On the Rebellious Thunderfork

A reader mentioned a radio interview given by two Polish academics: professors Duczko and Słupecki. The interview deals with Polish pagan customs and related topics. You can find it on the web. In any event, one of the claims made there, it seems, is that the Polish word piorun (that is “thunder”) is a relict of the worship the god Perun.

This is backasswards as I’ve hinted at already before.

The argument goes something like this: Suavs worshipped Perun but the use of the name was “taboo” so when they spoke of “thunder” they used grom instead. Grom is a word used for thunder by all Suavs.  (Incidentally, it is at the root of the word pogrom which just means a heavy defeat and which, in more recent centuries, had been applied to outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence).

But the fact that Poles (including Kashubians) use the word piorun to designate “thunder” proves that the word was known everywhere among Suavs (correct), was associated with thunder (still correct) and, this is the leap, with the all-Suavic “thunder god” (nope!).

In fact, the only thing the Polish use of the word piorun proves is that that was the Suavic word for thunder or, perhaps, for a thunder bolt. Such use does not prove the existence of any all-Suavic “thunder” god.

For one thing, if the name was really “taboo” then why was it not “taboo” for the Poles and Kashubians!?

For another, there is no evidence of the worship of Perun anywhere in Suavdom except, crucially, the Kievan Rus.

Quite apart from this, perunica is a type of the iris flower among the Southern Suavs (and, at least some of these, came from the East) so if there was a taboo, it seems to have had a limited scope.

The story, I believe, is quite different but much more interesting. The word piorun (not perun) was a word used for “fork” throughout continental Europe. This is so in Greek. Same in Venetic. It appears in the name of the Pirin range and of the Pyrenees…

Whether the word originated as a name for a “fork” that was later applied to an atmospheric phenomenon or, vice versa, it originated as the name of the atmospheric phenomenon and then was applied to a common utensil such as a fork, likely, no one will ever know. If the latter is true then it certainly is possible that it had an early “divine” connotation but this neither necessary nor, in any event, relevant for the Suavic Perun question. The word may simply refer to “thunder” and, well, it thunders in the mountains for reasons that are obvious to the modern man.

It seems that a cognate name – Fjörgynn – was deified in Scandinavia – at least in the Middle Ages. As the Viking (and, maybe, Goths) expanded they first got to the Balts whose own word for perkunas might at that point acquired a “divine” quality. From the Balts, the Vikings carried that Perkunas to the East Suavs in Kiev who adopted it as Perkun along with the “thunder” God connotation which, by the way, by then was likely associated by the Vikings with Thor. Another route could have been from the East where a similar process may have resulted in the the Vedic Parjanya.

The West Suavs, however, retained their piorun as a name for thunder which, however, never was a “divine” name for them.

Of course, and quite obviously, a terrible atmospheric phenomenon such as thunder would have likely been associated by the primitive man with the divine. But that certainly does not mean that there was ever a God named “thunder” until, that is, Scandinavia, the “vagina of peoples” also proved itself a “vagina of Deities” where every aspect of the divine became a God or Goddess in its own right.

If you are interested in other cognates throughout history, check out SMU’s mascot Peruna (the first of the name got its own Peruna statue!) named after the peruna “miracle cure.” Or look at the etymology of a “pear” which goes to the Swedish päron – that a pear looks like “Thor’s Hammer” I’ve mentioned before and, it is possible, that that form of the name was known to Scandinavians even before they crossed the Baltic. Whether by then they recognized the same root as Fjörgynn is rather doubtful.

And, to close the loop on this, Fjörgynn itself also is cognate with “fork.” Furthermore, the words fork and Fjörgynn likely come from something like piorun. Thus, if true we have:

piorun/πιρούνι/pironi = fork >

> Vedic God Parjanya

> Scandinavian God  Fjörgynn

> Mordwin God Pur’ginepaz

> Baltic Gods Perkūnas/Pērkons/Perkūns/Perkunos/Parkuns

> Peron (but now as the Kievan Rus God)

This is not to say that the symbol of the lightning was not understood by the West Suavs as a Divine symbol. For example, the Polish word for “fork” is widelec. This is cognate with widły (a garden fork or trident) which is a plural form (meaning there are multiple wids). Now, the question is why “wid“? Well, wid or vid simply means “to see” but also “a lord” thus we have Svantevit – or “Great Lord”. (Further, these are also cognates with “knowledge” as in vedas).

But the point is that the Name of that Sky God was not Perun or Piorun – rather, that was the name of the Holy Utensil.

Or, before that was invented, perhaps of the Divine Appendage.  

In another alternative, note that the word for “arrow” in certain places in Poland was itself piorun.

The Name was the Lechitic and Venetic Jasień or Jassa or Baltic Usenj or Iasion which the Scandinavians also kept as the Aesir.

It is also the Name of the type of a world tree – ash. If you believed that we lived on a Giant Tree (perhaps one among many such trees in the Sky Forest – hence gwiazdy) then, it is possible that you could also have believed that the hands of that tree would stretch out to Earth (perhaps in a fertility act between Iasion and the Mother of the Gods – Demeter) and, over time, that hand of God acquired a separate Divinity – so much so that, in at least the Greek version of the story, Zeus – the Thunder God par excellence, strikes out at Iasion who, in this version is portrayed as a demigod and his son which may well have been a reflection of an act of usurpation, a palace coup delivered by the Greeks to the earlier IE faith of the region.

As an aside, note that that Name that is also likely cognate with the “hero” Jason and check out this map of Jason’s return journey guesstimated by Jason Colavito (with a slight modification by me) when using the version of the story provided by Timaeus of Taormina.

Now, whether the Scandinavians always had two gods or whether Thor or Odin was adopted from elsewhere is another matter. If you believe the above are not necessarily lightning but rain then the Storm God may be Wotan of the woda even if, in later days, Wotan was reduced to war and Thor seems to have become the Rain God (“If plague and famine threaten, a libation is poured to the idol Thor; if war, to Wotan, if marriages are to be celebrated, to Frikko”).

Finally, Duczko and Słupecki mentioned possible pagan-town names in Poland of Swarożyn (Swaroschin) and Strzyboga (also rivulus Striboc; but then why not Strebechi near Halberstadt – today’s Schachdorf Ströbeck). These may or may not have anything to do with Svarozic or Stribog. But the professors failed to mention the villages named Łada and those villages whose names may be derived from ash tree names but might just as well be derived from the name of Jasień – of these there is quite a multitude – a topic for another day perhaps.

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