The Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge are often mentioned in Slavic mythology. In fairy tales and epics, this is the place of battles of heroes and princes with the Serpent Gorynych and Baba Yaga, and in historical legends this is a certain boundary between the two worlds of Reality and Nav.
What is Kalinov Bridge?
Fairy tales and beliefs from different regions describe this border between worlds differently. In the western regions, Kalinov Bridge is:
- purgatory through which the soul enters;
- the boundary between the domains of death (Nav) and living people (Yav);
- possessions of evil power;
- kingdom of Morena;
- the place where witches draw their power;
- the path along which evil spirits come into the human world on the eve of the holiday of Ivan Kupala.
The ancient Slavs believed that only the path along the Kalinov Bridge determines whether a soul is worthy of going to heaven or its place in the fiery hyena. If during life the soul did not live by the law of God and did not adhere to the commandments, demons stopped it in the middle of the bridge and took it not into the Light, but into the Darkness. Slavic mythology does not tell us exactly where Kalinov Bridge is located; all information boils down to the fact that it is located at the end of the world.
Kalinov Bridge - what is it among the Slavs?
The Slavs believed that Kalinov Bridge was not just a transition between two worlds, but a place of atonement for deadly sins. According to legend, the bridge itself was not in Russian lands, but distant lands in the thirtieth kingdom. The pantheon of the Ancient Slavic Gods is diverse, but Morena, who has the power to decide to take a person’s life or leave him on earth, demanded worship and personal possessions. The Kalinov bridge is the path along which the goddess of Death visits the world of the living in search of new subjects.
Who guards the Kalinov Bridge?
The Winged Serpent Gorynych and Kalinov Bridge are tied together. Thus, Slavic mythology calls the place where the Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge are located a transition between worlds, and the Serpent as a destroyer, because those who have not completed their earthly journey cannot enter the territory of Morena. Zmiy Gorynych himself is also not a simple character, he:
- Three-Headed Immortal Monster;
- fire-breathing dragon;
- guardian of the gate to Nav;
- Morena's chained dog;
- stealer of beauties;
- relative of Baba Yaga.
Where the Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge are mentioned, the Serpent Gorynych is always present. In Ancient Rus' there were fairy tales and legends that the heroes fought the Beast and he killed many knights. They say that the square in front of the Kalinov Bridge is strewn with the bones and remains of reckless daredevils and “the monster destroyed many souls of the righteous and the unrighteous,” but there was always someone who managed to defeat the Monster and cross the border.
Kalinov Bridge - a legend
Kalinov Bridge over the Smorodina River has a rich history. Some sources say that initially there was no border between the worlds, but the living and the dead did not adhere to their territory. This led to the fact that women gave birth to dead babies from dead men, and dead women took living guys into their possessions and they became half-dead. Hordes of these roamed the territory of Yav, and the ground under their feet burned with hellish fire. The world of the living gradually fell into decay, and people prayed to the great gods with a request to separate the two worlds with a barrier insurmountable for both the living and the dead.
The Supreme Gods gave the order to gather all the living on one bank, and all the dead on the other. It was decided to dig a ditch between the worlds, but since a transition to the world of the dead from the world of the living was needed, a fragile bridge was laid between the sides of the ditch. This structure was so thin that it could only support a soul, not a living body. When the construction was completed, the gods gathered all the half-dead and threw them into the ditch. They walked in a circle, and a fire burned under their feet, and soon the entire area was engulfed in flames. This is how the fiery river, or Currant River, appeared.
Kalinov Bridge - ritual
The mythology of the Slavs will make Kalinov Bridge part of it over time. Thus, on the path of the funeral procession, a small puddle was artificially created, and an imitation of a bridge was built above it from wood chips. This masonry symbolized the very Kalinov Bridge among the Slavs, which is the last frontier of life. They believed that if the deceased was carried over a symbolic bridge to the other world, then it would be much easier for his soul to pass through purgatory and get to the Gods.
They come to the Smorodina River and see -
all along the shore there are human bones,
everything around was burned by fire,
the whole Russian land is watered with blood.
Stands near Kalinov Bridge
a hut on chicken legs...
Russian folktale
IN In Russian folk tales, the Kalinov Bridge on the Smorodina River occurs more than once, where a battle between the hero and the monster takes place: “The Battle on the Kalinov Bridge”, “Ivan Bykovich”, “Ivan the peasant’s son and a peasant himself with a finger, a mustache for seven miles”, etc.
