Mythological space: Adamovičs’ world outlook

Ludvigs Adamovičs represents a differing background and institutional affiliation from Straubergs, and the context of his work on Latvian mythology is also entirely different: his program is based on the theory of the phenomenology of religion, referring to van der Leeuw and the hypothesis of differentiation and integration as the main processes that characterise religion as a dynamic system (p. 118–122). Naturally, the views of both scholars also differ on mythological space. Adamovičs’ Senlatviešu pasaules ainava (Ancient Latvian world outlook, 1938) is perhaps still the most complete description of spatial dispositions in Latvian mythology. At the same time this forty-page-long article overviews and questions all previous research on the issues has analysed. Later the author summarises his conception of mythological space according to three themes: the

Heavenly Mountain, the Sun Tree, and three levels of the world. The Heavenly Mountain represents the sky, the Sun Tree represents the World Tree, located in relation to the Sun’s path, and the three levels of the world consist of Heaven, Earth (or This World), and the Netherworld (Adamovičs 1938: 364–366. See Appendix I for the translation of original Adamovičs’ description of this world-view – p. 195–196). So, according to Adamovičs, mythological space consists of variations between mutually displaceable semanthemes and routes between the basic structure of the three levels. Variations across the genres, within one genre, and across geographical locations where particular folklore materials had been collected are problematic in light of a single unchanging ancient Latvian world outlook and cosmology. After describing a variety of Sun Trees, the author states that “Such examples are more likely evidence of a free combi-nations of mythical folk songs than the basis of joining them together in one view” (Adamovičs 1938: 22). However, by trying to provide a logical description of mythological space, Adamovičs uses various devices of inter-pretation to establish one primary system of which other variations are seen as deviations akin to a course of profanation.

An eloquent illustration of such an interpretation is the example of the World Sea semantheme. Adamovičs refers to the above analysed article “World Sea” (1937) by Straubergs several times and accepts his notion of sea all around the world, although closer analysis of folklore material shows this assumption to be somewhat problematic for the folklore of east Latvia, i.e. regions that are further away from the coast of the Baltic Sea. As there is no evidence of the notion of the sea or any other large water body in the eastern direction, Adamovičs just notes that “folklore about this matter was somewhat reserved”

(Adamovičs 1938: 4). Furthermore, he claims that “Regarding the position of the sunset, as we see, empirical experience in the eastern part of Latvia has overshadowed the notion of the World Sea. It is substituted by the lake and the broad Daugava, in addition to the mythical places ‘beyond the nine lakes’ or

‘where the nine rivers flow’” (ibid.: 7). However, during further investigation, the World Sea remains important only as far as it is located in the west, because that is the place where, according to Adamovičs, all three levels of the world meet. While folklore materials provide different locations for the passages between the worlds, Adamovičs here refers to the comparative study by Wundt (Adamovičs 1938: 31; cf. Wundt 1909: 220). Therefore, mentioning of the sea or river Daugava in relation to the sunset is also interpreted as a reference to the

“far west, mythical border zone of the world where a natural horizon is visible”

(Adamovičs 1938: 23). Following this example, other references to the sea are reduced to the World Sea in the west. A similar pattern of interpretation also characterises the author’s analysis of the World Tree semantheme. Likewise, he refers to Wundt’s idea: “The World Tree that spreads its roots among the depths of earth and reaches the sky with its branches, holding together the whole world, being in the middle of the earth itself, which overshadows the whole world with its leaves and hosts heavenly bodies in its branches. The prototype

of the World Tree is the Tree of Life” (Adamovičs 1938: 15; cf. Wundt 1909:

193, 210, 214, 219). Adamovičs finds the Sun Tree to be the main Latvian variation of this semantheme and also locates it in the far west – where Sun sleeps at night. Even though he admits that the same World Tree also grows in the underworld, as depicted in folktales (Adamovičs 1938: 34), the other locations of the Sun Tree are considered to be a deformation of the original myth (ibid.: 26). This is explained either by a poetic play on words or by mythical syncretism where other trees acquire the characteristics of the Sun Tree.

There are also several other places where Adamovičs speaks of profanation or degradation of original mythical notions. For example, regarding folklore materials in which Sun Tree could be found by a shepherd girl (Adamovičs 1938: 17) or God could hide in a wormwood or mugwort¹⁰² bush (ibid.: 29) or sleep under a grey stone (ibid.: 28). Such a devolutionist view of myth is somewhat contradictory to his notion of the ‘natural base’ as the primary source of the mythical imagination. Mythical semanthemes are not only grounded in this ‘natural base’ but also designate the more ancient, older level of the world-view. On various themes, Adamovičs states that this or that notion has already evolved from its natural base, i.e. physical object: God as the sky and the Sun as the sun are primary images. The greater their anthropomorphic features, the more recent a stage of mythological development they characterise (e.g.

Adamovičs 1938: 11, 25, 31). Such development also implies several world structures – from ‘less developed’ or ‘nature-like’ to ‘more developed’ with the Heavenly Yard and its inhabitants characterised by an elaborate social structure.

Other interesting questions in Adamovičs’ mythical world order touch on

‘Vāczeme’. Literary translated it is the ‘Land of Germans’, and the contemporary name in the Latvian language for Germany is a shortened form of

‘Vāczeme’ – Vācija. In several folk songs it bears the characteristics of the netherworld; Šmits admits that theorists leaning towards animism consider

‘Vāczeme’ as a land of the dead, while he explains these characteristics as a simple misunderstanding, because Germany is located to the west of Latvia (Šmits, 1926: 65). Adamovičs makes a cursory reference to this question, stating that ‘Vāczeme’ for ancient Latvians meant “the place of otherness” due to an encounter with the different culture brought to Latvia by Germans. At the same time, he admits that many mythical elements in descriptions of ‘Vāczeme’

require special attention and ‘Vāczeme’ is not only a place of otherness, but also of wrong-way-round-ness (Adamovičs 1938: 20–21).

The same description applies also to the Opposite World where Straubergs (1937: 171) locates the “home of the Sun, Moon, God, and all higher powers, and souls” (Adamovičs 1938: 19). While Straubergs claimed here that the idea of God and God’s location in Heaven is comparatively new, Adamovičs states that both Sun and God live in Heaven and that a “special home of the gods and

102 Artemisia absinthium and Artemisia vulgaris, widespread slightly hallucinogenic plants.

dead souls far away at the horizon is not a primary independent concept, but only a transitional combination” (Adamovičs 1938: 31). Instead, Adamovičs proposes that the Sun, God, God’s sons and other deities spend their nights in the Great Heavenly Yard. That is generally everything that the author writes about the third level of the world – Heaven. The situation is considerably different when it comes to the underworld. Adamovičs, like Straubergs, refers to many folktales describing various paths to the underworld (caves, wells, springs, etc.) and out of it (directly, across the sea, by flying, etc.), referring also to the locations of those entrances and exits both in this world and the far west, inhabitants of the underworld, and heroes’ quests. In this tripartite world-structure the question of the home of the dead souls, a subject not considered by Adamovičs remains problematic. Other issues discussed in Ancient Latvian world outlook are also characteristic to other scholarly productions of the interwar period, acquiring the most comprehensive form in this essay by Adamovičs, interpreted according to the theories he preferred.