Archaeologia Baltica

The object of this publication is the anecdotes about famous people and personages of the movies and literature. The research helped to identify the most popular personages and describe the images of them. It can be done conclusion that in the anecdotes which are told in Lithuanian the personages of movies and literature are more popular than the real famous people (politicians, sportsmen or pop stars). The images of personages are ambivalent, they can be shown in positive situations but more often these personages are negative: the features of the characters are drawn ironically; the results of their activities are estimated in the mocking and even scornful way.

The article deals with the issues related to the specifics of the incantation as a genre of oral folklore, history of collecting, publishing and the beginning of their studying in Russia. The main emphasis is put on the first monographic work dedicated to conspiracies. Scientific portrait of the author is represented, his work, translations and reprinting are analyzed. Features that have made the book classic are established.

The paper deals with the relationship between Christianisation and the pastoral care in the first Christian Balt communities on the east Baltic coast during the period of the Crusades. It has to be noted that at the turn of and throughout the 13th century, Christian missions were influenced by the attitudes of the new religious movements of the 12th and 13th centuries proclaiming the ‘humanisation’ of the idea of God, and the efforts of the human soul to seek the ‘individualisation’ of salvation. Given these ideas, the paper analyses the forms in which Christianity spread in the Baltic communities, and the impact the inception of the Crusades had on these communities. The research proves that the spread of Christianity took place not only in a ‘theologised’ and therefore ‘difficult’ to understand form, but also in common, knightly (during the Crusades), and other forms of piety. These forms unfolded through the Christian missions and the pastoral care that were carried out in parallel, so that they functioned in the first Christian Balt communities in the 13th century.

Stones where mythical creatures carry out work connected with wearing apparel appear in publications on the mythological stones of Lithuania and Belarus. This theme is not so widely considered in Latvian research literature. The aim of this work is to show that in Latvian folklore, by natural (stone, tree, stump, water, cave, etc) and man-made objects of the cultural space (threshing barn, cemetery, hill-fort, etc), mythical creatures tailor, spin, knit and mend for people or for themselves.

Lake Sauka is the largest lake in the district of Augšzeme in Latvia. It features very often in tales and legends, which mostly relate the story of its flight and its settling down in its present location. The nearest place from where it might have flown is approximately 30 kilometres away, but the most distant place is about 70 kilometres away. The places of origin, flight routes and conditions of settling down mentioned in numerous tales, when confronted with modern knowledge about the layout of archaeological sites, allow us to see yet unknown connections between the mythical world reflected in tales, and the real world represented by the relief and by archaeological sites.