Serious and authoritative researchers have turned to them more than once, solving questions of the hidden meaning in them, but there is no comprehensive answer yet, and not at all due to insufficient efforts made, but because of the complexity and antiquity of fairy-tale symbolism, the meanings of which are lost in the depths of centuries, and elude understanding. Therefore, the study and understanding of images must be continued.
Smorodina River
Thanks to the research of the talented scientist V.Ya. Propp in science, the opinion has been established that this river represents the boundary of life and death, the boundary between worlds, between reality and reality. Without intending to argue with this, I will venture to propose a question for discussion: why exactly was it called that and what power did it have? The most common meanings are: fiery, smoky, stinking, fetid, filled with sewage. In addition, the root is associated with the concept of pestilence, death.
Proponents of this approach emphasize that the Smorodina River has nothing to do with its plant namesake. On the one hand, indeed, when describing “currant”, V. Dahl notes first of all the meaning of “strong stuffiness, stinking, suffocating odor, burning, fumes, fumes, stinking spirit, especially burnt.” However, on the other hand, he also calls currants as a bush/berry (so called “because of its suffocating smell”), and on the third, he even refers to the concept of the queen bee (!).
In this regard, it is worth noting that the bee in the tradition of our ancestors is associated, in particular, with the image of the World Womb and the origin of people (according to mythology, the goddess Lada gave birth to the Russians from the vibrations of the Heavenly Beekeeper). It was also a symbol of the soul (including its relation to the cult of the dead), and in Christian symbolism it personifies the resurrection and immortality of the soul, accompanies the images of saints Yegor and Elijah, revered among the people.
In addition, the same Dahl, in another dictionary entry, calls currants a berry, that is, growing along the banks of rivers. Let’s turn to this article, especially since it talks about self-sufficiency. It is known that in the ancient writing of the Slavs, vowels were omitted, so it is quite reasonable to assume that currants could originally have been a native land. Then the river of the same name could mean an ancient stream, counting its existence from the primary forces of the universe.
At the same time, the semantic proximity of the word to the concept is clearly visible. nugget, which has long been understood as natural as opposed to artificial, and also denoted the bearer of special talents and qualities. Needless to say, the Smorodina riverbed is an unusual, iconic place, and it’s not for nothing that it was here that epic heroes and fairy-tale heroes fought the monsters that threatened Holy Rus'.
From the end of the 19th century to the present day, enthusiastic researchers have been looking for the legendary water artery on the map of the European part of Russia, the Caucasus and Ukraine. Toponymic landmarks, that is, geographical names close to those mentioned in the plots of epics and fairy tales, are found, in particular, in the Kursk, Smolensk, Leningrad regions, in the Elbrus region and in Moscow.
It is curious, for example, that the name of the Sestra River, which flows in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, is of Finnish origin. It is formed from Sisterjoki(“sister” - currant, “yoki” - river). Please note, this refers to vegetable currants. And according to the “Pantheon of Russian Sovereigns”, Prince Oleg in 880 arrived on the Moscow River, which was then called Smorodina (or Samorodina). And to this day, in the southwest of the capital, in the Troparevsky forest park, a river flows, the name of which has two transcriptions: Smorodinka and Samorodinka.
Not at all in order to insist on the “Muscovite” priority, but to characterize the image of the mythical river, it is worth citing fragments from ancient historical songs. Thus, in the recording of Kirsha Danilov (18th century), the hero of the song “The young soldier drowned in the Moscow River, Smorodin”, going to the royal, military service, arrives on the river bank and addresses her like this:
And you, mother fast river,
You are fast, river Smorodina!
Tell me, is the river fast?
You're talking about horse fords,
About viburnum bridges,
Frequent transfers!
And he receives this answer from her:
The fast river will be cleared
In a human voice,
And a red maiden at heart:
“I will tell you, the river is fast,
Good fellow,
I'm talking about horse fords,
About viburnum bridges,
Frequent shipments:
From the horse ford
I take the horse kindly,
With frequent transportation -
According to the Circassian saddle,
From the Kalinov bridge -
According to the daring young man,
And you, timeless young man,
I’ll miss it anyway.”
