#Kastav | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bitchwhoreofastorm · 5 months

Text

gratuitous nord demon backstory. following the battle of kastav, 1E392. tw: imprisonment/kidnapping

They hadn't bound her hands. Thank Kyne, thank Tsun, thank Mara, thank dead Shor in the ground, they hadn't bound her hands. Even with the gag forced into her mouth, with her hands free Barfok is not without a voice: she can sign, she can make herself known, even if her protestations are witnessed only by the walls of the dungeon and the back of the half-dead boy they threw down here with her, but oh, by Kyne, by Tsun, by Mara, by dead Shor in the ground, doesn't it make everything better? She flips off her captor when he throws her in and it is utter bliss.

So, hours into being in this dungeon, she sits against the wall, practising her signs the way she used to when Ysmir first taught her how to sign it. Ahg. Aak. Ah. Bah. Bah, ah, rah, fu'u, og, kah. Yo, su, mah, ikh, rah. She finds herself keeping tempo with the dripping water coming from one corner. There's a bucket under the drip, and she realises, slowly, that's the Whiterun men's idea of water for a guest.

Yo, su. It's a slow drip, or she'd go bathe.

She hears a soft groan. Kah, eg, mah, ah.

She's not alone in this prison. Her companion, the boy, proves himself to be a little less than half-dead. He's lying on the ground with his back turned to her, not his fault, just how he landed when they tossed him in. Barfok watches with mild curiosity as he slowly rolls himself onto his back, cranes his neck up, gasping for air. He, too, is gagged. His eyes are closed, his hair is long and only red-ish and plastered to his face with sweat. His breathing comes very shallowly.

He'd lost the battle for them. His first battle, sorry luck, that. He'd been wielding the thu'um and cantering through a Whiterun wheat-field alongside her when they'd speared his horse and he'd gone flying and landed hard on his chest in a way that Barfok was surprised hadn't killed him. No wonder he now gasps like a fish. Su, tah, ug, hag, nah. The wheezy little breath he's making is profoundly annoying.

The dungeon is cold. The floor is hard beneath the sad clumps of rotten hay that line it. Barfok's hands are growing clumsy, so she tucks them into her armpits for warmth.

She settles back against the wall, listening to her fellow Tongue die. It is going to be a long night.

Her fellow Tongue does not die. His lungs learn a way to work despite whatever wreckage lays inside him, and his breathing steadies, and his throat stops its wheezing. After the first night (there's no window, but it feels like a night) he stops moaning in pain. He lies very still in a certain position after that, reluctant to move, but he is breathing deeply, and not moaning in pain.

Their captors realise that as two Tongues of Morrowind they might be worth keeping alive. In the morning they're brought bowls of cold gloopy porridge and glasses of milk. The gag is narrow enough that, with some effort, the porridge and milk can be crammed around it, so Barfok eats inelegantly, smashing porridge through the fabric with lusty grunts of undignified gusto. She's used to being starved, thank Ysmir for his diligent tutorship, and the breaking of a fast never loses its thrill.

The boy half-dead watches her. He's finally opened his eyes and tilted his head to the side to look at her; he has very blue eyes, pretty in his fine features, even bloodshot and puffy-red as they are. Just for fun, Barfok locks eyes with him as she crams fully half of her porridge-coated hand into her mouth around the gag. His eyes narrow, and he looks away from her again, the expression of disgust unmistakeable-- prudish nobility!

Still, she doesn't touch his food. And some time in the supposed afternoon he rises unsteadily, shuffles the cell door, and eats with his hands, just as absent of dignity as she was.

There's an old fire-pit in their cell. In the fire-pit, there is charcoal. Some of the charcoal is in sticks. The sticks are long enough to write with.

Barfok thinks the other Tongue broke his ribs. It's in the way he keeps one arm folded over his chest, his shoulder stiff and raised. He favours one side in movement, holding the left, the one he fell on, very rigid. When he accidentally folds his abdomen he hisses and whimpers and then his breathing gets shallow again. Barfok signs to him, and he clearly understands her, but he never replies. He refuses to move his arm from his side. He lets the pain drive him from conversation.

