It is believed that in the entire Russian epic there are only two authentic epics that have preserved the ancient form of the narrative. One of them, and the most famous is the epic about Sadko. Until recently, it was considered an ancient Novgorod epic of about the 10th century. In this article you will find evidence that this is not a Novgorod epic, written not in the 10th century. You will find out what ancient, archaic times of the ancient northern region gave us these stories about a strange man traveling between worlds.
"This is one of the pearls of folk poetry," - this is how VG Belinsky, a Russian writer of the 19th century, said about the epic. Lovers of classical opera are well aware of this epic from the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, who perfectly understood and felt the fabulous beauty of this magnificent fairy tale, creatively transforming it.
The apotheosis of the Novgorod epic - not at all in Novgorod
The story about Sadko is composed of three parts
The first - Sadko, a poor guslar, offended by the fact that they stopped calling him to play at rich feasts, goes to play at Ilmen Lake. This game is overheard by the water king and rewards him for it: he teaches him how to catch golden feathers in Lake Ilmen and how to make a bet with Novgorod merchants that he will catch such a fish. He catches a fish, wins a mortgage - shops with goods - and becomes a wealthy merchant.
The second - having got rich, Sadko again wages a pawn with Novgorod merchants: he undertakes to buy up all Novgorod goods. It succeeds in some ways, but in most cases it fails. In both cases, he has a huge amount of goods.
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And the third, which stands alone. With the purchased goods, Sadko goes to sea to trade. The sea king stops his ships and demands him to him. Sadko finds himself in the kingdom of the sea lord, where he amuses him with his playing on the harp. He chooses Chernavushka as his wife, thanks to which he returns home from the magical underwater world.
Please note that the action of the first two Novgorodian units in the place of action differs from the main, third. And, which is characteristic, it is to the king of the sea that Sadko comes to visit, and not to the king of the river and not to the king of the lake. There is no sea near Novgorod, which means that the real action takes place not at all in Novgorod.
This is a very old story … and not quite Novgorod
It can be assumed that in the epic about Sadko we have the remains of that mosaic structure, which is characteristic of very early epics.
In the Russian epic, as we know, this mosaicism has long been overcome: Russian epics, as a rule, are completely monolithic. But in this case, the structure of the epic is unusual for a Russian singer. The weak internal connection of the parts leads to their disintegration. Perhaps in no Russian epic do we have such a large number of variations and fluctuations. This unequivocally speaks of some other origin of the epic, going back millennia.
Let's remember history
The most ancient period of Russian history is usually called the Kiev period. One should not, however, forget that, as Academician Grekov says, "the Kiev state, or the state of the Rurikovichs, was formed from the merger of two Eastern Slavic states - Kiev and Novgorod proper." Of these, Novgorod must be recognized as the more ancient. Thus, the recognition of the Novgorod epic as one of the most ancient in the Russian epic in itself does not contradict the historical data.
But the epic about Sadko is not only "pre-Kiev", but also "Donovgorod". The main components of this epic are much older than historical Novgorod. Let's remember the historical facts.
Novgorodians in the 11th century, attracted by rumors about the fabulous fur and fish wealth of the "midnight countries", as the north was called in the old days, began to populate the territory of the modern Arkhangelsk region.
Modern genetics divides the Slavs into three groups that are genetically distinct from each other: South Slavs, East and North. These three groups are linked by language, customs, marriages, culture. Nevertheless, Novgorodians belong to the eastern Slavs, the people who lived in the north - respectively, to the northern Slavs. According to the chronicle legends, it is known that the North has long been inhabited by the Chud tribes, "the Chudi Navolotsk, white-eyed". Paganism and idolatry flourished among the “white-eyed chudi”. Christianity came here much later and was much weaker.
The signs of paganism are the perception of the world, in which the Gods, as supreme beings, are at the same time the ancestors and relatives of people.
And now you understand that Novgorod Christians who came to the North in the XI century, faced amazing myths, fairy tales telling that people are almost Gods, they are descendants of Gods, they are relatives of Gods. How the soul of Novgorodians, who heard the ancient songs, reminded them of ancient times, when the earth was inhabited by Human Gods and Noble People, must have rang like a harp! How they wanted to become a part of this fabulous life! We know that the Novgorodians went from the mouth of the Pinega River, but did not reach the headwaters in the area of the Vyya and Pinezhka tributaries, where the representatives of the ancient people, displaced by them, gathered. It seems that the winners themselves were subdued by the ancient tales of the departed people. The Novgorod "preface" was simply attributed to the northern story about Sadko.
Where is this epic actually recorded?
To date, about forty records of the epic about Sadko have been published, which fall into four groups: Olonets, White Sea, Pechora and Ural-Siberian.
Note that these are northern territories, not Novgorod. These materials would be quite enough if the song was well preserved. But it doesn't. A large number of notes are fragmentary and incomplete. This picture is rather unexpected, and we will have to try to find our explanation for this.
One can name only one singer who knew all the episodes of this epic in their full form and gave a coherent and consistent presentation of the entire plot from beginning to end. This is a wonderful Onega singer Sorokin, who takes one of the first places in the Onega tradition for the completeness and brilliance of his songs. His epics were recorded by A. F. Hilferding in 1871. Let me remind you that Onega is part of the Arkhangelsk region.
There is something in this story that never happened in other epics
The first is God's benevolent attitude towards man
The legend about Sadko in terms of his meeting with the sea king is so archaic that researchers talk about the most ancient origin of this tale.
Sadko meets - the only case in the entire Russian epic - the master of the water element, the sea king, the sea God. The sea king is not hostile to the hero, but benevolent - a very archaic trait.