Having safely reached the other bank and driven off a couple of miles, the unlucky traveler began “in his stupid mind” to boast about how successfully he crossed, and instead of gratitude he compared Currant, which had the reputation of an impregnable obstacle, with a rain puddle. Then the river called the braggart back, citing his insufficient weapons and predicting a quick meeting with the enemy, and when he began to return, he found himself in a pool...
The poor fellow prayed and heard in response:
I'm not the one drowning you
Timeless young man,
Drowns you, well done,
Your boast is ruin!
This plot clearly demonstrates not only the magical properties of the river, but also its powers in deciding the issue of life and death, and also shows generosity, on the one hand (at the first crossing), and the severity of punishment for an offense, on the other. Note that the hero did not at all doubt the predictive abilities of his interlocutor, and he addressed her respectfully, calling her “mother of the fast river.”
In a number of stories, Smorodina is approached for a prediction. Thus, in the epic story “Prince Roman and the Livik brothers” the ritual is described:
He gathered forces of nine thousand,
He came to the river to Currant.
He himself said these words:
“Oh, you good friend!
Do what you are told:
Cut the linden lots,
Throw it on the river at Smorodina...
Which power to be killed.”
Therefore, things were that river. It is mentioned in a number of epics (“The First Battle of Ilya Muromets”, “Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber)”, but nowhere is it said about the fiery nature. Judge for yourself: “the Smorodina River is turbulent, swamps, deep swamps...”; “So Ilya reached the Smorodina River. The river flows wide, turbulent, and rolls from stone to stone.” And in the fairy tales “Ivan Bykovich”, “Ivan the Peasant Son and the Miracle Yudo” there is no fiery characterization.
All this indicates that stench/fire as the leading characteristics of the image of Currant, no matter how stable they may seem, still cannot be considered the only version that claims to be true. At the very least, it is worth acknowledging the ambiguity of the ancient symbol.
This assumption is appropriate, if only because over time it has happened more than once that images that were initially independent became mixed up. This happened back in ancient times: in the late period, the Greeks and Romans began to confuse the river Styx (through which the souls of the dead were transported) with two others that flowed from Hades: Lethe (the river of oblivion) and Acheron (the river of sorrow). So Smorodina is sometimes called either the Forget River or the Puchai River, although there is no sufficient evidence that all these names refer to the same river.
Kalinov Bridge
Since the Smorodina River represents the border between worlds, then, therefore, the bridge across it is the path of passage from one world to another. This object has also attracted the attention of researchers for a long time. So, back in the 19th century, an expert on Russian fairy tales A.A. Potebnya expressed the idea that the etymology of the Kalinov Bridge is connected with the words heat(high heat) or kalet(to become numb, numb from heat or cold). Justifying his point of view, he referred to non-random epithets for viburnum, which are close in meaning to fire: red, hot, etc. However, later the author abandoned his own guess, putting forward another version, according to which the Kalinov Bridge was metal.
Academician B.A. Rybakov explained the original essence of the concept of “Kalinov Bridge” as follows: “ The bridge over which the massive mythical monster will walk is made of viburnum, a small and extremely fragile bush, absolutely unsuitable for any kind of construction. Viburnum branches can only be used to cover something, to throw something, but not to build with them... I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to recognize in these fabulous signs of a monster the outline of an ancient mammoth (or mammoths), driven by a fiery chain of beaters into a trapping pit, into a dungeon camouflaged by branches of viburnum bushes”.
But if so, then why is the Kalinov Bridge sung about in wedding songs, in brides’ lamentations, and in girlish melodies? And in the opera P.I. Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” as an image of a folk women’s song sounds:
It’s like crossing a bridge,
On viburnum boards!
Wai-doo, wai-doo, wai-doo, wai-doo,
On viburnum boards...
This image also appears in the tale “Guest Terentishche” from the collection of the already mentioned Kirsha Danilov:
He will be, Terentishche,
At the honorable cross of movement,
At the living bridge Kalinov...
It is worth mentioning that “living Kalinov bridges” existed historically. This was the name of the influx crossings, gati. In particular, in Moscow these were originally the Krymsky, Yauzsky and other bridges. They were called alive because the wooden floorings were dismantled before the spring flood.