Drawing, however, he can do. When Barfok sits next to him and writes: 'I am Barfok' on the cell floor in Dovahzul, he leans over awkwardly and writes, beneath it, unsteadily, 'Kema.'

So they talk like that. They just write to each other. There's nothing else to do down here, and he can manage it well enough with one hand. They switch to a wall when they run out of accessible floor. They sit close together so that passing the charcoal is easier.

They write to each other about the battle. They write about Morrowind and Monahven. They talk about Ysmir. They talk about his horse-riding. They talk about her home in Whiterun. They talk about their families, and her massacred hometown, and his assassinated mother. They ponder to each other if they'll be ransomed. They ponder to each other if they'll die.

She makes him laugh, by accident. The way he groans she worries it will kill him again.

There's no window in the cell. After long intervals a guard comes down to give them food-- porridge and milk, or bread soaked in milk. Mushy food that can be eaten around a gag. Not enough to sustain them but enough to prevent immediate death. Despite the cold, Barfok starts to sleep a lot, out of boredom as much as exhaustion. She does the trick she learned on Vvardenfell, where she curls up with her knees squishing her stomach to make it smaller, to make herself feel less hungry. It helps. She doens't have a choice but for it to help.

When she's awake, Kema draws for her.

(That's not his name, she recalls Ysmir using one with more vowels, when planning for that stupid, stupid battle. But she likes the simplicity of Kema. Kah, eg, mah, ah. She's so glad he's in too much pain to write out the extraneous letters.)

Kema is a good artist. He draws her pictures of his childhood home in the elf-land, a marvelous palace with a strange shape. He draws the Queen of that palace, who Barfok finds very beautiful. He draws Monahven, and Barfok stares at it, squints at it, pretends she's looking out of the window in her own childhood home.

Barfok cannot draw. Nonetheless, she tries: she copes his drawings of Monahven, and then adds her own of a stone circle and of a baby goat she once owned. She draws Red Mountain and an implausibly rotund Ysmir with a scraggly beard before it. She draws a bunch of leeks, because it's the only thing she can think of that she knows how it looks.

The drawing of the goat is so bad it makes him laugh again, and then their fun ends, because he goes back to lying very still with his arm bent up.

Later, once he runs out of chapters of his short life, he starts drawing horses. Barfok adds horns to them. Unicorns. A stick-figure Hircine with a spear in the background. He draws guars for her, round fat shapes sharing a banquet of hay. She adds another stick-Hircine, scratching his head in confusion. Did Hircine ever go to Morrowind? He spends a long time drawing a dragon, and Barfok, lying on her belly beside him, adds in a veritable feast for it: homesteads, fleeing figures, hawks, bears, squids, a whole army succumbing to its flames. Lying flat, her stretched-out stomach growls.

A few hours after their fifth meal-- or is it a few days, or a few minutes? Is it weeks? Is it years?-- after their fifth meal, as Barfok is trying to doze, the door is slammed open.

Barfok scrambles to her feet, raising her balled-up fists. A string of drool slips out of the corner of her gag.

There is no meal for her.

Here, instead, is Jarl Olaf in the flesh.

She might have lunged. She balls her fists, she prepares for it. But he, unlike they, has no gag in his mouth. The fus he breathes is not enough to send her flying, not enough to even send her stumbling, but it is a warning nonetheless.

Olaf stands in the doorway and surveys his spoils of war. His gaze on Barfok is so loathsome that she worries she might vomit around her gag. She cannot stop shaking, not with fear but with an animal desire to fling herself upon him, to tear, to rip, to maim, to hurt--

And then he is no longer looking at her. "Kul-se-Chimarvir," breathes Olaf towards his other prisoner. "Son of Chimarvir of Mournhold. No?"

When Barfok turns she sees that Kema is folded up against the back wall of the cell. He is sitting. He has not moved. He glares resignedly at Olaf.

"Perhaps not," drawls Olaf. "Mournhold has refused to ransom you."

Then Olaf turns to Barfok, and he says, "And you. None from Monahven know of you. Who do you belong to?"

