At a fundamental level, mythologies and folklore are shaped by the landscapes into which they are born. Stories arise out of our experience of the world in which we live. We are born into a particular environment and it in turn is reborn in us and in our stories.

This page explores the interaction between Bulgaria's landscape, including its wildlife, and the country's traditional tales. It provides a geography and ecology for Bulgarian myth and folklore. Inevitably this includes the impact of the modern world upon the environment in which those tales now dwell.

Bulgaria is a beautiful country with diverse landscapes ranging from snow-capped mountains to white-fringed beaches, sub tropical rivers and fertile plains. It is rich in wildlife and nature. Eagles and vultures soar in the heights; brown bears and wolves roam mountain forests; butterflies and wild flowers throng the meadows. Although it has a continental climate with hot summers and cold winters, the countryside is generally green and abundant.

Bulgaria's myth and folklore reflects this natural wealth but over the past few decades social upheaval, economic hardship and previous government policies have combined to put some of it at risk. The landscape in which Bulgaria's traditional tales have thrived is now changing.

We thank Green Balkans for supplying us with some of the ecological information for this page.

A large part of Bulgaria is covered with mountains. The Stara Planina ("old mountain") rises in the north, the Sredna Gora in the central region, and the Pirin, Rila and Rhodopi ranges straddle the south. The lower reaches are spread with forests of every variety, and it is not surprising that mountains and forests have a special place in the country's mythology. These landscapes provide the setting for many Bulgarian traditional narratives and sometimes become a metaphor for human experience.

The phrase "beyond nine green forests, over nine high mountains" for example, common to several folk ballads, conjures a sense of distance and separation. The image of Krali Marko, the great legendary hero, leaping from mountain peak to mountain peak, at once conveys his great power and strength.

In traditional Bulgarian mythology, mountains are places of danger, but they are also places of magic and transformation. Krali Marko's childless wife, Elena is sent to meet her end on a high mountain peak, but instead she magically gives birth to a son, a dragon-child. The mountains are also cathartic for the hero Doichin's seven year old son when he begins to see the truth with horrific clarity. The mountains are a visionary place, where you can see clearly what is around you, where you are closest to the sun and the heavens. Here all is stripped bare.

Forests are dangerous magical places of a different kind. There is no clarity of vision here. They lure you in, you lose your path amongst the trees and you cannot see into the distance. It's a closed in internal world and time must pass before you can find your way out again.

In fairy tales children are abandoned to perish by cruel parents within its boundaries and must face danger or learn new skills before they can emerge as strong young people ready to face the world. In the tale of the hero Doichin, he breaks a forest taboo, and the forest then claims him as its own. It weaves through his body, moss covers his skin, and sparrows nest in his ears and sing through his eyes until he is awoken from a nine-year sleep by the tears of his sister.

Particular trees have their own mythology and symbolism. The fir-tree, the slender "elha", for example, is associated with girls who are ready to get married. The ubiquitous lime or linden tree is sacred to Lada, the Slavic goddess of love and beauty, while the oak tree is sacred to Perun, the Slavic god of lightening and storm.

The mountains and high forests are also the realm of the samodivi/samovili (singular samodiva/samovila), the wild and beautiful nymphs of the waters and the woodlands. They sing and dance from dusk to dawn in their sacred places and they punish those who anger them without mercy. Mists and whirlwinds are their companions and they reflect the fascination and the danger that these untamed landscapes hold.

But this landscape is changing. The mountains remain beautiful and relatively untouched despite increasing tourism. However, some new winter ski facilities violate nature conservation legislation and are detrimental to the natural environment.

Bulgaria's forests have fared less well. According to Green Balkans, they are being destroyed at an alarming rate and this is currently the most serious environmental problem in Bulgaria. In some regions, almost 80% of the forest has been destroyed over the past 15 years as a result of short-sighted government policies and illegal logging.

About 800 brown bears still live in Bulgaria's mountain forests.

According to Bulgarian mythology the bear was once a woman. Traditionally "Baba Metza" (Grandmother Bear) was a sacred animal and killing it was taboo. Bears go into a state resembling hibernation during winter, giving birth soon afterwards, associating them mythologically with the seasonal cycle, the earth's fertility and the return of spring.

The practice of keeping dancing bears (common throughout  the Balkans and in other countries) runs contrary to this tradition of respect. Captured in the wild as cubs and trained through cruel methods, the bears could still be seen in many tourist locations up until a couple of years ago. Muzzled and with a ring through their nose, they moved on their hind legs to music played by their masters, usually on a gudoulka (Bulgarian upright fiddle). Dancing bears have provided the livelihood for many poor Roma families for generations.

Now dancing bears have almost disappeared from the streets after a sustained international campaign and a changing political climate in which such treatment has become unacceptable.

Bears are now protected under Bulgarian law and there are measures in place to safeguard the wellbeing of captive bears. A sanctuary called Four Paws has been established in Belitsa in the Pirin Mountains where 20 former dancing bears will live out the rest of their years in natural surroundings. Four Paws pays out compensation to former bear trainers who hand over their animals, to help alleviate the resulting loss of income while they find alternative work.
 

Bulgarian folk ballads reflect the sacred nature of the stag, describing it as having "the sun on its forehead, the moon on its breast and the stars upon its back."

According to Bulgarian folklore, deer live in the high mountains, drink water from virgin mountain lakes and are the companions of the samodivi, the nymphs of the waters and the woodlands who ride them up to the clouds and the moon.

Deer were sacred to the ancient Thracians, one of Bulgaria's ancestral peoples, and the Thracian great goddess of wild nature, Bendis, is sometimes portrayed riding a doe. Her attribute is the moon, which links the deer with feminine lunar aspects. But stags are also symbols of the sun, mediators between heaven and earth, crowned with antlers like the world tree upon their heads.

At present about 20,000 red deer, 5000 fallow deer and nearly 80,000 roe deer roam the Bulgarian landscape.
 

There are over 400 species of birds in Bulgaria, which has one of the most diverse bird populations in Europe.

The Green Balkans team release an Imperial Eagle back into the wild.
Photo: Green Balkans

Eagles
 

In Bulgarian mythology, the eagle is a creature that flies between the worlds from the mountain heights to the underworld depths. It never ages because it drinks from the lake of the water of life that lies at the end of the earth. It is the helper of heroes.

The Imperial Eagle is one of the largest of the eagle species resident in Bulgaria. It has a wingspan of up to two metres and builds large nests made from sticks in trees along rivers and streams.  In the past people believed that it drove away the hail clouds and protected the crops. It was considered sacred and no-one harmed it. It was a common birds of prey with a population of nearly 2000 in 1904.

Now there are only 16 known nests in the country and the species is at risk of global extinction. The reasons are many, including changes in agricultural methods, hunting, and the use of poisons and agricultural pesticides to control wolves and rodents. Public education campaigns and initiatives led by Green Balkans, the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds and other organisations have brought some improvements and the Imperial Eagle now has at least nominal protection in law.
 

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