Talk:Latvian mythology

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Contents 1 Inaccurate information 2 Cart before the horse? and usability 3 Merge 4 accuracy tag 5 Festivals 6 diacritic signs 7 Merging articles on mythological deities 8 Tags

[edit] Inaccurate information

I think there should be more objective information about sources where from did all these deities came from (for example the cult of Mothers, are all these "mates" reconstructions or do they exist in written sources?). Also there should be more information about scientists who researched ancient Latvian mythology and etc... Welnias, 2007 03 12

[edit] Cart before the horse? and usability

Isn't it fair to say that religion came first, then songs, etc.? There should also be some mention that today's Dievturi in Latvia and (fill in the name) equivalent in Lithuania are still going strong. Also, clicking through for each item for a one-sentence description is rather cumbersome; it would be better done as a list in the article, otherwise it just doesn't lend itself to readability. --Pēters 17:33, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I have merged all the 1-3 line stubs into this article. I have made the original articles a redirect to this one. Now someone needs to check it for accuracy and somehow separate the list into gods, mates, terms, other stuff. Is there a need for something like for holidays? Renata 06:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I know that info here is not accurate. I asked the person who originally created the stubs and this page way back in 2002 what was his source, and he pointed to here. I know this page needs a loooot more work. Like the list of gods. I reallt don't think it list all of them.

I just wonder, what's wrong with Ausekla Zvaigzne that you have removed it? Renata 02:42, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Kudos to Renata! This is 1000% better now than it was for readability! I replaced the introduction—Latvian mythology is reflected in Latvian songs, it didn't come from songs, and also noted its continuing impact on contemporary Latvian life. Good web links in English are few and far between, I added some Latvian ones that should assist efforts going forward in improving accuracy. I don't see any reason for removing the Ausekļa Zvaigzne (eventually we also need a "Symbology" section!), it was correctly depicted and described. The other edits done at that time were all fine—it might have just been an oversight. —Pēters 16:39, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Good you like it. Now it's your turn to expand/clean it up. A note that pantheon.org was written by a Latvian. Question though. What to do with holidays? Merge in the same manner? I think a lot of that info needs sources and verification, it is more doubtful than gods. Renata 17:00, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

At this point, it will take reading through the Latvian sources and doing a cleanup pass. Unfortunately I'm fully booked right now, so it will be a while before I have a chance. Hopefully another Wikipedian can take a look through the external links in the meantime... The holidays should probably be merged the same day, the major ones, such as Jāņi, would then have articles with more in-depth detail. The basic accuracy of the current holidays 1-3 liners doesn't appear to be too bad. —Pēters 22:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I removed Ausekla zvaigzne, because I thought that its name was wrong and that it is not so notable to mark it out separately, to undo this deed I described the said star in Auseklis article. I think that symbols should be in one, saparated article - to much information for section, thought it could be started as section and then separated.

I decided to do reserch on this subject (Latvian mythology, more specificly Auseklis relevant things), but currently I have to draw quite ambigious conclusions, so I doubt if I will expand anything in the near time.

I haven`t heard of most "other holidays" listed, I think those are names for church holidays in Latvian, thought pelnu diena and septiņu gulētāju diena are sometimes still remembered (not realy celebrated).

Anyway - few links you could find usefull (if you speak Latvian of course):

• On Latvian calendar(google keyword search results, I have had no time to read them): http://www.pbla.lv/izglitiba/Vesture/laika_skaitisana.htm http://www.dievturi.lv/gasdkarta.htm http://www.liis.lv/astron/IE_version/Paradies/Saule.htm http://profundis.christian.net/gramatu_plaukts/raksti/kalendars.html http://www.ailab.lv/dievturi/Ceroks/c110.htm http://www.undine.lv/lat/gadskartas/laiks.html
• Other: http://www.dainuskapis.lv http://www.lfk.lv/lfk_eng.html - in english (I think that you must see this table http://www.lfk.lv/Stendera-Langes_tabula.html ) http://www.ailab.lv/folklora/ -- Xil/talk 11:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] accuracy tag

I decided that it would be more appropriate to tag this article and explain what is wrong here, than keep that note ("This information was initially gathered from non-Latvian web sources and mightreliable be slightly inaccurate") - after all it is slightly ambigious to say that english sources are wrong on english encyclopedia.

