Talk:Latvian mythology

message: I think there should be more objective information about sources where from did all these deities came from (for example the cult of Mothers, are all these "mates" reconstructions or do they exist in written sources?). Also there should be more information about scientists who researched ancient Latvian mythology and etc... Welnias, 2007 03 12
: I agree, but think it is time to go much further: this article is such a mess it should be deleted. It creates much confusion (not just between Latvian Neopaganism and Folklore, but by borrowing from other mythologies without proper citations, merging some Lithuanian and Latvian deities, possible hoaxes and reconstructionism). It is beyond simple review and needs a suitable authority to rewrite it from scratch. --The Lesser Merlin (talk) 09:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: They, the University of Latvia History department and their students, are welcome to edit this article - anyone can. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 09:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The article is entirely unsourced, but given the large amount of content, I believe that deleting the entire article would be more destructive than helpful. If someone went through the article and embedded numerous  tags to highlight the inaccuracies, we would have a better idea of how to improve this article than we would if it was deleted. (I have added a  tag to the article, but I am not knowledgable enough about the topic to add sources myself.) Writing an article like this from scratch is an arduous effort and can't be expected from anyone here. I will try to contact a number of the editors who have raised the issue of this article's inaccuracy and ask them to highlight some of the most flagrant errors so that we can bring more experts in to offer small improvements. I will then appeal to the members of WP:WikiProject Latvia and WP:WikiProject Mythology to offer some expert opinions on the issues which have been highlighted. Does anybody else have any ideas for how to improve the accuracy of this article? Matt (talk) 22:32, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: At least some of the topics included here are found as separate articles in the recent Encyclopedia of Religion edited by Lindsay Jones, which I have found in pretty much every public or academic library I have yet encountered. A list of the separate entries it has related to this general topic can be found at User:John Carter/Religion articles#Baltic religion. Each of those articles is also, so far as I remember, individually referenced. The earlier edition of the encyclopedia edited by Mircea Eliade might contain more articles, I don't know. But if no one here does have access to those books, drop me a note on my user talk page and I can try to go through the articles in the Jones edition probably early next week, and add citations and corrections as I can find them there. And there do seem to be at least some sources on some of this in English, as I found by running a check of Google books on Perkunas here. John Carter (talk) 23:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, John Carter. That sounds really helpful. I currently don't have access to those books, but I might try and find access to one if I have some spare time soon. Matt (talk) 23:43, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

text: I completely rewrote the article last summer. The issue was that sometime along the way somebody had copied snippets of text from other sites into separate articles, which were then merged into this article, resulting in a list that was a rather strange mixture of stuff hard to verify. Feel free to read the current article and add/change anything, just remember you need to reference it with WP:reliable sources ~~Xil (talk) 21:58, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inaccurate information 

message: Isn't it fair to say that religion came first, then songs, etc.? There should also be some mention that today's Dievturi in Latvia and (fill in the name) equivalent in Lithuania are still going strong. Also, clicking through for each item for a one-sentence description is rather cumbersome; it would be better done as a list in the article, otherwise it just doesn't lend itself to readability. --Pēters 17:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cart before the horse? and usability 

message: i thought i'd just correct the names of Kārta and Dēkla (they're lacking macrons)
but then i come up the description of the Lithuanian Laima stated to have sisters Karta and Dekla as well..
and the Lithuanian Laima's sisters Karta and Dekla link to an article about Latvian mithology..
and i'm not even sure if there really are any Kartas or Deklas in Lithuanian mithology
okie i really suck at getting my point across..what i want to say is that this article is (i assume) erratically overly unifying or universalizing Latvian mithology creating some misguiding conception of shared Karta and Dekla
well i'm not sure but anyway they're spelled Kārta/Dēkla
:Assuming that you read Latvian visit this page: http://www.liis.lv/folklora/ articles on bouth deities start with pointing out that they are trinity of fate godesses and article on Dēkla states that "Laima and Dēkla are often used as synonims". -- Xil/talk 22:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  diacritic signs 

message: Wouldn't it be a reasonable idea to start merging some Lithuanian and Latvian deities (which are actually of Baltic origin) into single articles, for example Saulė/Saule, as they are generally very related. And the redirections would seem more reasonable than now, when Saule redirects to Latvian mythology and Saulė to Saulė (Lithuanian mythology) and so on? Iulius 11:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merging articles on mythological deities

message: I think it is better to tag an article then to make a simple text note, especialy given that whole article is disputable. I had done so (per reasons already disputed above), however over time someone has left such note (regarding only one subsection) and removed the accuracy tag, so I removed the note and tried to find tag which would stress more sharply that this article has a problem, unfortunately I could only find one that states that the article is currently edited, which isn't true - this article needs atention from an expert or at least someone with wide range of academic sorces available at hand, so I tagged it as such as well.---- Xil/talk 22:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Tags