But still: what exactly does viburnum have to do with it? Let's try to understand this by turning not to etymology, but to the symbolism of the tree. There are many folk tales about her. Ukrainians, for example, from century to century pass on the story of how the Tatar-Mongol army took girls as guides, who led them either into an impenetrable thicket or into a swamp. The adversaries stabbed the heroines with sabers, and at the site of their death, a viburnum with blood-berries grew. Another legend tells how in the Galician lands Olenochka committed suicide, whom her brother wanted to sell to the Turks; out of frustration, they chopped her body into pieces, and then the viburnum groves split with great sadness.
There is a legend that once upon a time viburnum berries were sweeter than raspberries. But one day the young beauty fell in love with a proud blacksmith, who did not notice her and often wandered through the forest. Out of despair, she decided to burn that forest, and when the hard-hearted one visited there, everything had already burned down. Only under a viburnum bush sat a tear-stained girl. The blacksmith looked at her and fell in love, and until his death he saw a beauty in his wife, because viburnum endowed him with the ability to respond to love and appreciate it. But its berries have since become bitter - like tears of unrequited love.
Since ancient times, viburnum has personified beauty and virgin love. It was grown near the hut - for good luck. It was an indispensable attribute of the wedding ritual, starting with decorating the upper room and ritual rolls with branches, wreaths and berries and ending with the announcement of evidence of the newlywed’s innocence. Funeral rituals for viburnum during marriage meant sacrificing virginity in the name of procreation. Brockhaus and Efron, based on the research of the same A.A. Potebni, claim that “Kalinov bridges are a common, constant common place in wedding songs (bridge - connection, connection).” Later, this tree became a symbol of women and love in general.
On the other hand, viburnum was a funeral, memorial tree and was planted on the graves of soldiers who died in battles for their homeland or loved ones who died untimely. It was also believed that viburnum was capable of seeing, hearing and thinking.
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Our ancestors believed that it helps against the evil eye and evil spirits, calms and eases the soul. “If you feel hard and bitter about your fate, hug Mother Viburnum, run your hand along its trunk several times, tell and reveal all your bitter secrets, press close to her carefully, without breaking the branches, your soul will immediately feel lighter” (it’s interesting that An infusion of viburnum berries is still used today as a sedative for neuroses).
The people treated viburnum as a sacred, sacred plant, so it was no coincidence that the bridge was named in its honor. And in the battle between the hero and the monster on the border of the worlds, Life and Death, and during the transition from girlhood to marriage, the dying of the previous state and the birth of a new one took place. Both a feat of arms and a wedding are initiation, dedication. Kalina acts as a protector, intercessor, and assistant. In any case, the basis for such a version is the symbolic meaning of the tree, deeply revered by the ancient Slavs.
Recreating the original meanings of fairy-tale symbolism is not just a subject of historical interest. It is certainly important for psychologists and teachers, since folk tales connect current generations with long-gone strong threads of the unconscious, and the symbols embedded in them, in addition to the will and consciousness of readers and listeners, resonate in their souls.
11.10.2015
In Russian folk tales, the Kalinov Bridge on the Smorodina River occurs more than once, where a battle between the hero and the monster takes place: “The Battle on the Kalinov Bridge”, “Ivan Bykovich”, “Ivan, the peasant’s son and a peasant himself with a finger, a mustache for seven miles”, etc. With the light hand of the scrupulous researcher of fairy tales V.Ya. Propp, it was customary to believe that the Smorodina River represents the border between worlds. Therefore, the bridge across it is a transition from one world to another.
Bridge as a symbol of unity
A bridge (like a rainbow) in many cultures symbolized the transition between worlds - between Earth and Heaven.
The Kalinov Bridge in ancient Russian epics connects the two banks of the fiery Smorodina River. On one shore is the world of the living, on the other is the kingdom of the dead. The bridge is guarded by the personification of evil - the Three-Headed Serpent, with whom the epic heroes fight for the triumph of Good.
The rainbow bridge Bifrost in German-Scandinavian myths connects the world of people (Midgard) and the world of gods (Asgard). The god Heimdall protects him from the ancient giants. When he blows the horn, then the last battle between the gods and giants will begin, which will end one stage of the life of the world and begin a new one.
In China, the bridge symbolized the union of heaven and earth. The Islamic tradition describes a bridge leading to heaven, which is located over hell; by the will of Allah, the souls of the dead cross it or end up in the underworld. For the ancient Jews, the bridge acted as a sign of the Covenant made by God with His people. In Finnish mythology, a rope bridge or a thread bridge leads across the river separating the lands of the dead from the lands of the living.