Barfok's hands refuse to be unclenched from their fists. She takes several short sharp breaths, as if this will make her bloodlust less. She cannot even think for her own rage.

"How feeble Kjoric has become," drawls Olaf. "The Tongues he sends against me, unwanted children and nobodies. Tell me, at least," he addresses Barfok, "Give me the name of someone who will cough up a few coins for your safe return, won't you?"

Thank Kyne, thank Tsun, thank Mara, thank dead Shor in the ground they've left Barfok's hands unbound.

Barfok flips him off.

Olaf must think she's of some value to somebody out there, because the beating the guards give her is comparatively light. She ends up with a bloodied nose and a swollen lip and a swollen-shut eye and a few big boot-shaped bruises around her stomach, but her bones are pleasantly intact, and she's not coughing up blood, so she feels a smug sense of satisfaction, like she's gotten away with something.

Nonetheless, the aching starts up a while later, and it sets her in a foul mood. So, after she's washed her face the best she can with her filthy sleeves, she lies down in her corner, grumbling under her breath at every little ache. For not the first time she realises how unpleasant the gag is getting in her mouth, crusty and stinking pungently of curdled milk and her own rancid breath. Her clothing is scratchy for the sweat and dust caked into it. Her joints hurt from lying on the hard floor for so long and the beating hasn't distracted from that. At that dark moment, she feels very sorry for herself.

Kema, too, has been lying very still in his corner ever since Olaf's visit. He hadn't even stirred during her beating-- not that she can blame him for that, really. But lying there in the dark she hears him breathing in a weird way. She hears him shuffle around, then gasp in pain, and then he sucks in some hoarse breath, and moves against the ground again. This goes on for quite some time.

He's trying to puncture his own lung. Barfok realises this with a dim disinterest. This thought comes moments before she falls asleep.

Herma-Mora appears to her. She's sitting very still against the wall when the blackness before her blossoms into a thousand emerald eyes. A staring fractal descends upon her, infinity's watchfulness coalescing on a prisoner.

She thinks that he'll have the usual offer: he helps her and her soul wears away a little bit more. But he doesn't say anything. She can't say anything, either.

So she hangs there in a miasma of swamp black and forest green, being blinked at.

After a million years, or three hours, or a minute, or a second-- was she asleep?-- she blinks and he's gone again. The torches have been lit in the hallway again. She wonders if Herma-Mora would pay a ransom for her.

One day, the jailor throws in a blanket, so now Barfok and Kema sleep side by side, Barfok pressed against his back so as not to harm his broken-up front. They don't really talk any more, they've run out of charcoal and he still won't move his arm. Barfok paces around the cell sometimes, and washes daily from the water-bucket, and signs poetry to herself, but Kema seems to have given up. Most of the time he just lies there. He seems to like staring at the old drawings they did together, of the horses and the dragon with its feast. When they wrote to each other, Barfok had offered condolences about his dead horse, and he'd said that he was sad about it, too. Krosis. Geh, Krosis. Men love their horses.

One day Barfok tries looking for more charcoal-- she wants to tell him about the Herma-Mora vision, she wants to confess to someone before she's dragged into Apocrypha the moment they die down here-- but they've used it all up. There's no word for Herma-Mora in Nordic Sign so she's forced to keep the secret.

On a different day, Barfok offers in sign to bathe him. He doesn't agree but he doesn't refuse either, and he doesn't fight when she unbuttons his now-crusty tunic and pulls it aside.

Below the fabric his chest is a tapestry of blue and purple and yellow and black. When he breathes the movement is asynchronous, the two sides of him rise at different times. His eyes are closed and he is breathing very shallowly, as if he's trying not to breathe at all, as if he's willing himself to be elsewhere.

Barfok uses a corner of his the blanket to clean the dirt away from his chin and his neck. It must have been trapped there since the battle, since he fell from his horse. There's even still strands of straw in his hair. He blighted all the wheat in the field. She'd never seen a thu'um like that; she found it-- finds it-- so horrifying it doesn't bear thinking of. But her own stomach remains empty, and she cannot help but feel just the tiniest bit gleeful, at the thought everyone up there will be going as sad and hungry as she is.

