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Use-And-Reuse-Of-Ancient-Sacred 74 Use and reuse of ancient sacred places in Mikytai, Žemaitija National Park, NW Lithuania Vykintas Vaitkevicˇius Introduction Ancient sacred places are a highly characteristic type of monuments in The study of the ancient sacred places Lithuania’s protected areas, which cov- in Lithuania was a rather slow process er the most natural lands. Usually sa- in the twentieth century. Many ideologi- cred places located in protected areas cal and methodological controversies are well preserved, and therefore they surrounded the subject. The multidisci- deserve special consideration. plinary character of the ancient sacred places and ambivalent ideological atti- The complex of ancient sacred places tudes towards them were the factors of Mikytai is located in North-western that affected the issue greatly. Lithuania, within Žemaitija National Park. As many other protected areas of Nowadays nearly 2500 ancient sacred the country, this national park was places have been recorded in Lithuania. founded in 1991, soon after the inde- This figure includes hills, arable fields and pendence of Lithuania was declared. meadows, groves and trees, rivers and springs, lakes and wetlands, stones, hol- The core of the Žemaitija National Park lows. There are also some known caves is Lake Plateliai, located in the middle located in exposures on riverbanks. of the site, although numerous other < An oak with holes and two trunks grown together on the north-eastern slope of the Alka Hill. 75 The location of the Mikytai Site in the Baltic Sea Region. places of interest are located in its pe- the religion of the Žemaitija region. It is riphery. Žemaitija (Samogitia – in Latin) sometimes described by the term ‘Folk is a renown region for its history and Christianity’ that includes ancient sa- cultural heritage. cred places: sacred trees, sacred springs, and sacred stones being in Although Christianity has been official- passive or active use today. Especially ly introduced into Žemaitija in the early the votive treatment and offerings of fifteenth century (Jucas, 2007: 31-38), this kind are prevalent and practised in real changes in the worldview of the lo- Žemaitija. Small wooden chapels, cal population took place only in the crosses of different size, figurines of late sixteenth century, during the Ref- the Saints as well as numerous other ormation and the reaction against it. offerings are brought to the ancient sa- Syncretism of inherited Baltic (and also cred places. Indo-European) spiritual traditions and Christianity is highly characteristic of 76 Mikytai sacred places and the In historical times, at least for four or Alka Hill five centuries, the Mikytai village aka( - lica – in Polish) at the roads crossing The case of the ancient sacred places in was a settlement inhabited by noble- Mikytai is quite different from other Lithu- men. For this reason there were no anian sacred sites. The Devil’s name that regulations indicating that the villages appears in some of the place names of were the property of the State (e.g. Mikytai as well as in the local legends re- Grand Duchy of Lithuania). The repre- ferring to the Alka Hill does indicate that sentatives of the noblemen were the the original sacredness of the pre-Chris- keepers of old customs in some cases. tian site has been transformed into fear This might be supported by recent re- and fright a long time ago. The name of search carried out in Lithuania and the village ‘Mikytai’ might have derived Latvia. In both cases a kind of religious from a surname, but at the same time, independence of the noblemen related folk etymology draws attention to the to the ancient sacred places was dis- meaning of the Lithuanian word mikyta cussed, and buildings of sacred plac- ‘the goat’, because the ghost of the goat es next to the villages that were inhab- plays the central role in the numerous place legends related to the Mikytai Alka ited by the noblemen were presented Hill (Vaitkevicˇius, 1998: 22). (Vaitkevicˇius 2008; Laime 2009). From an archaeological point of view, the Alka Hill (whose literal translation hill fort in-between the sites Mikytai and would be ‘hill of the Alka’) is the most Šliktine is a significant mark in the prehis- significant landmark in the surround- toric landscape dating back to the first ings of Mikytai and it possesses the millennium – early second millennium AD common Lithuanian name alka (femi- (Baubonis and Zabiela, 2005: 372-373). nine). For a long time Alka was widely Couronian settlements covered a huge accepted as the name for ‘a sacred area from North-western Lithuania to grove’, ‘a place where sacrifices were South-western Latvia (Žulkus, 2004: 41). burnt’, or ‘sacrifice’ itself (Vaitkevicˇius, There is no information about a burial site 2004: 7). It is worth mentioning that in Mikytai. However, several findings Alka is one of the few Baltic