It's a chill, pale day in New Mexico today, and it's just begun to snow, so what better way to spend it than reading and thinking about places much chillier and snowier than here? I have recently discovered the wonderful, endlessly distracting website of Renee Perelmutter, a U.C. Berkeley linguistics student. Her specialties are Slavic tongues and Old Norse, but she is very willing and able to delve into stranger territory, particularly folklore. For an appetizer, check out this post on Bulgarian dragons.

"You are marrying me, mother, preparing me,
But you're not asking me, mother,
whether I will marry or no -
A dragon, mother, loves me".

I've also been greatly enjoying Songs of the Russian People by W. R. S. Ralston (1872). Though I expect scholarship on the subject has changed considerably since the 1870s, there's more information here on pre-Christian Slavic and Baltic mythology than I've seen gathered in any other place.

Equally worth some perusal is The Incantator: Studies in Siberian Shamanism and Religions of the Finno-Ugrian Peoples, by Estonian folklorist Aado Lintrop. If you're not yet acquainted with Finno-Ugrian folk poetry, consider yourself warned: it tends to be very strange. Here's a bit of a Khanty Bear-Feast song which tickles my fancy:

In several swamps with crow beak
tread I, the beast,
in several swamps of magpie beaks
tread I, the beast.

If you'd prefer to hear about a rather less Boreal culture, here's most of what you're probably wanting to know about the Ingush. A Caucasian language (Northeast Caucasian, to be precise) with tones: absolutely terrifying to contemplate.

And finally, I was happy to find this morning a very handy side-by-side text and translation of what may be my favorite poem ever, especially on a cold day.

Indeed, now they are troubled,
the thoughts of my heart,
that I myself should strive with
the high streams,
the tossing of salt waves --
the wish of my heart urges
all the time
my spirit to go forth,
that I, far from here,
should seek the homeland
of a foreign people...

Not for him is the sound of the harp
nor the giving of rings
nor pleasure in woman
nor worldly glory --
nor anything at all
unless the tossing of waves;
but he always has a longing,
he who strives on the waves.