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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 other attributes were fire, mountains, wind, iris, eagle, firmament (in Indo-European languages, this was joined with the notion of the sky of stone), horses and carts, and weapons (hammer, axe (Axe of Perun), and arrow). The supreme god in the Kievan Rus' during the 9th-10th centuries. He was first associated with weapons made of stone and later with those of metal. Of all historic records describing Slavic gods, those mentioning Perun are the most numerous. As early as the 6th century, he was mentioned in De Bello Gothico, a historical source written by the Eastern Roman historian Procopius. A short note describing beliefs of a certain South Slavic tribe states they acknowledge that one god, creator of lightning, is the only lord of all: to him do they sacrifice an ox and all sacrificial animals. While the name of the god is not mentioned here explicitly, 20th century research has established beyond doubt that the god of thunder and lightning in Slavic mythology is Perun. To this day the word perun in a number of Slavic languages means "thunder," or "lightning bolt". The Primary Chronicle relates that in the year 6415 (907 AD) prince Oleg (Old Norse: Helgi) made a peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire and by taking his men to the shrines and swearing by their weapons and by their god Perun, and by Volos, the god of cattle, they confirmed the treaty. We find the same form of confirmation of a peace treaty by prince Igor in 945. In 980, when prince Vladimir the Great came to the throne of Kiev, he erected statues of five pagan gods in front of his palace which he soon thereafter discarded after his Christianization in 988. Perun was chief among these, represented with a silver head and a golden moustache. Vladimir's uncle Dobrynya also had a shrine of Perun established in his city of Novgorod.

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Related concepts (33)

Perkūnas

Perkūnas (Perkūnas, Pērkons, Old Prussian: Perkūns, Perkunos, Yotvingian: Parkuns, Latgalian: Pārkiuņs) was the common Baltic god of thunder, and the second most important deity in the Baltic pantheon after Dievas. In both Lithuanian and Latvian mythology, he is documented as the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, fire, war, law, order, fertility, mountains, and oak trees. Perkwunos The name continues PIE *, cognate to *, a word for "oak", "fir" or "wooded mountain".

Perun

Stribog

Stribog is a god in Slavic mythology found in three East Slavic sources, whose cult may also have existed in Poland. The sources do not inform about the functions of the god, but nowadays he is most often interpreted as a wind deity who distributes wealth. Stribog appears for the first time in the 12th-century Primary Chronicle together with other gods for whom Vladimir the Great erected statues: And Vladimir began to reign alone in Kyiv, and he set up idols on the hill outside the castle: one of Perun, made of wood with a head of silver and a moustache of gold, and others of Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, Mokosh.