Now the explenation: reliability of non-latvian sources is questionable, thought it appears that latvian mythology isn`t fully researched subject and therefore theories may vary. If you do not happen to speak latvian, but wish to edit this article, perhaps best thing to do would be link to web sources you are using, so other people could veritifity how reliable they are, also if your source provides multiple spelling choises for term try to use the one that could be close to latvian speling, so that other people could determine correct name when serching for more information - Latvian alphabet doesn`t contain q, x or y, while w and h where used in old ortography used 100 years ago and might apper in foreign and posibly erroneous spelling variations. Names in singular nominative ends with -a,-e or -s, in plural with -i, -es or -as -- Xil/talk 17:18, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Festivals

I have merged the festivals. Most of them are link to from their dates articles, e.g. January 6. I suggest removing those entries because a number of entries are dubous and unsourced. Any opinions? Renata 01:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

One thing though, it's quite jarring to try to look up a single holiday/festival, Tanis Diena, which was highlighted on the Main Page on the date it just fell on, and now be re-directed to this long article on All of Latvian Mythology. What's the problem with brief definitions? OK, I'm a newbie, but I get the idea that a "stub" is somehow an incomplete article, still I think that some things can be well described or defined in just a few words--that doesn't make them incomplete. Why not keep all the small articles and have each one refer to this for the deeper background? BillFlis 11:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Because those stubs are widely inaccurate. They are not properly sourced and might be even little hoaxes. So I put them all here - one can take a glance at them all now and I hope it is going to be easier to corrrect all those mistakes. And all those stubs were created in 2002... So it's long overdue to do something about them. Renata 12:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed this from article:

"Zāļu Diena ("day of grasses") was a festival held on June 20. The women and girls gathered grasses and flowers to weave into wreathes. Farmers cut birch boughs and put them in their barns; this prevented mice and other rodents from eating the harvest. John's Grass was given to the cows and sand was sifted onto their heads; this caused the cows to have sweet milk. Young girls gave crowns of flowers to their potential suitors; both children then wore their wreaths to bed and, if they dreamed of each other, they were a match."

In my humble opinion it is very stupid and misdated description of Jāņi, only thing is that it should redirect to Jāņi because "Zāļu diena" is used today to name 23 June, so I tried to change redirect page, but it still redirects here :( -- Xil/talk 14:57, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirect works, apperently something was wrong with my browser yesterday, sorry -- Xil/talk 08:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] diacritic signs

i thought i'd just correct the names of Kārta and Dēkla (they're lacking macrons) but then i come up the description of the Lithuanian Laima stated to have sisters Karta and Dekla as well.. and the Lithuanian Laima's sisters Karta and Dekla link to an article about Latvian mithology.. and i'm not even sure if there really are any Kartas or Deklas in Lithuanian mithology okie i really suck at getting my point across..what i want to say is that this article is (i assume) erratically overly unifying or universalizing Latvian mithology creating some misguiding conception of shared Karta and Dekla well i'm not sure but anyway they're spelled Kārta/Dēkla

Assuming that you read Latvian visit this page: http://www.liis.lv/folklora/ articles on bouth deities start with pointing out that they are trinity of fate godesses and article on Dēkla states that "Laima and Dēkla are often used as synonims". -- Xil/talk 22:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging articles on mythological deities

Wouldn't it be a reasonable idea to start merging some Lithuanian and Latvian deities (which are actually of Baltic origin) into single articles, for example Saulė/Saule, as they are generally very related. And the redirections would seem more reasonable than now, when Saule redirects to Latvian mythology and Saulė to Saulė (Lithuanian mythology) and so on? Iulius 11:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tags

I think it is better to tag an article then to make a simple text note, especialy given that whole article is disputable. I had done so (per reasons already disputed above), however over time someone has left such note (regarding only one subsection) and removed the accuracy tag, so I removed the note and tried to find tag which would stress more sharply that this article has a problem, unfortunately I could only find one that states that the article is currently edited, which isn't true - this article needs atention from an expert or at least someone with wide range of academic sorces available at hand, so I tagged it as such as well.---- Xil/talk 22:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)