religious were discovered during the reclamation terms of the pre-Christian period. Nu- of the Šata River valley in 1938 and 1970 merous ‘hills of Alka’ are highly charac- (arms, jewellery, pieces of rider’s equip- teristic of the Žemaitija region in Lithu- ment, etc.) and their appearance is char- ania and the Couronia region in Latvia acteristic of the sacrificial sites all around (Vaitkevicˇius 2004: 9-10). Usually they Northern Europe. In a marshy area locat- belong to archaeological complexes ed to the north of the hill fort some hun- dated from the early fourteenth to the dreds of items from the ninth to eleventh early fifteenth century, the same period centuries AD have been found in two when the Northern Crusades and Con- compact concentrations (Rimantiene, version ends. Evidently, the Mikytai 1977: 132-133). Alka Hill was somehow connected with 77 The Mikytai Alka Hill in the landscape (view from the west). the Mikytai hill fort, at least in a visual well-known feature in the area of the way, but the key point is the location of Mikytai Alka Hill, is placed on the east- the complex of the ancient sacred ern side. Currently, the dry 0.6 m deep places in the watershed area. hollow that has a diameter of 2.2 m and is paved with stones, is regarded The Mikytai Alka Hill (184 m above sea to be the former place of the sacred level) is located in a woody and marshy spring (Vaitkevicˇius, 1998: 225-227). watershed area in-between the basins of the Rivers Minija, Bartuva, and Var- Apart from the Devil’s Stone and Prayer’s duva. It has a shape of a large irregular Well mentioned in the place-legends, cone, and it represents the ground mo- some other elements of the site should raines – the gently rolling hills. All these be mentioned. Namely, an oval-shaped are related to the glaciers which have pond full of water (10 x 25 m in size); a disappeared some thirteen thousands formation of two stones (of unknown ori- years ago in Žemaitija. gin), one on top of the other, both of re- markable shape and appearance as The slopes stretching from 28 to 32 m well as a table-shaped stone (1.4 x 1.6 are particularly important features of m, 0.1 m high) surrounded by a circle of the site; the southern slope rises grad- fourteen other stones. ually, while the northern one is ex- tremely steep. The Devil’s Stone (red Recently other new discoveries were granite, 3.6 m in length, and 3 m in made during the field-survey that took width) is located in the middle of the place in April 2011. Attention was northern slope. On the top of the boul- drawn to certain trees bearing holes. der there is a depression of 7–16 cm x Holes of different size and form were 34 cm in size, the so-called Devil’s shaped in many trunks and (or) footprint. The Prayer’s Well, the second branches grown together. The species 78 of the trees varied, and included an collection of narrations, place legends oak, a bird cherry, two spruces, two and beliefs which were compiled dur- maples, a pair consisting pine tree and ing the twentieth century. In 1926 Juo- a maple; they were recorded mostly in zas Mickevicius (1900–1984) authored the north – north-western side of the the first publication on the subject Alka Hill. Those trees were used in (Mickevicius, 1926). Later on he was special healing rituals and are known followed by Jurgis Dovydaitis (1907– in Lithuania, the former territory of 2001), Juozas Šliavas (1930–1979), Prussia, as well as in Belarus, Russia and Antanas Šleinys (1897–?). The lat- and other countries. The holes in the ter is a story teller and folklore collector, trees represent gates in which the inhabitant of the Kruopiai village, and clothes of patients or sometimes sick deserves special attention. His place legends are famous in Lithuania and children were put. are characterised by the author’s very Finally, some other landmarks, such as individual style, uncommon among the earth mounds and a particular kind of other story tellers. At the same time, ditch discovered within the area of the however, his stories have a traditional Alka Hill, might be regarded as a result form and character. of human activity during the late nine- Generally there are a number of mo- teenth and the beginning of the twenti- tives behind place legends. For in- eth century. stance, the Mikytai Alka Hill is consid- ered the dwelling place of a particular goat that is usually depicted as a ghost Legends and beliefs that misleads local peasants, and An important part of the intangible cul- frightens them. By bleating, the goat tural heritage of the Mikytai Alka Hill is a stays in a kind of active communica- An indirect illumination of the northern slope of the Mikytai Alka Hill as well as the Devil’s Stone in the evening sunshine 79 The topography of sacred places in Mikytai: (1) the Devil’s Stone on the northern slope of the Alka Hill, (2) the Prayer’s Well on the eastern foot.
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