In Iranian mythology, the Bridge of Separation (Chinvat Parvata) between the world of the living and the world of the dead is thrown over the Darkness and leads to the Heavenly Kingdom of Garodman. It is made of light and is like a multifaceted ray. Along its wide edges, righteous people pass into the Heavenly Kingdom, and from its narrow and sharp edges, like a dagger blade, sinners are cast into Darkness.
Japanese myths tell: standing on the Sky Bridge, the spirit of air Izanagi and the goddess of clouds Izanami create the world. In search of land, they lower a spear into the swirling clouds and discover the ocean below. The water flowing from the spear freezes and the first island is formed, on which the gods settle and create the rest of the world.
In medieval knightly legends, Lancelot must cross a “smooth sword sparkling in the sun” - a bridge - to the place of Guinevere’s imprisonment. Crossing this bridge is “full of torment and suffering.” But as soon as the knight fearlessly passes the test - he crosses the bridge to the other side, the ferocious lions waiting for him there disappear or turn into harmless lizards.
Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge
The Currant River is one of the main symbols of our Ancestors. The River of Fire, which is crossed by the Kalinov Bridge, is the subject of endless discussion. They looked for currants among real rivers and even found some matches; she is credited with exclusively fairy-tale origins; it is considered a river around the world of the dead; the Smorodina River is considered a transcendental, mystical manifestation, and so on. But first things first.
WITH. Panasenko "Bridge over the Smorodina River"
Fire River
The Currant River is the Fire River. The name “Currant” itself has an ancient interpretation. Currants are red or fiery in color. There is another interpretation of the etymology of the word “Currant”. There is an assumption that it came from the ancient Russian word “currant”, which meant a strong and pungent smell, sometimes stench, stench, and sometimes a very pleasant strong smell; for example, even incense was called “currant”. Dahl in his notes calls the currant berry a river berry, that is, growing along the banks of rivers. The same applies to Kalinov Bridge. Viburnum is a bright red color, fiery, incandescent. Both viburnum (berry, shrub) and Kalinov bridge have the same origin and refer to the word “heat”, “heat”, “heat”, i.e. something very hot and red-hot. Thus, the bridge can be called that because it is red-hot, and because it is red-hot, and because it is thrown over a hot or red river. In addition, in conspiracies the bridge over the river is also called copper.
The Smorodina River separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. It is possible to overcome it only by crossing the bridge, which is called Kalinov. It is worth saying that the river of the dead exists in other ancient beliefs. For example, the ancient Greeks had the river Styx (the river along which souls are transported to the kingdom of Hades), which the dead crossed not on a bridge, but in the boat of the ferryman Charon, as well as Leto (the river of oblivion) and Acheron (the river of sorrow). At its core, the river, which is called fiery, is an obstacle on the path of the Soul, which it must overcome in order to leave the border of the world of the living and enter the world of the dead, separated from each other by an insurmountable wall of fire.
So, Kalinov Bridge connects two worlds. However, overcoming it is not so easy. On the way to the kingdom of Morana, fairy tales often depict the most dangerous obstacles. One of the most common is the terrible guard - the Serpent. In fairy tales and epics, heroes and heroes often fight with this snake, which is the personification of the battle of good and evil.
In epics and fairy tales, Baba Yaga is often mentioned, who lives next to the river and bridge, and is probably a later replacement for the Serpent or Miracle Yud. Although, it may be that everything is quite the opposite, and initially it was the goddess, who is popularly called Baba Yaga (a kind of fairy-tale version of Morana), who guards the Kalinov Bridge or helps the Soul pass from one world to another.
Kalinov Bridge symbolizes not only physical death, as the transition from earthly life to the afterlife, but also symbolic death. For example, Kalinov Bridge was often used in ritual wedding songs: the bride symbolically died, leaving her old life behind, crossed the symbolic Kalinov Bridge and entered into a new life, as if being reborn, having overcome the River of Fire.
There were traditions associated with the Smorodina River in the funeral rites of the ancient Slavs. Performing special funeral rituals, people symbolically crossed the Kalinov Bridge. In addition, another fire was lit around the funeral pyre, which covered the central fence. It is this engulfing fire that researchers attribute to the beliefs about the Smorodina River and its importance in life after death. The ancient tradition of burning the dead in boats and boats also relates to crossing the afterlife river after death.
