Slavic Pantheonidol
Idol of Perun at Kyiv
- Focus of state cult
- Guarantor of oaths
The wooden image of Perun with a silver head and a golden moustache that Prince Vladimir set up on the hill outside his palace in 980, and had thrown into the Dnieper at his conversion in 988.
About Idol of Perun at Kyiv
Set up in 980
The Russian Primary Chronicle, compiled in Kyiv in the early 12th century, records under the year 980 that Vladimir, newly ruler of Kyiv, set up idols on the hill outside his palace: Perun, made of wood with a head of silver and a moustache of gold, and beside him Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh. People sacrificed to them, the chronicler writes with disapproval.
Thrown down in 988
Under 988, after Vladimir's baptism, the chronicle describes the images being overthrown. Perun was tied to a horse's tail and dragged down to the stream, beaten with sticks by twelve men, and thrown into the Dnieper, and men were set to push the image away from the banks until it had passed the rapids.
How far to trust it
The chronicle was written more than a century later by Christian monks, and some historians read the 980 'pantheon' as partly literary. But the silver-and-gold idol is one of the few physical descriptions of an East Slavic cult image that survives, and excavations on Starokyivska Hill have been argued to locate the site.
Origin
Erected by Vladimir Sviatoslavich on the hill beyond the palace courtyard in Kyiv, according to the Primary Chronicle under the year 980.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Russian Primary Chronicle, s.a. 980 (paraphrase)
- Russian Primary Chronicle, s.a. 988 (paraphrase)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.