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6. Under the open sky

The holy spacje contains the sacrum. As M. Eliade (1966, p. 363-368) wrote: “A fence signifies the constant presence of hierophany or cratophany in the enclosed spacje, moreover it is supposed to protect an uninitiated person (a profane) from the danger that mlght impend him if he carelessly crossed the border.” A sanctuary is an organized spacje, separated from a surrounding sphere of secular chaos, constituting, iike a house or a town, imago mundi. There are different ways of separating a place of cult from the surroundings. Temples, although their aim was to confine the divine power within a special structure, were sometimes additionally enclosed in an appropriate fence, like the tempie in Arcona, or the shrine of Rugevit in Garz. Sometimes a whole stronghold was meant to serve cult purposes, as both military and magie protection, which is visible from the example of Radogość. Perhaps it will be possible to consider the so-called gorodishcha-sviatylishcha (strong-holds-shrines), identified by Russian archaeologists (Rusanova, 1992, p. 58, Timoshchuk 1993), as traces of that type of stronghold, if the relevant finds are seriously documented.

Slavonic open-air sanctuaries were yards and drcles marked out in vari-ous ways, often with statues or other symbols of gods, groves, which are separated by fences from their environment and usually sheltering no statues, and hills, surrounded sometimes with Iow embankments. In the case of sacrosanct water it is morę difficult to specify the rules of delimiting the sacred space. Cult drcles and yards were marked out in places regarded as predestined for religious functions by their creators, but in this case the form of enclosure of the sacred space may have reflected their beliefs conceming the ideał shape of such a place morę explicitly than endosures of hills and groves. The perfect models were a sąuare (or rectangle) and a drcle.

Let us start with some analogies. The square as the ideał model of enclosed space appears in the myth about the foundation of Romę, which is originally Roma ąuadrata (Czarnowski, 1956, vol. 3, p. 232-233; Eliade, 1966, p. 368). We know a type of open-air Celtic sanctuary, called “sąuare earthworks” - Yiereckschanzen (K. Schwartz, 1958; Schlette, 1987, p. 137-140). A very interesting specimen of the type was discovered in Czech Libenice (Rybova, Soudsky, 1962). From Scandinavian examples we should mention a Danish village Gudhagen (which means “gods* grove”), where the sacred space was a sąuare sized 48 x 48 metres with stone-lined entrance (Stróm, 1975, p. 226). It seems, however, that the circle was a morę common motive. We should mention here the sanctuary of Germanie Hermundurs from Oberdorla, where Gunther Behm-Blancke (1973, p. 144-148) discovered a circle surrounding wooden poles (possibly representing gods) and a ąuadrangular altar. The finds included remains of human and animal sacriflces. Old Scandinavians called such sanctuaries stafgardr, which meant an enclosed yard (gardr) on which a wooden pole representing a deity (stafr) was situated. The latter was often a statuę, as the word stafr soon acąuired the meaning of god’s effigy (de Vries, 1956-1957, vol. 1, p. 374-375; Stróm, 1975, p. 215-217). As for Slavonic names, Ruthenian chronicles noted the words trebishtehe and kapishtehe. The former means a place where offering were madę (treba = offering, recorded in 785 in the Paderborn capitulary and was probably known also outside Ruthenia (Hilarion, 1963, p. 165; Gieysztor, 1982, p. 183; Bruckner, 1985a, p. 580; E. Herrmann, 1986, p. 96). The etymology of the latter is not elear, but supposedly it refers to a cult place where a god’s effigy stands (Vasmer, 1953-1958, vol. 1, p. 522; Gieysztor, 1982, p. 183).

The best description of a sanctuary of that type comes from Ahmad ibn Fadlan. He was probably a Greek converted to islam, one of the envoys sent by caliph al-Muktadir to the king of the Volga-Bulgarians, Almiś. Along with other acute and reliable observations his relation contains a description of the sanctuary of the Varangians (ar-Rus) upon the Volga. It was situated at the estuary of the Melenka river, near a huge market place several kilometres from the ręsidence of the king of Bulgarians. When ships owned by Ruthenians came to the harbour, “each of them descended [the land], carrying bread, meat, onion, milk and nabid (alcoholic beverage), and went towards a high pole which is set in the ground and has got a human-like face, around which there are smali figures and high poles at the back, [also] set in the ground. Then [the Varangian] comes to the large figurę, bows to it and says: ‘O, Lord, here I have arrived from a faraway land, I have got slaves, such and such amount, sable skins, such and such amount’, until he enumerates all the commodities he has brought with him, ‘and I have come to you with this gifl.’ And he places what he has brought at the foot of the pole. (...) If his sales are poor and he has to stay for a long time, he retums [to the idol] with gifts for the second and third time. (...) He brings a gift to each of the smali figures, asks them for help and says: ‘These are out Lord’s wives, his sons and daughters.’ And he keeps asking the figures one after another, humbly pleading for their favours. Sometimes it happens that his trade improves [later] and he sells everything. Then he says: ‘My Lord fulfilled my wish, so I must reward Him.’ He takes some sheep or cows and kills them. He distributes some of the meet and takes the rest to put it between the Large wood [i.e. the wooden statuę] and the smali ones standing around it. And he hangs the heads of the cows or sheep on the pole set in the ground” (Ibn Fadlan, 208a, 210b, 1985, p. 106, 110).

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