Nart Sagas from the Caucasus : Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on The Amazing Narts, Now in English!
Review: If you like mythology, but have never heard of the Narts, don't worry that you've overlooked something obvious; most translations of the stories about them have so far been into Russian, French, and German. On the other hand, you may have encountered references to them in studies of, for example, the Balder myth. Now a very full selection of the range of stories and characters is available, although not in the forms usually cited. Colarusso has excluded from this volume the Ossetian versions of the Nart stories, which have had a more prominent place in discussions of the mythologies and legends of the Indo-European peoples, providing instead a first real look for readers of English at the equally interesting versions from neighboring peoples.

For me, the volume was also a fascinating introduction to many of the cultures of the Caucasus Mountains and the coastlands of the Black Sea. Unexpectedly, but not too surprisingly in retrospect, the often rather ambiguous protagonist of one version may show up as the villain in a variant of the story told elsewhere!

The description and quotations provided in the posting here at Amazon are a fair representative of the stories of the heroes and (probably) faded gods who populate these ancient oral traditions. Although the total picture is both unusual and varied, the reader may find the stories hauntingly familiar, suggesting here a bit of Asgard, and there a little of Olympus, at another point the Finn Cycle, and elsewhere a touch of Robin Hood or the Border Ballads.

Some of the resemblances are probably coincidental, others suggests ancient contacts between civilizations, and the spreading and staying power of good stories. If Colarusso and others, notably Georges Dumezil, are correct, some reflect a common origin, before the dispersal of Indo-European speakers across Europe and Asia.

Unfortunately, Colarusso's frequent, and usually useful, comparisons to more widely known mythologies, notably those of Greece and Scandinavia, show heavy dependence on secondary sources, by which I mean reference works, not translations. Partly as a result, there are an annoying number of trivial, but avoidable errors. The son of Anchises and Aphrodite was Aeneas, not Adonis; Odin's ravens, "Thought" and "Memory," are confused with his brothers, "Will" and "Holiness". (The former seems to go back to Robert Graves, who put Anchises and Adonis in sequence as lovers of the goddess, postponing her offspring to a later chapter.)

Those unfamiliar with any of the mythologies he cites (and I am not well acquainted with a number of them) should therefore treat his references with a little caution. Fortunately, the errors which I spotted did not make a great difference to his arguments and conclusions. (I would also view with reserve some of his suggested replacements for accepted etymologies, such as that for the Norse god Odin.)

Despite this problem with non-Caucasus material, the book as a whole is richly rewarding for those with an interest in a "new" mythology.

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on The Amazing Narts, Now in English!
Review: If you like mythology, but have never heard of the Narts, don't worry; most translations of the stories about them have so far been into Russian, French, and German. You may have encountered references to them studies of, for example, the Balder myth. Now a very full selection of the range of stories and characters is available, although not in the forms usually cited. Colarusso has excluded from this volume the Ossetian versions of the Nart stories, which have had a more prominent place in discussions of the mythologies and legends of the Indo-European peoples, providing instead a first real look for readers of English at the equally fascinating versions from neighboring peoples. For me, the volume was also a fascinating introduction to many of the cultures of the Caucasus Mountains and the coastlands of the Black Sea.

The description and quotations provided in the posting here are a fair representative of the stories of the heroes and (probably) faded gods who populate these ancient oral traditions. Although the total picture is both unusual and varied, the reader may find the stories hauntingly familiar suggesting here a bit of Asgard, and there a little of Olympus, at another point the Finn Cycle, and elsewhere a touch of Robin Hood or the Border Ballads. Some of the resemblances are probably coincidental, others suggests ancient contacts between civilizations, and the spreading and staying power of good stories.

Unfortunately, Colarusso's frequent, and usually useful, comparisons to more widely known mythologies, notably those of Greece and Scandinavia, show heavy dependence on secondary sources, by which I mean reference works not translations. Partly as a result, there are an annoying number of trivial, but avoidable errors. The son of Anchises and Aphrodite was Aeneas, not Adonis; Odin's ravens, "Thought" and "Memory," are confused with his brothers, "Will" and "Holiness". (The former seems to go back to Robert Graves, who put Anchises and Adonis in sequence as lovers of the goddess, postponing her offspring to a later chapter.) Those unfamiliar with any of the mythologies he cites (and I am not well acquainted with a number of them) should therefore treat his references with a little caution. Fortunately, the errors which I spotted did not make a great difference to his arguments and conclusions.

Despite this problem with non-Caucasus material, the book as a whole is richly rewarding for those with an interest in a "new" mythology.