And in the battle between the hero and the monster on the border of the worlds of Life and Death, and during the transition from girlhood to marriage, the death of the previous state and the birth of a new one took place. Both a feat of arms and a wedding are initiation, dedication.
Geographical search for the Smorodina River
Many researchers have tried and are still trying to find in the Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge not just a mythological image, but a real hydronym, that is, a really existing river, which served as the basis for the creation of myths. For example, there is an assumption that the Smorodina River refers to one of the rivers in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, which is called the “Sister” river. The fact is that the original name of the river is Sisterjoke, which is translated from Finnish as the Currant River, Sister - currant, yoke - river. This assumption is also confirmed by the message from legends that the Smorodina River is turbulent, and there are marshy swamps around it, which we can observe on the Sestra River. Another version of the real prototype of the legendary river is the Pochayna River in Nizhny Novgorod and Kyiv. Researchers came to the conclusion that they are identical because in many epics and myths Smorodina is referred to as the Puchai River, which is very close in similarity to Pochaynaya. There are also opinions that the real Smorodina: the Kyzyl-su river in the Elbrus region, on the banks of which there is even a Kalinov bridge; the Smorodinnaya River in the Bryansk region near the village of Nine Oaks; Sneporod (left tributary of the Dnieper); Moscow River (in the recording of Kirsha Danilov (XVIII century) the hero of the song “A young soldier drowned in the Moscow River, Smorodin”) and so on. Be that as it may, none of these assumptions could take a strong position and so far they exist only in the form of versions.
Inner battle
To look for a fiery river and a bridge across it as some kind of symbolic boundary, overcoming which one can find oneself in a completely different world-space, is meaningless in geographical latitudes, because they are located in the consciousness of every person and all nationalities. And each hero has his own hour of battle with the monster in an attempt to move to a new side of existence. Our past mistakes, our bad habits of thinking have tenacious paws and toothy jaws - they will fight us to the death. It's an internal battle. And it will happen over and over again, either increasing the intensity, or weakening its grip, giving a respite - an opportunity to comprehend what is happening, until you become a winner in it.
Thus, the Kalinov Bridge over the Smorodina River is a mandatory test that all travelers undergo who want to go beyond the veils of this world... Not in the sense of getting from the world of the living to the world of the dead, but, having overcome a certain personification of evil within themselves, to reach a new level existence, understanding, vision...
Good luck.
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The Smorodina River is practically one of the main symbols in Slavic-pagan mythology. The River of Fire, which is crossed by the Kalinov Bridge, is the subject of endless discussion. They looked for currants among real rivers and even found some matches; she is credited with exclusively fairy-tale origins; it is considered a river around the world of the dead; the Smorodina River is considered a transcendental, mystical manifestation, and so on. But first things first.
The Currant River is the Fire River. The name “Currant” itself has an ancient interpretation. Currants are red or fiery in color. There is another interpretation of the etymology of the word “Currant”. There is an assumption that it came from the ancient Russian word “currant”, which meant a strong and pungent smell, sometimes stench, stench, and sometimes a very pleasant strong smell; for example, even incense was called “currant”. Dahl in his notes calls the currant berry a river berry, that is, growing along the banks of rivers. The same applies to Kalinov Bridge. Viburnum is a bright red color, fiery, incandescent. Both viburnum (berry, shrub) and Kalinov bridge have the same origin and refer to the word “heat”, “heat”, “heat”, i.e. something very hot and red-hot. Thus, the bridge can be called that because it is red-hot, and because it is red-hot, and because it is thrown over a hot or red river. In addition, in conspiracies the bridge over the river is also called copper.
Academician Boris Rybakov put forward a different point of view. In his opinion, the Kalinov Bridge was called such not at all because it was red-hot, red-hot or red, but because it was made of viburnum branches. Rybakov justified this version by the antiquity of the myth, which dates back to the times when people hunted mammoths and set pit traps, covering them with a thin layer of branches. The mammoth did not see the threat and fell down, becoming trapped. The mammoth, or another large animal, also became the prototype for the mythological monster, which is always present near the Kalinov Bridge. Boris Rybakov also founded the Fire River here, because mammoths were driven into traps using a fire chain, which was made by beaters from grass or bushes.
