The Dead and the Mermaids: Essays on Slavic Mythology

What do you know about mermaids? Do you know terms like kupalki, vodianytsia, devil-women, and tricksters? Do you understand how mermaids are connected with the spirits of the dead?

Soviet ethnographer Dmitry Zelenin (1878–1954), in his book “Essays on Slavic Mythology,” explores these topics through the lens of Eastern Slavic beliefs and rituals.

In his extensive work, Zelenin pays special attention to a specific cultural aspect related to the notion of “the buried-alive”—people who died an unnatural death, most often by violence. A mermaid was perceived as a “buried-alive woman”—the spirit of a deceased person whose nature and behavior differed from a “buried-alive man.”