Lunar mythology – a case study of Natko Nodilo’s mythology of nature

Abstract

While the reconstructions of Old Slavic religion are mostly based on solarism and lunarism (solar and lunar mythology), whereby solarism is represented by Alexander Brückner, Vittore Pisani and Raffaele Pettazzoni, and lunarism by Evel Gasparini, Lubor Niederle, Mircea Eliade and Veselin Čajkanović, Nodilo initiated his own mythological re/construction with the epicentral mytheme (or, in his attribution – mythologem) of Svantevit (Svantevid/Vid), considering that Helmold’s Chronicle of the Slavs determines Arkona’s Svantevit as deus deorum of the Baltic-Polish Slavs (Svantevit’s Temple in Arkona on Rujana – the present-day Baltic island of Rügen/Rugia). In the last chapter of his study The Old Faith of Serbs and Croats (1885–1890), it is evident that Nodilo did not apply the absolute conclusion of pansolarism in his re/contruction of the old faith of Serbs and Croats.