Encyclopedia of Baltic Mythology in Czech, or “As Some Sleep, Others Must Keep Vigil. . .”

Abstract

is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International In 2012 the Czech scholars Marta Eva Běťakova and Vaclav Blažek prepared and published an encyclopedia of Baltic mythology in the Czech language [Běťakova, Blažek 2012].This is a welcome and significant event given the dearth of publications in other languages about Baltic mythology in recent years. Mythology is the core of a people’s worldview, a species of figurative thinking offering solutions to major philosophical and ideological problems. Conversely, the expression of a community’s or a people’s culture is the primary source for learning about that community. To put it another way, if you want to learn about any people thoroughly, about their way of life, their system of values, and their modern existence and perspectives, you have to begin with their mythology. One can agree partially with the compilers of this encyclopedia in their claim that this is the first such book of its kind, offering etymological interpretations of Baltic mythologems based on primary sources. It must be admitted that, up to now, there has been a lack of attention to the etymology of different mythologems, gods, goddesses, mythical beings, ghosts, and so on in encyclopedias and dictionaries published in Russian, Latvian, and Lithuanian [Myths 1980; RelDict 1991; ME 1993–1994; ME 1997–1999; Beresnevicius 2001], and these publications present Baltic mythology at rather variable levels of quality and from many different points of view. Works by Reviews Рецензии