Marta Eva Bět’áková and Václav Blažek (eds), Lexicon of Baltic Mythology (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2021), 290pp.

The English translation of Marta Eva Bět’áková and Václav Blažek’s Lexicon of Baltic Mythology (which originally appeared in Czech in 2012) was published in 2021, and thus this is a somewhat tardy review. The Lexicon is an important volume because it is the only reference work covering Baltic mythology in any detail in English, and therefore its publication is a major event for Baltic folklore studies. Up to now the English-speaking reader has been limited to a handful of translations of works that deal only with a limited number of folkloric themes, such as Algirdas Greimas’s Of Gods and Men; or whose interpretations of Baltic mythology are outdated and contested, such as the works of Marija Gimbutas; or which are long out of print and hopelessly difficult to obtain. Furthermore, the Lexicon introduces the world of Czech Baltic studies to the world (which was certainly new to me). The book provides an excellent starting point for the researcher of Baltic mythology, religion and folklore, and in this respect I cannot recommend it highly enough.

As anyone who has read my book Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic will be aware, I am very much a sceptic when it comes to the findings of comparative mythology, yet Indo-Europeanism continues to dominate the field of folklore studies in the Baltic states, and thus it plays a major role in this Lexicon. I am also sceptical about the possibility of stories and songs recorded in the 19th century preserving ancient mythology. I was thus compelled to bite my tongue a great deal when reading this volume, which leans heavily into comparative mythology and draws extensively on the Latvian dainas. However, the book is also rich in citations of actual historical material from the early modern period describing Baltic beliefs and practices – the kinds of sources which, in my view, are actually useful in making sense of pre-Christian Baltic religion. Having said this, however, the editors of the Lexicon are careful not to endorse or rely too heavily on the views or interpretations of any one scholar of comparative mythology, and the volume thus offers an excellent overview of debate in the field and highlights the ambiguity inherent in such an approach. It is thus a much better starting point than, say, the works of Gimbutas or Dundulienė, or even Vėlius and Beresnevičius, which might lead people to assume that only one forcefully argued interpretation is possible. Comparative mythology is, in my view, fascinating as speculation and as a discourse among scholars, but of limited or no value for reconstructing ancient Baltic beliefs. But this Lexicon at least makes the encounter with comparative mythology a fairly painless experience.

A large number of entries in the book are the names of Baltic deities or spirits, which the editors do their best to elucidate – not least because there are over a hundred Latvian ‘mothers’, supernatural personifications or tutelary deities of various aspects of life. The editors are frank about the invented nature of some Baltic lore, such as Teodor Narbutt’s Jūratė and Kastytis, Nijolė and Milda – the alleged ‘Lithuanian goddess of love’ who even has features named after her on the planet Venus. The volume’s appendices are useful, consisting of various early modern lists of deities and a translation of Maciej Stryjkowski’s account of the mythological founding of Vilnius by Gediminas. The editors provide thorough coverage of the etymological material, while dealing with etymological issues deftly and concisely.

In certain respects, such as their willingness to take authors such as Peter of Duisburg and Simon Grunau more or less seriously, their engagement with scholarship of Marija Gimbutas and their suggestion that Baltic tribes might once have inhabited Bohemia, the editors venture into controversial waters. Compared to the work of Vytautas Ališauskas or Darius Baronas, for example, who keep their eyes firmly on the historical record and eschew the speculative world of comparative mythology, the approach of Bět’áková and Blažek could be seen as a little old-fashioned. However, it is important to bear in mind that a Lexicon of Baltic Mythology should not only tell us about the content of the mythology itself but also about the field of study; and the fact remains that comparative mythology still holds sway over the study of folklore in Lithuania and Latvia – a reference work that ignored it would be unlikely to get far. The Lexicon of Baltic Mythology is thus an ark of knowledge whose passengers are the tendencies in Balticist scholarship, both good and bad, and that is probably inevitable. It does not detract from the overall value of the book, which is one that anyone interest in Baltic folklore and pre-Christian religion should have to hand.