The Smorodina River separates the world of the living from the world of the dead. It is possible to overcome it only by crossing the bridge, which is called Kalinov. It is worth saying that the river of the dead exists in other ancient beliefs. For example, in ancient Greek paganism there was the River Styx (the river along which souls are transported to the kingdom of Hades), which the dead crossed not on a bridge, but in the boat of the ferryman Charon, as well as Leto (the river of oblivion) and Acheron (the river of sorrow). At its core, the river, which is called fiery, is an obstacle on the path of the soul, which it must overcome in order to leave the border of the world of the living and enter the world of the dead, separated from each other by an insurmountable wall of fire.
There are a lot of references to the Smorodina River and the Kalinov Bridge. These names appear in fairy tales, epics, and conspiracies. “Just as a red-hot bridge is thrown across a river of fire, so I will walk across that bridge, lead the illness-illness by the hand, send the illness-illness to the dark shore, say goodbye to it with strong words: you, illness, leave the body (the name of the patient), get out , illness, to your dark shore. " In these ancient Russian legends and magical conspiracies, the same river is often called the Puchai River, that is, seething and swelling from the heat.
As mentioned above, the Kalinov Bridge connects two worlds. However, overcoming it is not so easy. On the way to the kingdom of Morana, fairy tales often depict the most dangerous obstacles. One of the most common is the terrible guard - the Serpent. In fairy tales and epics, heroes and heroes often fight with this snake. Such legends include: “The Battle on the Kalinov Bridge” (otherwise “Ivan the Peasant Son and the Miracle Yudo”), “Ivan the Peasant Son and the Little Man with a Mustache for Seven Miles”, “Ivan Bykovich” (otherwise “Ivan - son of a cow"), "The First Battle of Ilya Muromets", "Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber" and others. In these folk tales, which are very ancient myths, interpreted in a new way under the influence of time and the new established religion, the main enemy of the heroes is a many-headed snake, which is also called “Miracle-Yudo”, sometimes “Serpent-Gorynych”.
In epics and fairy tales, Baba Yaga is often mentioned, who lives next to the river and bridge, and is probably a later replacement for the Serpent or Miracle Yud. Although, it may be that everything is quite the opposite, and initially it was the goddess, who is popularly called Baba Yaga (a kind of fairy-tale version of Morana), who guards the Kalinov Bridge or helps the soul pass from the world of the living to the world of the dead.
Kalinov Bridge symbolizes not only physical death, as the transition from earthly life to the afterlife, but also symbolic death. For example, Kalinov Bridge was often used in ritual wedding songs: the bride symbolically died, leaving her old life behind, crossed the symbolic Kalinov Bridge and entered into a new life, as if being reborn, having overcome the River of Fire.
There were traditions associated with the Smorodina River in the funeral rites of the ancient Slavs. Performing special funeral rituals, people symbolically crossed the Kalinov Bridge. In addition, another fire was lit around the funeral pyre, which covered the central fence. It is this engulfing fire that researchers attribute to the beliefs about the Smorodina River and its importance in life after death. The ancient tradition of burning the dead in boats and boats also relates to crossing the afterlife river after death.
Many researchers have tried and are still trying to find in the Smorodina River and Kalinov Bridge not just a mythological image, but a real hydronym, that is, a really existing river, which served as the basis for the creation of myths. For example, there is an assumption that the Smorodina River refers to one of the rivers in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, which is called the “Sister” river. The fact is that the original name of the river is Sisterjoke, which is translated from Finnish as the Currant River, Sister - currant, yoke - river. This assumption is also confirmed by the message from legends that the Smorodina River is turbulent, and there are marshy swamps around it, which we can observe on the Sestra River. Another version of the real prototype of the legendary river is the Pochayna River in Nizhny Novgorod and Kyiv. Researchers came to the conclusion that they are identical because in many epics and myths Smorodina is referred to as the Puchai River, which is very close in similarity to Pochaynaya. There are also opinions that the real Smorodina: the Kyzyl-su river in the Elbrus region, on the banks of which there is even a Kalinov bridge; the Smorodinnaya River in the Bryansk region near the village of Nine Oaks; Moscow River (in the recording of Kirsha Danilov (XVIII century) the hero of the song “A young soldier drowned in the Moscow River, Smorodin”) and so on. Be that as it may, none of these assumptions could take a strong position and so far they exist only in the form of versions.