Rzepiór - Krakonoš
Because you guys need to know more about Slavic folklore.
So I’m gonna tell you about the god-divinity-ghost legendary figure from the Karkonosze mountains.
The Karkonosze mountains (part of the Sudetes) are a range on the border of Czech Republic and Poland, a range very special for many different reasons. There’s more folklore in there than it makes sense to write in a tumblr post, so this time I’m concentrating on Rzepiór.
His Czech name is Krakonoš, basically the same as they name of the mountains themselves, and the most popular name used in Poland is actually Liczyrzepa (lit. Counts Turnips), but Rzepiór is infinitely cooler and more menacing.
But, you say, does he need to be menacing? Isn’t he usually depicted as a bearded druid-like guy, with a staff and a beard and an affinity to animals? Doesn’t the slightly-comical name with the turnips come from the fact that he was distracted by counting turnips and thus a princess ran away from him?
Well, yeah. But those are... later legends.
The earliest depiction of Rzepiór (Mountain Ghost, Krakonoš, Rubezahl, Berggeist... it’s a border region so he has many names in many languages) comes from a 16th century map, of all things.* That’s right, he was put on a damn map, all Here-Be-Dragons style. Oh, and on the map he was drawn like this:
Yup. Giant horns, goat legs, really scary beak-face. Looks familiar? Looks like a lot of other Horned God, Wild-Hunt, Herne types? Yeah.
And the princess? Oh, he kidnapped her from her actual man. In the pre-Christian times, people used to sacrifice black cockerels to him. He was responsible for the extremely capricious and stormy weather of the Karkonosze mountains. But, on the Czech side, he’s also the one who gave humans the recipe for the traditional Czech sourdough soup (kyselo), and pestered the German landlords if they mistreated the rural Czech populace.
He is also credited with the creation of Błędne Skały - a rock “labyrinth” in the nearby Table Mountains. Which looks like this:
The shift from a menacing demon to a bearded old wanderer may have happened when the mountains stopped being mined for precious metals and minerals, and people didn’t need to be scared off so much. Or maybe because people got less scared of dark mountains and forests in general.
Whatever the reason for the change, his bearded-wanderer incarnation was on a postcard that Tolkien had. And which inspired the idea of Gandalf. So, yeah.
*(If you want to see the map itself, check here. Look for the highest peak of the mountain range, the demon figure is right below.)