Barfok is not the caring sort. After a half-hearted attempt to clean him up, she braids his hair for him instead. He has very long, very pretty hair, and now that it hasn't been washed for a very long time, the colour has gone from flirting-with-blond to a definitive rusty red. Like an old wagon's axle, like the half-eaten blade of the sword her little brother found in the forest once. She puts it in very bad braids and then she leaves him to his sulking, overcome with her own misery.

He looks so dumb in those awful braids. They don't suit him at all. But he falls asleep with a peaceful comforted expression, unaware of the violence she just wrought upon him.

They are sitting on opposite walls and Barfok signs a question to him:

"When we get out, do you want to keep being friends?"

He's holding his arm rigid by his chest, the way he always does. She's surprised he's even sitting up. He's been growing more and more quiet over the past few-- what unit of time are they in, is it the next era already?-- and she thinks he's looking paler, that he's not breathing very well.

She is more surprised when he uncoils both arms and signs back to her:

"If."

The door is thrown open. Barfok had been asleep, and she's barely realised she's conscious again when the jailor barks: "Up."

For some stupid reason Barfok obeys; she's on her feet before she's even fully awake. Flustered with surprise, she flails both hands at the jailor, the universal Nordic sign for "What?"

"You've been ransomed," the jailor tells them. "I'm to take you to Dunmeth pass. Get up, come on, it's a long trip."

There's a drumming in Barfok's ears that she only belatedly realises is her own heart. She signs, "Who?" And then she raps out a series of letters: Yo, su, mah, ikh, rah? And then she signs the symbol for dragons. The symbol for king. She's babbling with her hands before she realises the jailor doesn't read sign.

"On your feet, now," the jailor barks again, and Barfok hears her friend also struggling to his feet. She does not go to help him but she doesn't hear him fall.

Then the jailor is leading them out, and they're walking through the hallway, walking together, walking… out of the cell, up the stairs, out of Oblivion, back into the world of mortals. They're crossing from one plane to another, treading over a billion stars.

Every step hurts. Her muscles feel very weak, the bruises from her beating are groaning with protest. She can hear Kema breathing through his nose in a way that suggests he's fighting back sobs. But the jailor walks before them, leading them boldly out, and he pays no notice to their agonies.

In fact, he's self-absorbed-- he's complaining to himself, though saying it as if he's addressing him. "Primitive heathens," he's spitting, "Imagine leaving your child to languish in an enemy dungeon for a week. A whole week!…"

They make it to Dunmeth pass, though Barfok does not recall the trip. Ysmir is there with the ransom, and the elven Queen is also there, and she is much prettier than she was in the charcoal drawing. And then, like wheels of cheese at a farmer's market, two young prisoners of war are passed off to their loved ones, and they're free, and they're safe, and they're home.

… There's a healer from Kogoruhn who sees to them. There's a special knife to pull away the gags, and there's Barfok, yelling, screaming at the top of her lungs just to get it all out. It's a gleeful sort of screaming, the delighted raucous of a goat kid learning to use its lungs for the first time-- incoherent hollering until Ysmir gives her a gentle slap about the head to shut her up. Then there's food, food, food! There's a cup of very strong flin with some sort of medicine in it, there's a clean tunic to get changed into, there's Ysmir, steady as a rock beside her, beside her, here, here. Barfok babbles through her mouthfuls of food, gleeful to be speaking aloud even more than she is for the nourishment and the rescue. She swears to Kyne, Tsun, Mara, Shor, all she wanted to do was talk. All she wants to do is talk and talk and talk. She's never loved the sound of her own voice so much.

They get on the road as soon as they can. There's a whole caravan that's come for them, carts and soldiers, a small army Ysmir's brought, he doesn't trust the Alessians. There's a second army that Barfok is told belongs to Mournhold. Reveling in her regained voice, Barfok hangs off of Ysmir's arm and chatters to every soldier that comes her way. Ysmir pretends not to approve of this display, but he lets her hold onto his arm, and he's never done that before, so she knows he must be pleased to hear her voice again. Ysmir's arm is terrifically warm.