Rating:
Summary: The "Asiatic" Narts
Review: In the story of Jason and the Argonauts, the crew of the Argo journey to the Black Sea in their quest for the Golden Fleece. While cruising past the northeast shore, they catch a glimpse of the Caucasus mountains, where Prometheus lies chained to a crag, while an eagle gnaws on his liver. Then they proceed onward to Colchis, a city located on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, just around the "corner" from the Caucasus mountains.
This geographic region is precisely the land of the Narts, whose myths and folktales John Colarusso has gathered together in this splendid collection. And in fact, the reader is delighted to discover, the Narts do indeed have a series of stories centering around a Prometheus figure named Nasran, whom they envision chained to the Caucasus for defying God. This is just one of the many overlaps between the myths of the Narts and those of peoples as remote from their region as the Norse at the Western end and the Vedic Indians at the Eastern. The character of Wotan, for instance, will turn up as "Wardana," a man who rides the fastest horse in the world (cf. "Sleipnir") and whose brother is named after the word for "raven," like Wotan's two ravens Hugin and Munin. Or Vishnu's avatar as the boar "Varaha," who comes into the world in order to rescue the goddess Earth from her kidnapping by a giant serpent demon is paralleled by the story of "Warzameg," who sets off to rescue the damsel Psatina, who has been kidnapped into the Underworld by a Lizard Man. Almost every story in this collection reveals such surprising echoes of the myths of surrounding Indo-European peoples.
But one of the most surprising things about the collection is the attitude that it reveals of the Narts toward their women. For all these surrounding Indo-European peoples, as any scholar of myth well knows, were patriarchal warriors who conquered, and discredited, the goddess-worshipping traditions of most of the societies that they came into contact with. As a result, the stories of the Greeks, the Norse, the Persians and yes, even the goddess-worshipping Hindus are filled with misogyny (this is true even of such non-Indo European, but Nordic, peoples as the Finns, for The Kalevala is nothing if not a story of a war against the witch-goddess Louhi, mistress of North Farm). It is appropriate, in this regard, to mention the role of Medea in the Jason story, for she is the daughter of the king of Colchis, and helps Jason out of nearly every scrape he gets into. In return, he simply betrothes himself to the daughter of the King of Corinth, telling her she should be grateful that he brought her to live in such a civilized country as Greece.
But as one soon realizes, after reading a handful of stories in The Nart Sagas, no Nart warrior would ever have been allowed to get away with treating his wife in such a brutal manner, for the Narts, almost alone amongst the Indo-Europeans (the other possible exception being the Celts) treated the Goddess with respect and near-equality. Sexual promiscuity amongst Nart women was tolerated, and male warriors were expected to put up with their indiscretions. And again and again, we come across stories in which the deeds of heroes like Warzameg are attributed to their having the favor of the goddess on their side. Whenever the male hero discredits, insults or otherwises abuses his wife, she withdraws her power, and disaster results, as in the story of the goddess Adif and her husband Psapeta, in which, after a quarrel, he loses his ability to drive his horses over a very narrow bridge made of linen, and falls to his death. Such warrior heroes as Shebatinuquo are suited up for battle and armed by their mothers (in this case, the goddess Setenaya) and we find references to the existence of Amazon women "who would ride forth with their menfolk to meet the enemy in battle."
The fact that women fare so well in this Indo-European society marks this particular ethnic group culturally as Asiatic, despite their being located just above the Black Sea, for as Bachofen pointed out in his Mutterrecht, the presence of matrilineal societies, and / or societies in which women fare as well as, or better, than men, indicates a survival into Western civilization of what is essentially an Asiatic ideal, namely, that the society is ruled by a god / king whose power is bestowed upon him by a goddess, as in the myth of Tanaquil. (Hercules, in his temporary service to the queen Omphale, is a vestigial survival of this practice in Greek culture, as is, most likely, the motif of the hero accomplishing his difficult tasks only with the help of a goddess (i.e. Jason and Medea; Theseus and Ariadne). In the Western myths, however, the goddess is rejected and left behind, as Aeneas leaves Dido to burn herself up on her funeral pyre in order to found what will later become kingless Rome. (Kingless, that is, because of the patriarchal rejection of an Asiatic goddess-powered institution: think of Osiris sitting on the throne of the body of Isis).
Colarusso has done a fine job in editing these stories together, and his rare attempts (rare, that is, among academic specialists) to point out comparative overlaps with the mythologies of other peoples is admirable, if not always successful. Some of his comparisons make better sense than others, but his attitude is the important thing here. Thanks, Professor Colarusso, for a job well done.