The second is the presence of a ritual for interacting with God
The scene when the Sea God demands a sacrifice is deeply symbolic. The sea is dangerous by those unknown forces that a person does not know how to control and before which he was then completely powerless.
Two disasters lay in wait for the northern navigator of antiquity. One calamity is calm, in which ships can stand still for days and weeks on the high seas. Another calamity is a storm that threatens ships with destruction.
But the calamity that befalls Sadko's ships has a completely unusual character: a terrible storm is played out, but the ships do not move, but stand still, as if in calm.
This is a miracle, but a miracle, which means that the unknown and mysterious forces, which the navigators of those times were so afraid of, began to interfere in the fate of the sailors. Sadko believes that his old patron, the sea king, to whom he has never paid tribute, is angry with him. Sadko thinks what the sailors of his time thought: the sea should be pacified, sacrifice should be made to it.
Sacrifice to the sea, “feeding” the sea is an ancient maritime custom, it is known to all peoples whose life and well-being depended on the sea. There is no doubt that such sacrifices were actually made in pagan times: the materials cited by R. Lipets in her aforementioned work on Sadko fully confirm this.
The epic is a poetic memory of a once really existing custom.
There is no doubt that even human sacrifices were made. As a substitute victim, a straw scarecrow was subsequently thrown into the water, of which the memory was preserved until very recently.
Third - transition to another world
Think for yourself - the hero easily moves to another world, to the Underwater King. The epic about Sadko is the only one in the entire Russian epic, where the hero, leaving home, finds himself in some other world, namely in the underwater world. Sadko falls asleep on the raft and wakes up in the underwater kingdom. We know that this way of getting into the “other world”, in this case, the underwater one, is prehistoric. We also know that in the most ancient epics, the hero is also always the master of another world.
Fourth - the power of the Divine
The figure of the king of the sea is mighty and strong. He makes Sadko play a dance, and he dances to his play. Sometimes sea maidens and mermaids lead their dance to his play. The dance of the sea king is of a special kind. This dance is causing a storm. The sea king makes Sadko play for three whole days. From his dance waves rise, ships perish, people drown.
The idea that a storm comes from the dance of the master of the water element, the sea king, dates back to pagan times. This is not possible in the Christian religion.
Fifth - marriage with a creature of the inhuman world
The sea king offers Sadko to choose any beauty - a princess as his wife. But Sadko chooses Chernavushka. He is not seduced by the beauty of sea princesses or mermaids, who sometimes dance to his play. He chooses Chernavushka, and this moment is one of the most beautiful and poetic in the whole epic.
This advice is in line with the inner aspirations of Sadko himself. The entire underwater world with its unearthly beauty and beauties is the temptation of Chernobog, which Sadko does not give in. He does not for a minute forget about the world of people.
Who is Chernavushka and how to understand her image? Her touching human beauty is clearly contrasted with the false beauty of mermaids. But, despite her human appearance, she is not human, she is also a mermaid.
The epic about Sadko is one of the rare and exceptional epics in the Russian epic, in which the tradition of marriage with a creature from another, inhuman world is still preserved.
So what happens?
In the oldest, archaic part of the famous epic - the action takes place on the sea (which was not near Novgorod, but which for many thousands of years washes the northern part of Russia).
The plot itself is a pagan story, unthinkable for newly minted Christians - the hero enters the Other World and marries the daughter of the Divine.
The action of the first parts is geographically removed from the main plot, which takes place at sea. The epic itself differs sharply in structure and content from the well-known later Russian epics.
Consequently, this old tale has deep northern roots and is based on pagan ideas about the world and the place of man in it. The epic is the work of not Eastern, but Northern Slavs, who have their own ancient and not yet fully cognized history.
Do you know that in northern mythology this story is told in different ways, but recognizable? Among the ancient Germans, this is Siegfried, who caught the treasure of the Nibelungs (Buslaev) in the form of a goldfish; among the Scandinavians, this is the mythical singer and spellcaster Weinemeinen, who plays and sings to the sea god (Miller).
Want to know what other Nordic tales still tell about Sadko?
The northern tale "About the Adventures of the Eldest Son Wang and Mary" begins like this:
- Van and Mary, the daughter of the bogatyr Svyatogor (son of Rod) and Filka (daughter of the Sun - Ra), had many children, sons and daughters, from whom different peoples later went.
But the eldest son stood out from all. In height, he went to grandfather Svyatogor, and in intelligence, not otherwise than in his father. But she was a mischievous person in games and amusements, certainly in his mother's relatives. These relatives were special: whatever the uncle, then the god, and whatever the aunt, the goddess.
On long winter evenings, when only the mother and the children remained at home, and the father, as usual, with his team went out to sea to hunt for seals and walruses, the children gathered in a circle around their mother, and closer to the stove, and mother's stories began about how she lived in the heavenly mansion with her father, who supported the heavenly vault with his shoulders, as she stayed with the sisters at Dazhdbog, and how they looked after each other with Van, and how Van wooed her and won the competition that was appointed.
This story was told by the mother many times, but the children again and again demanded repetition and new details. The elder liked the stories about uncle Veles more, about his travels, about his victories, where Veles won not only by strength, but also by his mind.
“I'll be like Uncle Veles,” he said to his mother, to which his mother, hugging her first child, whispered:
- Of course you will, only grow!
- And I'm growing anyway! - he answered, - and did not deceive.
By the age of 7 he knew the literacy, even to the Star Book of Kolyada that his mother had kept, he got there, but his mother forbade him to read it for the time being, until he finally entered his mind.
This is a fairy tale about the eldest son of Van, the first person who married the daughter of God, who was named Sadko. This is the beginning of a story that happened long ago, when Human Gods and Noble People lived hand in hand.