And finally, after she's talked at Ysmir until her throat sounds like a frog croaking, after her lungs are burning and her head is swimming with flin, Barfok wanders off to find her newfound dungeon friend.

She finds him in a cart in the Mournhold half of the caravan. They've made a bed for him, he's lying in a nest of soft wool blankets and silk sheets. His filthy clothes have been changed for some soft-looking elven robes, and the Queen of Mournhold is sitting near his head, studiously untangling his hair from the horrid braids Barfok had put it in. A healer sits at the other side of him, preparing some pungent mixture to slather on his deformed purple-black chest.

In the light of day he looks closer to death than he had in the dungeon. Barfok even thinks he might be asleep, resting so peacefully in this decadent cart-back bedding. But when the Queen stops her work at Barfok's approach, he opens a single eye. He tilts his head very slightly and stares down at Barfok, half-lidded, his bloodless lips drawn into a thin line.

Barfok is half-drunk from medicated brandy, Barfok has an eye swollen shut from being beaten and is wearing an old ill-fitting tunic from Ysmir. She is not fit for an audience with nobility. She greets them nonetheless.

"Wow." Barfok says. And then, "You look like shit."

Now he opens both eyes, and he raises his head from his pillows to stare down at her.

"I'm Barfok," Barfok follows up, her voice unsteady. "And you're, eh, you're Kema, right?" She feels herself sway a little. "Kema of Mournhold. Yeah. Of Chimarvir."

He blinks very slowly. The Queen who sits behind him looks vaguely unimpressed.

"It's pronounced Chemua," he says, hoarsely. "And you are the most annoying woman I've ever met."

#i'm on a temporary hiatus from the TES fandom while in the throes of a much dumber hyperfixation #but here. drivel from my second dumbest hyperfixation: my awful ocs #this was originally posted on my other acc i'm just putting it here because somehow i still like it

17 notes · View notes

barfok · 5 months

Text

wrt last post fuck it. gratuitous nord demon backstory. after the battle of kastav

tw kidnapping/imprisonment

So, hours into being in this dungeon, she sits against the wall, practising her signs the way she used to when Ysimr first taught her how to sign it. Ahg. Aak. Ah. Bah. Bah, ah, rah, fu'u, og, kah. Yo, su, mah, ikh, rah. She finds herself keeping tempo with the dripping water coming from one corner. There's a bucket under the drip, and she realises, slowly, that's the Whiterun mens' idea of water for a guest.

Yo, su. It's a slow drip, or she'd go bathe.

She hears a soft groan. Kah, eg, mah, ah.

She's not alone in this prison. Her companion, the boy, proves himself to be a little less than half-dead. He's lying on the ground with his back turned to her, not his fault, just how he landed when they tossed him in. Barfok watches with mild curiosity as he slowly rolls himself onto his back, cranes his neck up, gasping for air. He, too, is gagged. His eyes are closed, his hair is long and only-red-ish and plastered to his face with sweat. His breathing comes very shallowly.

The dungeon is cold. The floor is hard beneath the sad clumps of rotten hay that line it. Barfok's hands are growing clumsy, so she tucks them into her armpits for warmth.

She settles back against the wall, listening to her fellow Tongue die. It is going to be a long night.

Still, she doesn't touch his food. And some time in the supposed afternoon he rises unsteadily, shuffles the cell door, and eats with his hands, just as absent of dignity as she was.

There's an old fire-pit in their cell. In the fire-pit, there is charcoal. Some of the charcoal is in sticks. The sticks are long enough to write with.

Drawing, however, he can do. When Barfok sits next to him and writes: 'I am Barfok' on the cell floor in Dovahzul, he leans over awkwardly and writes, beneath it, unsteadily, 'Kema.'

She makes him laugh, by accident. The way he groans she worries it will kill him again.

When she's awake, Kema draws for her.

The drawing of the goat is so bad it makes him laugh again, and then their fun ends, because he goes back to lying very still with his arm bent up.

