Bestiary of Ukrainian Mythology

No riverbank is empty. No forest is ever alone.

For centuries the Ukrainian peasant lived on two planes at once: he lit a candle in church and, back home, left a bowl of hot porridge behind the stove. He knew the river had an owner, that the rye is watched at noon, and that some questions cost your life if you answer them wrong.

This bestiary gathers twenty-four creatures of Ukrainian folklore and presents them as what they were to the people who feared them: dangerous neighbors you had to learn to live with.

Inside the book

• A full profile for every creature: region of origin, nature, appearance, powers and danger level.
• The rules for surviving an encounter: what to sew into your hem, what never to answer, which road not to take home.
• Water spirits: the Rusalka who climbs the willows in the first week of June, the Vodyanyk who takes his toll at the mill, the Bolotianyk of the peat bogs.
• Lords of forest and field: the backless Mavka, the Lisovyk, the Poludnytsia who walks the sheaves at twelve sharp, and the Carpathian giant Chuhaister.
• The house as a ritual fortress: the Domovyk who guards the home that feeds him, the sacred grass snake under the threshold, and the Zlydni who ruin a family to the last grain.
• The restless dead and the demons: the Upyr vampire, the werewolf Vovkulaka, the tavern Chort, the primordial Aridnyk and the seven-headed dragon Zmiy.
• Full color illustrations in every chapter, a glossary of Ukrainian terms and a complete bibliography.

Why this book

Nothing here is invented. Every creature is reconstructed from the ethnographic expeditions of Pavlo Chubynsky (1872), the witchcraft trial records published by Volodymyr Antonovych, the Hutsul materials of Volodymyr Hnatiuk and Volodymyr Shukhevych, and the fieldwork of Volodymyr Halaychuk (2016), taken down from shepherds and fishermen in isolated villages.

Perfect for

• Readers who have exhausted Greek and Norse mythology and want a pantheon almost nobody has told.
• Fans of folk horror, dark fantasy and Slavic literature.
• Illustrators, screenwriters and tabletop game designers hunting for fresh monsters.
• Anyone with Ukrainian roots, or curious where that culture comes from.
• A gift that gets looked at as much as it gets read.

Open it anywhere. Learn the rule. And never answer parsley.