"If our lives be short, let our fame be great": Nart sagas at the Silk Road House

For those of you just tuning in: I have fallen in love with the Nart sagas a while ago. I worked with them for a museum program for Archaeology Day, told them for MythOff, read them for Epics A to Z, and have been waxing poetic about their greatness for quite a while.

Which is why this storytelling event at the Silk Road House in Berkeley was such a perfect convergence of passion and storytelling. 

This summer, John Colarusso's translation of Nart Sagas (the Circassian and Abkhazian sagas) got its second edition, and Tales of the Narts (the Ossetian sagas) was published in English for the very first time. Since I was in San Francisco for Epic Day just in time for 3rd Friday, the traditional storytelling day of the Storytelling Association of California, everything came together for a concert celebrating the Nart sagas. On top of all that, it turned out that John Colarusso himself also just happened to be in town, and he did not only graciously accept our invitation to the event, but even agreed to present a short opening lecture. I was more than a little star-struck. He told us about what makes the Nart sagas unique and important, talked about their connections to European traditions, and pointed out some linguistic curiosities about the languages they have been translated from. It was a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of how these books came to be. Professor Colarusso also very patiently helped me with the correct pronunciation of Ossetian names when I cornered him in the kitchen of the Silk Road House before the performance...

Since I have been working with the Ossetian sagas for a while now, I was given the honor of filling the first half of the event with the stories of my choice. I opened with the saga that first made me fall in love with them - it is called the The Narts and the Wadmer's Bones, and it talks about the Nart heroes unearthing the giant skeleton of an ancient hunter, and bringing him back to life to ask questions. As an archaeologist, I have always loved this tale, and now that I am (finally) reading First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor, it has become even more fascinating. 

Following up the giant's story, I told a short anecdote to introduce Shirdon, the Narts' trickster. He is like Loki, except he is treated worse, and, in Colarusso's words, he is more motivated. In Who deceived whom? the Narts try to cheat him out of his one fat ram, saying the end of the world is near - but in the end, Shirdon gets the last laugh. This story led me to the longest and most elaborate tale of the evening, A Nart Expedition, in which the heroes take Shirdon along on an adventure just to bully him for entertainment... until Shirdon decides to take revenge by tricking them into mortal danger, and then saving them in the last moment. It is a fun story, but also has a lot of very human moments. I especially like the fact that it has a very close parallel in the Irish Fianna stories (The Hostel of the Quicken Trees), and I have not found a similar tale anywhere else so far.

The second half of the evening was dedicated to Shatana (or Setenaya), the great matron of the Narts, a powerful and wise woman who keeps showing up in many of the tales. She is "the mother of one hundred", the matron of the war band of the Narts. I shared this set with two amazing storytellers. First, Cassie Cushing (the great matron of the Kaleidoscope storytelling café) told the story of the hero Shoshlan's conception and birth, elaborated with a shorter story about Shatana's golden apples. She wove several versions of the tale into one, making it sound like an enjoyable piece of gossip ("Some say..."). Since that story exists in so many versions, her solution to picking one was on point... Next, Tim Ereneta told the story of Urizhmag and Shatana's divorce, the Nart variation of the well-known folktale type of the Clever Wife ("Take from the house whatever is dearest to you..."). He did it with a lot of humor, while preserving the wisdom at the core of the story, and Shatana's character. Finally, I closed the evening with the saga of How Shoshlan rescued Shatana from the Lake of Hell, another long-time favorite of mine. It is a tense story, but it has a happy ending, and says a lot both about Shatana and the Nart heroes in general.

As far as storytelling events go, this was a near perfect evening. It was also a long-time dream of mine to do a concert like this, introducing people to the Nart sagas. We had a full house, and even a film crew from a Comparative Mythology program; people seemed inspired by the stories, and several of them said they will go and read the books now. That is what I consider a true compliment to an event like this: People discovering new tales, and storytellers passing them on. 

Gemstone Mountain (The Storyteller Does Her Homework)

(This is one of those posts where I reveal how the storytelling sausage is made)
(The sausage is bigger on the inside)

In two weeks' time, people will be telling Turkmen folktales at the Silk Road House in Berkeley, CA. Since I'll be in town for Epic Day, I volunteered to join in the fun.

It is not easy to find folktales from Turkmenistan. I have yet to locate a full book dedicated to them in either English, Spanish, or Hungarian. My initial search frustrated me to no end; I had to resort to cherry-picking Turkmen folktales from "Tales of the Soviet Union" type collections (well, that was a delightful trip down Retro Lane, bringing up memories of Russian children's books back home).

One of the few stories I kept coming across was a tale titled Gemstone Mountain (or, alternately, Mountain of Gems or Diamond Mountain).

I like shiny things.

The story was immediately familiar from the Second Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor. It tells of an inaccessible mountain range filled with gemstones, and people being wrapped in raw ox hides to trick giant birds into carrying them to their nest on the peak. People get rich from harvesting gems this way - but the brunt of the work is done by poor workers destined to die up on the mountain since they can never get down.
Or can they?...

All the versions of the Turkmen folktale I located were almost verbatim the same (both in English and in Hungarian). After frustrating myself for another day or so, I resorted to pursuing the Sindbad version instead.

Jackpot.

Illustration by Nadir Quinto

The Valley of Diamonds is a true Silk Road story: It stretches from Greece to China, and spans several centuries from the 4th all the way to the 15th (AD). Apart from Sindbad, some versions feature Alexander the Great as the protagonist, and such prominent writers included it in their works as Marco Polo and Buzurg Ibn Shahriyar. We know it from Greek, Arabic, and Chinese sources, as well as from Armenia, Russia, and Persia.
And, of course, Turkmenistan.

In this most well-know type of the story, there is a hidden valley in the mountains, filled with gems, inaccessible (and often invisible) to humans, crawling with deadly snakes and/or scorching fire. People in the area devise a way to get the gems by throwing sheep carcasses into the valley, and waiting for birds of prey to bring them up to their nests. Then, chasing the birds away, people gather the gemstones that stuck to the carcass. This job is dangerous, so convicted criminals and slaves are often tasked with it.

Here are some useful things I discovered:

1. The two earliest (Greek and Arabic) sources locate the Valley in "Scythia" or in "Khorasan," both of which historic regions cover Turkmenistan. Other sources usually locate it in India.

2. The earliest known (Greek) source claims the gemstones in the valley are hyacinths (red-orange zircon), but it was later changed to diamonds.

3. Diamonds are actually lipophilic - they do stick to grease or greasy meat.

4. The mountains on the southern border of Turkmenistan - along which the southern route of the Silk Road traced - belong to the Alborz range, the legendary home of the giant Simurgh bird of Persian mythology. The Simurgh is not only a giant bird living on an inaccessible mountain peak, but it also builds its nest from ebony and sandalwood. In an alternate version of the Valley of Diamonds (recounted by Herodotus, III, 3), people actually harvest spices like cinnamon from the nest of a mythical bird in a very similar fashion, with the use of carcasses. The stories probably share the same roots.

5. The mountains on the southern border are also rich in minerals and gemstones. Khorasan as a region is famous for its jewelers.

All in all, this was a fun rabbit hole to get into. And the story itself is the better for it.

If you want to hear me tell this story, along with some other great Turkmen folktales, join us on Valentine's Day at the Silk Road House!