A few hours after their fifth meal-- or is it a few days, or a few minutes? Is it weeks? Is it years?-- after their fifth meal, as Barfok is trying to doze, the door is slammed open.

Barfok scrambles to her feet, raising her balled-up fists. A string of drool slips out of the corner of her gag.

There is no meal for her.

Here, instead, is Jarl Olaf in the flesh.

And then he is no longer looking at her. "Kul-se-Chimarvir," breathes Olaf towards his other prisoner. "Son of Chimarvir of Mournhold. No?"

When Barfok turns she sees that Kema is folded up against the back wall of the cell. He is sitting. He has not moved. He glares resignedly at Olaf.

"Perhaps not," drawls Olaf. "Mournhold has refused to ransom you."

Then Olaf turns to Barfok, and he says, "And you. None from Monahven know of you. Who do you belong to?"

Barfok's hands refuse to be unclenched from their fists. She takes several short sharp breaths, as if this will make her bloodlust less. She cannot even think for her own rage.

Thank Kyne, thank Tsun, thank Mara, thank dead Shor in the ground they've left Barfok's hands unbound.

Barfok flips him off.

He's trying to puncture his own lung. Barfok realises this with a dim disinterest. This thought comes moments before she falls asleep.

She thinks that he'll have the usual offer: he helps her and her soul wears away a little bit more. But he doesn't say anything. She can't say anything, either.

So she hangs there in a miasma of swamp black and forest green, being blinked at.

On a different day, Barfok offers in sign to bathe him. He doesn't agree but he doesn't refuse either, and he doesn't fight when she unbuttons his now-crusty tunic and pulls it aside.

He looks so dumb in those awful braids. They don't suit him at all. But he falls asleep with a peaceful comforted expression, unaware of the violence she just wrought upon him.

They are sitting on opposite walls and Barfok signs a question to him:

"When we get out, do you want to keep being friends?"

She is more surprised when he uncoils both arms and signs back to her:

"If."

The door is thrown open. Barfok had been asleep, and she's barely realised she's conscious again when the jailor barks: "Up."

For some stupid reason Barfok obeys; she's on her feet before she's even fully awake. Flustered with surprise, she flails both hands at the jailor, the universal Nordic sign for "What?"

"You've been ransomed," the jailor tells them. "I'm to take you to Dunmeth pass. Get up, come on, it's a long trip."

"On your feet, now," the jailor barks again, and Barfok hears her friend also struggling to his feet. She does not go to help him but she doesn't hear him fall.

"Wow." Barfok says. And then, "You look like shit."

Now he opens both eyes, and he raises his head from his pillows to stare down at her.

"I'm Barfok," Barfok follows up, her voice unsteady. "And you're, eh, you're Kema, right?" She feels herself sway a little. "Kema of Mournhold. Yeah. Of Chimarvir."

He blinks very slowly. The Queen who sits behind him looks vaguely unimpressed.

"It's pronounced Chemua," he says, hoarsely. "And you are the most annoying woman I've ever met."

#ill delete this in a hot minute i just like it too much not to let it cool on the windowsill

5 notes · View notes

knight-of-moths · 5 months

Text

---Heartfire, 2nd, 4E 201---

Another damned word wall.

The worst part is, and I've neglected to relay this in my previous entries, that the words make sense. That as I stare at them, eyes glazed over in a daze, I can read that word and speak it alone.

This one was the dovah word for kill. As it enters my mind, it feels thick and heavy, like a meal that just won't settle. It makes me feel ill, itchy. Like a presense entering my mind that I didn't allow.

And worst of all, I'm the only one that can see what's happening. They can't.

I can't sleep. I'm sorry to them, if they're tired, but we must press on.

In an old abandoned fort, Kastav I think. Infested with rogue warlocks and necromancers. At least it's decently warm in here, comepared to the outside.

I know they're both probably tired, and I am too, but it'll be a great place to find some good stuff for enchanting. Gotta get Gore that flaming sword somehow.

Sadly not as much here as I hoped for.

Came upon a cave. Stillborn cave, the boys tell me. Full of falmer, freezing cold.

I'm ignoring my problems.

