“U dvorima od zlata“ - Croatian Folk Song About Slavic God Perun

“U dvorima od zlata“ (“In the court of gold“) - with English subtitles. In Slavic mythology, Perun (Cyrillic: Перýн) is the highest god of the pantheon and the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, law, war, fertility and oak trees. His enemy is Veles (mostly symbolized as a snake or dragon) who always provoking Perun by stealing his cattle, children (Jarilo) or wife. Perun was hunting Veles from the sky and Veles would run transforming into various animals and hiding behind trees, houses and people. Where thunder strikes, it’s believed Veles was hiding there. At the end Perun managed to kill Veles and return everything back to normal, but Veles’s death was never permanent and this battle was cyclic. With the arrival of Christianity, Perun in Croatia took the form of George the Dragon Slayer (Sveti Jure) and Ilija the Thunderer (Sveti Ilija Gromovnik). A Croatian medieval poem from the Paris hymnal from 1350 tells of St. George (Perun) slaying a dragon coming out of the water (cf. Veles as a water snake): “At that moment, the dragon left the lake. Saint George stared at him. He marked himself with the sign of the holy cross, they shook the shield and spears with their hands, the dragon’s throat was stabbed.“ In the Croatian language, we still see remnants in toponyms: Perun (hill on Učka), Perunić (Poljica) and Perunsko (Poljica). In 980, Prince Vladimir the Great in Kiev erected statues of six or seven pagan gods in front of his palace, the main one being Perun, depicted with a silver head and a golden moustache. Vladimir’s uncle Dobrinja established Perun’s shrine in Novgorod, which became a monastery after Christianization, but retained Perun’s name. In the Middle Ages, large oaks, sacred groves and even entire villages and fortresses were called by Perun’s name. All credits for this song goes to music band “Svarica“.