The Narts

First, ponder that there is a famous group of ancient heroes actually called the Narts.

Well, Nartae in Ossetian, but that's just Nart + plural ending, so Narts. They populate stories told in Ossetia, one of the smaller nations of the Caucasus. The stories were discovered by Russian folklorists in the 1800s and collectors roamed Ossetia throughout the century, badgering old men to tell these tales over and over so they could be written down. A standard Russian translation, based on what were considered the "best" versions, was published under Soviet auspices between 1925 and 1941. Meanwhile French philologist Georges Dumézil learned Ossetian and spent more than a year recording these tales from Ossetians living in Turkey, which led to a book about the Narts published in 1929 and then to the publication of the Nart legends in French. Dumézil made the Narts famous in the west by arguing that these stories preserved remnants of the original Indo-European mythology, and that by comparing them to other early Indo-European stories (Irish, Greek, Germanic, Indian) we can reconstruct the original Indo-European mythos.

Ossetian is an Iranian language; the closest modern parallel is Pashto, spoken in Afghanistan. Many scholars used to think, and some still think, that the Ossetians are the last remnant of the great Iranian-speaking peoples of the steppes: the Scythians, the Sarmatians, and the Alans. One problem with considering the Nart stories to be memories of the ancient Indo-European world is that they are told across the Caucasus by groups who speak unrelated languages, such as the Circassians. Also, the Ossetian versions are full of words and names from other languages, including Turkish and Mongolian. Dumézil's view was that the stories took this form under the last of the great Iranian steppes empires, the Alans. We know that the Alans were a mixed people, with speakers of diverse languages among their armies, so that fits. Persian and Byzantine historians record that after being defeated on the steppes by Franks, Goths and Huns they formed a kingdom in the north Caucasus in the 800s AD.

Anyway, the Nart stories are famous in certain circles, and I read some of them in French back when I first got interested in this sort of thing. But my French was (and is) bad and I was busy with other things, like finishing my Ph.D. and starting a family, so I made little headway. I just discovered last month that a scholarly English translation of the Nart stories, based on that Soviet text, was published in 2016. So I ordered a copy and started to read.

This is not an epic in the sense of the Iliad or the Niebelungenlied, just a bunch of stories about a group of heroes. Nartae is a family name, and it seems that storytellers imagined the Narts as a multi-generation family. Opinions differ as to what "Nart" means, some holding for "manly" and others for "son of the sun." I think "son of the sun" is cooler and one of the stories does feature a being too bright to look at, obviously some sort of sun avatar, so I'm going with that. The foremother of the Narts is the daughter of the sea god, wooed by their founding father after he somehow got trapped in a pearl-lined chamber under the sea.

The Narts live together in a town full of tower houses; the height of the tower is a measure of the importance of the family, and the leading Narts all have towers with seven stories. The towers feature in several tales, with jealous fathers always locking their beautiful daughters into the tops of towers, or hiding treasure up there, so enterprising Narts have to fly up to the top chamber to woo or steal. Besides the houses the other prominent feature of the town in the Field of Games, where they compete against each other.

The Narts have a certain look, a family resemblance that allows people to recognize them even when they have travelled far from home. They all have golden hair and are of course tall, handsome, powerful, and so on. In the stories they do four things: tend their flocks, hunt, hold feasts, and have adventures. The feasts show the wealth and hospitality of the leading men and the prowess of the women, who appear prominently as hostesses in these scenes. In a typical feast there is so much food, mead, and beer that the heroes do not rise from the table for a solid week. I was struck by the repeated phrase, "toasts rolled around in waves." There is also dancing, both ring dances involving men and women and competitive acrobatic dancing by the men:

How skillfully Shoshlan leapt onto a low-three-legged table and whirled round and round on it, then hopped onto the next, and the next, and so on along the whole row. Like a top he spun on the very edge of the table, and not one crust of bread did he touch, and not one goblet did he brush.

(If this represents a real thing that Ossetians did during drunken banquets, I shudder.)

Shoshlan Dancing, Statue in Vladikavkaz

Hunting is often lovingly described, with long chases and clever ambushes, and much verbal artistry is lavished on the qualities of the deer; one trope that appears in several stories is that the fur of the slain deer rings like crystal bells when a hand is run through it.

Tending flocks is what people do between stories.

The Narts usually go adventuring out of boredom. Shoshlan, one of the top heroes, heads out looking for trouble when he has bested all the other Narts at shooting, riding, and wrestling and needs a new challenge. The transition from the Nart town to the world of adventure is always clearly marked, often with a verbal tic like, "how long he travelled, no one can say." The standard enemies are giants and gigantic beasts. The storytellers had fun coming up with ways to emphasize the size of these monsters, like, a man so large that his fishing rod was an oak tree and he used a whole ox for bait. One giant goat gets a man stuck in its hoof and doesn't notice. Sometimes the Narts defeat even giant enemies with superior strength, or stealth archery – which is just as boring in the Nart stories as it is in video games – but in the grander tales the enemies are simply too powerful for that. Cleverness is required, including old standbys like flattering opponents into revealing their weaknesses or tricking them into attempting impossible feats. When additional help is required, the Narts seek out wise women to consult. Sometimes these are sea goddesses or hags that dwell on mountaintops, but most often they turn to their matriarch Shatana. Shatana seems to know the secrets of every monster and robber baron, and she will issue detailed instructions on how they are to be defeated. Nobody knows quite what to make of Shatana, and scholars dispute whether she is a mother goddess, a goddess of wisdom, a witch, a weird version of the Virgin Mary, or what have you. I was struck that she often acts in secret for vaguely anti-establishment reasons, like helping younger brothers outwit their kin to get an inheritance. She knows what must happen, and sometimes that is not what the her husband and the other male Nart leaders want, so she has to act behind their backs to puts things on the proper course.

I did not find most of these stories very compelling. The world, though, is quite interesting, a mix of what seems like a semi-real society of warior/herders and, a journey of unknown length away, lands full of wonders. Some of the wonders are indeed wonderful: talking birds with diverse grievances against men, beasts that transform into people, magic treasures, strange signs that must be interpreted by one of the wise women, spells cast by the baking of three cakes, and more. Delightfully weird, just the kind of folklore I enjoy.

And here are my thoughts on what about these stories seems to be truly ancient:

• The story arc of a hero leaving home and journeying to some other land for adventure;
• Heroes wooing the daughters of gods or monsters to be their wives, sometimes with insane bride prices;
• Heroes getting into trouble by killing men "beloved of the gods";
• Giants;
• Heroes seeking advice from wise crones or other fey women;
• Infants with extraordinary strength who smash their cribs and head out to do great deeds; 
• Heroes cleverly tricking enemies into betraying their secrets;
• The power of music over certain beings.