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The Lithuanian Apidėmė: A Goddess, a Toponym, and Remembrance
Vykintas Vaitkevičius,
University of Klaipeda
Abstract: This paper is devoted to the Lithuanian apidėmė, attested since the 16
th
century as the name of a goddess in the
Baltic religion, as a term for the site of a former farmstead relocated to a new settlement during the land reform launched
in 1547–1557, and later as a widespread toponym. Apidėmė
has been researched by linguists, historians, and
mythologists. An archaeological perspective is applied here for the first time.
Polysemantic words in standard language that
coincide with theonyms, people’s surnames, or
toponyms conceal secrets encoded into their
rich history of meanings. On the other hand,
they
provide
researchers
with
ample
opportunities for studying and understanding
not just discrete parts of culture, but
phenomena as certain links that connect worlds
distant in terms of time or, at first glance,
unrelated aspects of life. This
paper deals with
the Lithuanian word
apidėmė, known from 16
th
century sources as the name of
a goddess in the
Baltic religion and later as a widespread
toponym.
Apidėmė was
also used as a term for
the site of a former farmstead relocated to a
new settlement during the Volok Reform, a
land reform launched between 1547 and 1557.
With the Volok Reform came significant
economic and social change but also spiritual
religious reverberations: the location of the
original farmstead was considered the abode of
family hearth deities as well as the souls of
ancestors. They could not be left behind
without the care of the gods. Data on land
ownership and land use reforms in Lithuania
collected throughout the 20
th
century allows
one to perceive the phenomenon
and to follow
its development, even if with certain
reservations. During the Soviet occupation of
Lithuania, the Soviets demolished or moved
Lithuanian settlements. A custom developed in
which the locations where these farms once
stood were marked with memorial stones,
trees, crosses, or small chapels. Today this
custom is a notable aspect of Lithuanian
culture.
Apidėmė has been discussed by linguists,
historians, and mythologists (Jurginis 1970;
Zinkevičius 1981; Greimas 1990: 91–92;
Mulevičius 1990). This paper adds, for the first
time, an archaeological perspective, which
significantly deepens and expands the research
on this topic; Viewed in relation to the
ethnological data,
apidėmė emerges as an
integral part of contemporary Lithuanian
culture, here viewed retrospectively.
Lithuania first attracted the attention of
Western European nobility and missionaries in
1009. Two centuries later, Lithuania’s Duke
Mindaugas rose to the status of Grand Duke
and, by the grace of the Pope, wished to advance
to the throne of the king. In 1251, in order to
be crowned king, Mindaugas was baptised. Two
years later, he achieved his goal of kinghood.
Yet his monarchy rule was short-lived. Later,
19
it was the Teutonic Order that sought to
Christianise Lithuania. The Teutonic Order
organised the Baltic Crusades together with the
European nobility, yet the Christianisation of
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was also a
lynchpin of the political aspirations and
activity of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, the
cousins Jagiello (1377–1392) and Vytautas
(1392–1430). In 1387, the Vilnius Diocese was
founded, followed by the Samogitian Diocese
in 1417. The resulting religious changes had an
impact on the political, administrative,
economic, and cultural life – and lifestyle – of
the country. However, ties with the pre-
Christian world were most notably severed by
the Volok Reform. The Volok Reform period
coincided with the spread of the Reformation
and a Counter-Reformation wave. The wave’s
main representatives in Lithuania – Jesuits –
also went to great lengths to remove
manifestations of the old religion.
In the implementation of the Volok Reform,
all the lands of the Grand Duke (at the time the
country’s largest landowner) were newly
measured and divided. This was achieved by
moving peasant houses from individual
farmsteads and free-plan villages to new linear
settlements in the form of precise rectangular
plots along a single road. Deprived of the last
of their freedom, peasants received strips of
land (a
volok or its part) in three or more land
plots in which they were to strictly administer
a newly-introduced three-field crop rotation
system. The ruler’s example was soon followed
by the Catholic Church and the nobility. The
establishment and development of
folwarks
(smaller units of economic administration) in
areas remote from the main estates took longer
(for more details about the reform, see:
Balčiūnas 1938: 30–45; Jurginis 1962: 288–
297; Bučas 1988: 57–64; cf. Šešelgis 1996).
The Historical Context of apidėmė
It is important to emphasise that
apidėmė
emerged in religious writings mainly during
the Volok Reform.
Apidėmė is first attested
among a group of deity names and sacred
places of the old religion found in the first
collection of Protestant sermons of 1573. This
collection
was
drafted
for
Lithuanian
Evangelical churches in Prussia and is best
known as
The Postilla of Wolfenbüttel. The
attestation appears as follows:
Tikedami ing szemepaczius, Eitwarius,
kaukus, appidemes, kelnus, akmenis, medzius
gaius (kaip ghe wadinna alkus) Vpes perkunu.
(Gelumbeckaitė 2008:
Litauische, fol. 85v;
here and below, underlining indicates the
spelling of
apidėmė in the source text.)
(Pagans)
believing in
gods of the Earth, spirits
of wealth, goblins,
appidemes, hills, boulders,
trees, groves (so-called
alkai), rivers, and
Thunder.
Along with the domestic wealth-multiplying
Aitvaras and the god of farmlands
Žemėpatis,
Apidėmė is emphatically refered to as an evil
spirit:
Welnas ira etwaras, teip besas ira
szemepatis, teipag czertas ira Apideme
(Gelumbeckaitė 2008: Litauische, fol. 85v)
[‘
Aitvaras is a devil, as well as
Žemėpatis, and
Apideme is also a devil’]. In Jan Lasicki’s treatise
on idolatry
De Diis samagitarum caeterorumque
sarmatarum
et
falsorum
Christianorum
(written around 1580 and published in 1615),
Apidėmė is defined as the deity of a ‘changed’,
i.e.
abandoned, settlement:
Apidome mutati domicilii deum. nato
cuiusuis generis, vel coeco vel debili pullo,
actutum sedes mutantur.
Apidėmė is a god of a settlement that has been
changed. As soon as some animal gave birth
to a blind or lame baby animal, people
immediately moved to live elsewhere.
(Translation following Greimas1990: 91; see
also Lasickis 1969: 20; Ališauskas 2012:
113.)
It is necessary to note that a major source of
Lasickis’ knowledge was surveyor Jacob
Laskowski, implementer of the Volok Reform
in the Grand Dukes’ land holdings in Samogitia.
As a place name,
Apidėmė (
опедоми) is
first found in a land ownership document dated
to 1552, during the Volok Reform. The number
of such records increased continuously through
the rest of the 16
th
century and into the first half
of the 17
th
century (see Mulevičius 1990: 93;
cf. Спрогис 1888: 13). Beginning from the
Volok Reform period the name
apidėmė or
apydėmė is recorded with numerous variant
forms
in
inventories
and
documents
concerning land purchases and litigation. In
this period, it emerges as a term for the sites of