message: Hello, everyone.
As Pirags suggested above, we should develop a "more academic introduction on the subject as shortly as possible". I do not know any Latvian, but here is a machine-translated copy of the Latvian Wikipedia's lede:
* Latvian mythology of Latvian culture is represented by a set of myths and beliefs, which formed the ancient Latvian folklore, Christianity and modern national culture (mainly First Awakening) interaction. Latvian mythology is not only a similarity with the other Baltic peoples (Lithuanians and Prussians) mythology, but also with the Livs and Estonians, the inherent nature cults.
I have made the links to the English Wikipedia articles where there were links in the Latvian Wikipedia article.
Could we rewrite that and add some reliable sources to make it a suitable lede for Latvian mythology? Kind regards, Matt (talk) 10:31, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I do have several sources on Baltic literature (English) and on Latvian specifically (in Latvian). They're on my list of much to be digitized, I'll see what I can do to make some of that web accessible. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 16:02, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

text: I did notice the LV WP article lv:Teikas (woefully, a stub), lists Latviešu tautas teikas. Vēsturiskās teikas. R., Zinātne, 1989. as its single source. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 16:28, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The later is a collection of tales. Part of series consisting of three (I think) books roughly organized by topic. Most like its foreword is quoted. Why the interest in that particular source? ~~Xil (talk) 16:53, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

text: I stumbled upon this description of Baltic religion, probably pieces of it apply here as well ~~Xil (talk) 17:44, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  It certainly sucked to be someone's horse when that person died (!). On the other, I just noticed that was the single citation for the LV "Teikas" article, don't know any more about that source. I'll post what other sources I have at home. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 18:49, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't get your point. As far as I remember the foreword is written from academic viewpoint, could find one of the books and look into it, but it will probably be focused on tales more than we may need. ~~Xil (talk) 20:23, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I found one of them - 14 pages just on tales, I remember one of the other books making vagues comparison between tales and legends, but I could only find one of the books. Ottherwise it just discusses origins and meaning of tales. So I doubt it is going to do as any good, however I'll read it later to see if it can be used to source the titbit on tales  ~~Xil (talk) 21:16, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

text: I have created a page in my user space to start mining the vaidilute.com webpage that Xil found. I'm not very knowledgable about mythology, pagan religion, or Baltic history, so if anybody else wants to contribute, I would be more than grateful. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 23:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

text: I also found this on Google scholar, it goes at length discussing sorces for research, perhaps could be used to rewrite sources section and also might mention something we could use as reference ~~Xil (talk) 01:15, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Also the encyclopedia refered to below is available here  As mentioned, doesn't have a seperate section on Latvian mythology, but discusses Baltic religion here starting at page 756 (159 for my pdf reader). There are also some further articles on some deities ~~Xil (talk) 02:58, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Oh, and suggestion - from way the pan-Baltic sources are written, most trying to reconstruct common religion, it is somewhat difficult to tell what indeed refers to Latvian tradition. I suggest therefore that these are used just to confirm what is written here already, not to expand the article (except in cases like Saule which doesn't even seem to mention Lithuanian tradition) ~~Xil (talk) 03:04, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  An academic introduction 

message: Based on sources dedicated to "Baltic Literature", which define that as the literature of:
* the Finns
* the Estonians
* the Latvians
* the Lithuanians
* the "Baltic mythology" article should include all four of those, a discussion to be had for/at that article.Based on eachh pairing (Finns/Estonians, Latvians/Lithuanians) having branched off from each other, the differences are more interesting than the similarities (I think). The problem is that this article narrative supporting the pantheon is so generic that it could apply to almost any cultural mythology with ancient roots.The underlying issue is that this article needs a lot more work.Tp John Carter's point, articles on the four mythologies need to be much better developed before we can discuss what can be combined in a "parent" article. His is a more than fair point, but at this stage of content, a misdiagnosis or at least premature. Just one opinion. :-) VєсrumЬа ►TALK 13:43, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Man, this is not literature. Although there may be some cross influence, all sources on Baltic mythology consider it mythology of Baltic People. And can we focus on this article needing fixing, not what the content of another article should be? ~~Xil (talk) 17:20, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Also pantheon is so generic that it could apply to almost any cultural mythology with ancient roots not true - Greek mythology has relatively few deities and straight forward implies that the deities are relatives. Here you rather have hundreds of deities, which look like simplistic anthropomorphication of natural occurrences. None of these Baltic pantheon overviews really account for that. Perhaps Lithuanian mythology doesn't have these mother deities (so problem above solved) as there were only some parallels mentioned of which some seemed to have distinct names? ~~Xil (talk) 18:48, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  To this and below, I did take a quick look at Rubulis' book on Baltic literature (has short sections on folklore for each), although I'm less sanguine about it as a source since running across a scathing review of it in Lituanus (although in fairness some of those criticisms were based on stricter scholarship whereas Rubulis definitely attempts to make the topic less impenetrable). Rather than opine more solutions, I'll do a bit more digging through my sources at home and just see what comes up. Thanks for the attention here. :-) VєсrumЬа ►TALK 19:04, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for all the good work, Vecrumba. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 01:44, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Baltic mythology, as used by scholars, refers to the indigenous pre-Christian mythology of the Baltic peoples; speakers of the Baltic languages. The native, pre-Christian mythology of the Finno-Ugric peoples needs to be handled elsewhere, perhaps both as a Finno-Ugric mythology article and a Uralic mythology article (which are both in inappropriate and sad states, lingering in a situation similar to many other developed mythology articles prior to getting reworked). :bloodofox: (talk) 08:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  My factoring 

