Vǎrkolak

A vǎrkolak (Bulgarian върколак) or vǎlkolak is an undead revenant or monster in Bulgarian folklore. Its name is derived from a common Slavic term, which means werewolf in most Slavic languages as well as in modern literary Bulgarian, and is originally a compound of вълк /"vǎlk", "wolf"/ and длака /"dlaka", "fur"/. Nevertheless, the creature as described in original folklore is more similar to a vampire.

According to the legends, when a bandit, a "hajdutin" dies (some versions specify he must be killed with a rifle or a knife ) in the wilderness, after 40 days , his swollen corpse or his blood turns into a vǎrkolak (a vampire also takes 40 days to arise in Bulgarian folklore). The vǎrkolak may appear in the form of various animals, or as a large human-like creature with only one eye, the size of a goose egg, on its forehead . The vǎrkolak dwells near the place where he was killed , in uninhabited areas such as forests, mountains, crossroads, abandoned mills and in caves . When travellers pass near the vǎrkolak's dwelling, the creature calls them by name , attacks them, sometimes robbing them , kills them and either drinks their blood , or voraciously devours their meat (hence the expression яде като вълколак - "he eats like a vǎlkolak") and stores it by hanging pieces in the cave .

It should be noted that Naiden Gerov's early dictionary (a work of partly ethnographic character) has separate entries on vǎlkolak (vlǎkolak) and vǎrkolak (vrǎkolak); the two are said to be similar, but only the vǎrkolak is explicitly described as a large one-eyed blood-drinker, while only the vǎlkolak is described as an undead man-eater. In Gerov's version, most of the other details in the paragraph above are also ascribed to the vǎlkolak, not to the vǎrkolak. This article follows Dimitrova's "Bǎlgarska narodna mitologija" ("The Bulgarian people's mythology") in describing both as a single creature.

In North-Western Bulgaria, a distinct notion is present. There, it is said that the vǎrkolak is a (probably wolf-like) creature that devours the sun and the moon, which explains eclipses.Иваничка Димитрова. Българска народна митология. С.1983. стр. 163-164. [http://bgrod.org/Vjara/index.php?p=bogove&page=vrkolak Online] ] This latter belief is also found in Romania, where the entity is called a vârcolac (a loanword from Bulgarian). In contrast, the Greek vrykolakas (also borrowed from Bulgarian) is a being similar to the Slavic vampire (although it rarely drinks blood), and the Serbo-Croatian cognate "vukodlak" is just the main term for "vampire" in Western Serbia and Croatia. [Петровић, Сретен. Српска митологиjа. [http://svevlad.org.yu/knjige_files/petrovic_mitologija.html Online] ] In the village of Peštani in Macedonia, the word "volkolak" denotes the "mature" stage of a vampire's development, i.e. a vampire that has survived for 40 days after its death and has attained human form, while the term "voper" is reserved for the initial, invisible stage. [Plotnikova, Ana. 2000. The ethnological-linguistic program in the Macedonian center of "Miniature dialectal atlas of the Balkanic languages". In: EthnoAnthropoZoom. Journal of Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. 2000. [http://www.iea.pmf.ukim.edu.mk/EAZ/EAZ_00/Plotnikova_angl_EAZ_00.pdf Online] ]

References

* Иваничка Димитрова. 1983. Българска народна митология. стр. 163-164. [http://bgrod.org/Vjara/index.php?p=bogove&page=vrkolak Online]
* Найден Геров. 1895-1904. Речник на блъгарский язик. Връколакъ. Влъколакъ.

ee also

*vârcolac
*vrykolakas
*vampire
*cyclops