Down the road there's mine, with a smelter outside! Very convenient, since my bag is getting a tad too full from all the junk I keep picking up to smelt. Next to a mine too, maybe I can find some good minerals in it.

Mine had a decent amount of iron ore in it! A good haul, all smelted for later usage.

Also, I now suddenly realize I have taken wrong turn somewhere, as we are in Winterhold instead of Dawnstar. It's easy enough to get from one to the other, but I feel a bit foolish for headding in such a wrong direction.

We've arrived at the Winterhold inn. I've rented a room, and I intend to relax. Hopefully I can get some privacy for, frankly, personal reasons.

I went and found a secluded spot in the inn's basement to, well, relieve myself, as it were. The entire time I just kept having vivid fantasties of varying things, of werewolves, of dragons.

And yet I can't get him out of my mind. I feel like I'm losing it.

As I came upstairs he was sat in the chair across from the bed I rented. An oddity, he's usually in the main room or at the bar itself, drinking mead. Maybe he doesn't like this inn?

Maybe he's there for me.

Gods I feel ill. Mara give me strength.

#skyrim #the elder scrolls #tes #skyrim gameplay #gameplay #skyrim screenshots #Mothuk Luzim #Moth's Journal #skyrim gore #skyrim taliesin #cw suggestive #it's like one bit but still

2 notes · View notes

rurik-fra-ladoga · 2 years

Text

Frescoes, including famed danse macabre, covering the interior of the Church of Sv. Marija na Škrilinah, Beram, Croatia. Painted by Vincent of Kastav in 1474.

#Beram #Istria #Croatia #danse macabre #renaissance #frescoes #medieval #middle ages

14 notes · View notes

babaroqa · 2 years

Text

i just love how you can see traces of folk culture in the these names of the months and just how connected they are to feasts and the nature, the land on which people toiled.

siječanj (january) being the month of st anthony the abbot (or st anthony the hermit) because that is one of the most important feasts in january, when the horn of st anthony (antonjski rog) is blown and the season of the carnival starts (and ends when lent begins).

february just straight up becomes january for some reason but i won’t get into that.

march keeps its latin name which is also interesting because there is a saying in istria and the kastav region that spring only really begins after the third north-eastern wind of the month (which we call marčana bura).

april and may also keep their latin names while june is the month of st john the baptist or the midsummer month because ivanje is the midsummer’s day feast (and hello istria for naming your june literally “little may” 🤗 i see you and i am kissing you on the month)

following is july, the month of st jacob (james the great) which was when wheat was harvested (in standard croatian srpanj, called after srp = sickle, scythe, the tool used for harvesting)

and then august, which i really adore because you get stomorica from sveta marica or sveta marija which is mary mother of god, and the italians understand us then we say that the holiday of mary’s assumption (the date of ferragosto in italian) is probably the most important feast after christmas and easter.

then in september the istrians and those from the kastav region sort of disagree because in istria september is the month of the fig (smokvenjak comes from smokva = fig) and anyone who’s ever been in istria knows that their figs are the best, but it’s also the month of autumn because leaves are starting to fall and you can slip (pohust, pohusti se = to slip). this is where we have a slight disagreement because september in the kastav region is names after st michael the archangel (mihovil), but i’m unsure as to when exactly he was celebrated since the istrians actually named october after him. but whenever the feast of st michael was, it was the time when serfs or peasants paid their levies/taxes. the people from kastav region call october after luke the evangelist (lučina = the feast of st luke). there are still celebrations of st luke in the area around the mountain učka, a continuation of traditional celebrations, but since they were interrupted and then began again in our modern times, i couldn’t really find how they used to celebrate it, further research on my part would definitely be needed.

and then comes november which is martinje, the feast of st martin of tours, the period when must (fruit juice, most commonly grape juice) is made into new wine.

and finally december is called božičnjak, or literally translated, the month of christmas. it’s also worth mentioning that the period of christmas was important in the pagan cultures (not just slavic) before christianity because it was the period of the winter solstice, of planting seeds and the birth of new life (as can still be seen in the custom of planting wheat seeds during the holiday of st lucy - which was actually the winter solstice for some time before the calendar was adjusted by pope gregory xiii).

anyway i am just obsessed with how etymology reveals history. i focused only on istria and kastavština i.e. the kastav region because those are the ones whose customs i am relatively familiar with but i bet you could find something to explain the etymology for every dialect in croatia.