message: Hi, I guess I'm a neutral here having just dropped by as a very minor member of Wikiproject mythology.
I would suggest that the should be a Baltic Mythology article with subsections as described, with each having a section in that page and for example a  type header. 
And more importantly once you've got the whole lot set up, you can then know enough to decide if (which is sounding unlikely) all the separate articles remain very small, whether the need to link to a Main article is worthwhile, or whether you might as well leave all the content on the Baltic page, and have those other pages just as redirects. EdwardLane (talk) 17:01, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  From WikiProject Mythology 

message: I'm bring the second paragraph here instead of tagging it 6 or 7 times over. It's worth noting that winter solstice and spring celebrations are basically, ah, everywhere, so we'd need a direct source before talking about Latvian mythology as the source of contemporary Christian things.
:::The legacy of Latvian mythology is also seen in contemporary Christian holidays. Christmas is called Ziemassvētki. Not only is Easter called Lieldienas, but the pussy willow has supplanted the palm frond in Christian symbolism. Palm Sunday is Pūpolsvētdiena, literally, Pussy Willow Sunday, and little children are awoken that morning by the ritualistic swats of a willow branch and the exclamation, "Apaļš kā pūpols, apaļš kā pūpols, apaļš kā pūpols!" ("Round like (the catkins of) a pussy willow!")
:::Also used "Apaļš kā pūpols, vesels kā pūpols!" - " Round like Pussy willow, healthy like Pussy Willow!" That way giving a blessing of good health for the year coming until Next Pussy Willow Sunday.
Darryl from Mars (talk) 05:06, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It's possible that the intended interpretation of this is that the legacy of Latvian mythology can be seen in contemporary Christian holidays in Latvia, rather than in contemporary Christian holidays everywhere. But the claim still needs to be sourced. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 09:08, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Although that seems to be the point of these lines, they don't really mention any traditions that would seem distinct and non-Christian. The pussy willow is used by many European nations for the occasion as palms are uncommon. The only thing is that maybe spanking is not Christian and that these holidays have names that have no clear connection to Christianity, but it hard to call either way - this is exactly why I think the article needs expert, who knows such things ~~Xil (talk) 12:04, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that we need an expert's attention to find sources for these claims. An expert's attention would help incredibly, but we can't leave this article in this state while we wait for an expert. I have alerted a number of editors who appear to be more knowledgable about the topic of mythology than myself, but if you want to bring an expert in from outside of Wikipedia, you might be able to contact someone at the University of Latvia. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 21:21, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lead 

message: I am trying to rewrite artcle to prose offline. The articles you found on Highbeam seem to be from afore mentioned Encyclopedia of religion. They almost all are written by Latvians and mostly refer exclusively to Latvian mythology, so there's plenty of material for reference. I find however that research reflected there in itself is contradictory and, given that, this article may not be as bad as it seems - granted though there is some crap from Dievturi doctorine and romanticism, but that might well be destroyed. The only issue is there don't seem to be many sources on what the hell is mātes and syncretism with christianity (half of the "minor holidays" look like church holidaysto me) ~~Xil (talk) 11:13, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds great, Xil. Thanks for putting in the great efforts of evaluating the Highbeam sources. If you need any help, let me know how I might be able to help you. I know that you said that you were going to rewrite it offline, but is there any chance of us getting updates on your progress so we can give you some constructive feedback? Kind regards, Matt (talk) 02:11, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Haven't forgotten about elsewhere and this, just extremely busy. Regarding syncretism, I'd suggest Catholic sources on colors of vestments, etc. As I understand it, the colors associated with pagan festivals were adapted to Christianity to make it more familiar and palatable. However, that's all more to the topic of religion than mythology. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 23:33, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: What I meant was that names of some deities (mainly those associated with major holidays, because the folk songs simply go and refer to holidays in antropomorphic manner) and holidays seem to be taken from Christian tradition. This is a quite obvious thing, but so far only source supporting it is 18th century dictionary quoted on LFK website. And there's nothing consise on those minor holidays either, though I got one source describing traditions associated with some. I'm not sure I want to expand it much with other forms of syncretism. I think I need to write three more sections and then I'll be done. ~~Xil (talk) 03:12, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

text: I'm done. I've lost my inspiration and it doesn't look like it is going to come back any time soon. I think lead needs rewrite, but it needs to be summary of article, not source research, so can easily be done by anybody. I also think some more pictures would be cool, but I don't have any ideas (besides afterlife section were one could use pics of modern festivals, but I couldn't find any). ~~Xil (talk) 23:33, 23 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  FYI 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello, user . Sorry to bother you. One thing I noticed is that ancient deity Bindus - an Illyrian deity - redirects to this article about Latvian mythology. Using Ctrl+F yields no result on Latvian, but the deity is mentioned in the article about Illyrian religion. So, to my mind, a better redirect for Bindus would be to Illyrian religion, instead of to this article.189.122.34.209 (talk) 02:39, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion for redirect: Bindus