Klaipėdos universitetas

The present article presents analysis of the dances Heiduka and Szala rutele of the inhabitants of the Lithuania Minor described by Matas Pretorijus in the 17th century. The article discusses the parallels between the dances hereinabove with the later variants of these dances described in the territory of the Lithuania Minor – in Klaipėda region and a certain part of Königsberg area (current Kaliningrad Oblast) – and in Samogitia in the 17–20th centuries. The interrelationship and change of the purpose, forms and figures of dances are analyzed.

The present paper is focused on the specific treatment of the sea topic in the Latvian writer Egons Līvs’ prose fiction. His works are focused on people who are related to the sea – fishermen and their families. Using the methodology of semiotics, two major variants of actualizing the sea topic in E. Līvs’ prose fiction are singled out: (1) the sea as a space of the rite of initiation, (2) the existential sea that preserves or takes one’s life. Within each of these thematic groups, one work by the writer is analyzed, emphasizing the specificity of the sea topic in it and characterizing the significance of the sea in the revelation of the conception of human and the construction of the world model. The literary and biographical contexts are briefly characterized by means of the biographical and anthropological methods.

In order to understand the narrative about Sovijus (1261), the author proposes a comparative analysis with similar myths in other Indo-European cultures: Hindu mythology (Indra), Irish mythology (Finn), and Scandinavian mythology (Sigurd). These myths emphasise the role of a sacred animal (Indra’s tricephalous monster, Finn’s salmon, Sigurd’s dragon, Sovijus’ boar with nine spleens). The animal allows the hero access to secret knowledge (divination in the case of Finn and Sigurd, revelation about cremation for Sovijus). Rituals or narratives of other folklore genres, such as tales, could be additional sources for a comparative analysis.