic farm"). Is there a reason why "grange" means a monastic farm and just a farm? Is it possible that many Monasteries were built on the grounds of old Granges, holy threshing floors dedicated to Crom Dubh, the god of grain? I believe that the word "gráinseach" originally meant threshing floor.  Gráinne in Irish means corn, grain. In my post about the people of the blade i talked about the ancient "sk, sek" root meaning to cut. In Irish it survived as a small cluster represented with the word "scean" (pronounced shkian) means knife but also to crack, split, sever. Is it possible that "gráinseach" is "gran" + "sek" = grain + cut = harvest, the place where cut grain was brought to be threshed, threshing floor, granary?

In the end, the dual use of Granges as both threshing floors and solar observatories, and the link between the Sun and Granin is embedded in the Irish language. In Irish "grian"  means sun and "gráinne" means corn, grain. But I will talk about that in my next Post. Until then stay happy.