#i mean i should be studying italian not conducting detailed research into how certain croatian regions named their months #but we can't all have what we want #language #slavistika

6 notes · View notes

tinyshe · 2 years

Video

youtube

Croatia Traditional Music Instruments Performance

“Sopilka: Sopilka is a name applied to a variety of woodwind instruments of the flute family used by Crocatian folk instrumentalists. Sopilka most commonly refers to a fife made of a variety of materials (but traditionally out of wood) and has six to ten finger holes. The term is also used to describe a related set of folk instruments similar to recorder, incorporating a fipple and having a constricted end. Sopilkas (Ukrainian: Cопiлка) are also used by a variety of Ukrainian folkloric ensembles recreating the traditional music of the various sub-ethnicities in western Ukraine, most notably that of the Hutsuls of the Carpathian Mountains. Often employing several sopilkas in concert, a skilled performer can mimic a variety of sounds found in nature, including bird-calls and insects. Sopile: The sopile (or roženice, as it is called in Istria) is an ancient traditional woodwind instrument of Croatia, similar to the oboe or shawm. It is used in the regions of Kvarner, Kastav, Vinodol, Island Krk, and Istria. Sopile are always played in pairs so there are great and small or thin and fat sopila. “Sopile are musical instrument of sound very interesting possibilities and very piercing special sound. This is replicated in more modern examples of Kvarner music through use of modified double reed clarinet or soprano Dulzaina. Sopile are, by "mih" and "šurle," today very popular in folk tradition of Istria, Kvarner and Island Krk. Roženice are ancient traditional musical instruments which continue to be used today in the region of Istria. Roženice are very similar to sopile from Island Krk. Roženice are always played in pairs so there are great and small or thin and fat rozenica. Roženice have a very piercing special sound, and have the possibility of producing a variety of sounds. Roženice are, by "mih" and "šurle", today very popular in folk tradition of Istra. The sopila is a wooden horn originating from Istria and some of the northern islands along the Adriatic Coast of Croatia. Like oboes, sopilas have double reeds, but are always played in pairs; one larger than the other. Both have six finger holes, being equally spaced on the smaller one, and set in groups of three on the larger one. Often used to accompany dancing, the voice of the sopila is that of the Istrian scale. Frula: The frula (pronounced [frǔla], Serbian Cyrillic: фрула), also known as svirala (свирала) or jedinka, is a musical instrument which resembles a medium sized flute, traditionally played in Serbia. It is typically made of wood and has six holes. It is an end-blown aerophone. The frula is a traditional instrument of shepherds, who would play while tending their flocks. --------- Istarski mih: The Istarski mih or Istrian mih is a bagpipe native to the regions of Istria and Kvarner, Croatia. It consists of a bag made most often from goat skin and a double-chanter with two single reeds. This type of bagpipe is distinct in that it has no drones, but a double-chanter with finger-holes on both bores, allowing both a melody and changing harmony to be played. In this respect the mih more resembles the bagpipes of the Southwest Asia and North Africa than other European bagpipes. The instrument is not dodecaphonically tempered, it is a solistic instrument and it corresponds to the so-called Istrian scale. Due to its specific tone-hole placement, its sound is distinct and unusual even when compared to other instruments of the same "mih" family. Unlike other Croatian bagpipe-like instruments that were forgotten and replaced with the accordion and violin in the 20th century, the art of playing istarski mih has not faced such rapid cultural decay. Ivan Matetić Ronjgov, a native Istrian composer, is credited with having revived the art of playing the istarski mih and the shawm-like instrument sopile in the 20th century. Nowadays, these instruments can be frequently seen and heard on many traditional music manifestations across Istria, with many young and perspective players performing and learning to play. “

#music #instrumental #folk music #tradmusic #croatia

2 notes · View notes