This is Season 2, Episode 2: How Ilya Muromets Found his Sword.

Ilya Muromets sat on his new warrior horse and rode north, all the way to the distant mountains that grazed the tips of the sky. Under those mountains stood an old oak, intertwining with itself in a maze of branches. Under that old oak stood a forge, and in that forge the bellows blew loudly, the fires came up from the chimney in bursts. Next to it stood a warrior great: Krasnoiar, brother to Mikula Selyaninovich, beating the metal with a hammer greater than any hammer Ilya had ever seen.

Krasnoiar greeted Ilya and wasted no time. Immediately he took to forging a new mail shirt for Rus’s newest protector of the ways. A helm he beat out of metal; greaves, shining and hot; and a spear. He even forged a metal quiver for a flock of metal arrows. Only one thing he could not make, no matter how hard he tried. He forged one sword, but it cracked in the heat. He forged another sword, but it shattered when it touched water. Nothing could he do. Not a single piece of metal gave itself to become Ilya’s new sword.

Perplexed, Krasnoiar turned to Ilyusha. “It seems, young man, that you have only one possible path to follow. Go to the great Svyatogor, the mountain warrior. It is time for him to relinquish his sword to you, for you to take his place. And don’t worry: that sword, it’s my best work.” And so Ilya traveled on, deeper into the mountains.

And in those mountains, those holy mountains, lived a wondrous bogatyr, a warrior that even mother earth herself could no longer bear. Svyatogor could only walk the peaks, lest the earth itself shatter under his mountainous feet.

Ilya Muromets rode on. From a distance he saw the giant warrior, great as a mountain. His helm grazed the tips of the clouds. He rode a mountainous horse, and every time the horse shook its mane, thunder boomed and lightning flashed. On Svyatogor’s back was a crystal box, shining with light. The great warrior stopped in the mountain plain and took off the crystal box gently, like it was the most precious thing he owned, and out walked the most beautiful woman Ilya Muromets had ever seen. Her eyes were like stars, her hair was as gold as the sun itself—Svyatogor’s wife.

She pulled a great tablecloth from the saddlebag and began to prepare lunch, right there in the mountain plain. She turned toward Ilya and happened to notice him, but she said nothing, so that Ilya began to wonder. After a time, Svyatogor fell asleep, content with his food and the glories of this summer day. Svyatogor’s wife beckoned to Ilya.

“Svyatogor is a great warrior,” she said, “but a stern one. He brooks no opposition, and since the days that mother Rus no longer bears him, he envies the bogatyri of the plains.”

“But I have come here to learn here from the great Svyatogor,” Ilya persisted.

She shook her head, but she said, “Very well. Climb into his pocket, young warrior, you and your horse. When the time is right, you will know what to do.”

Some time later, Svyatogor the Great woke up. “Come, my dear. Let us be on our way,” he said.

“Svyatogor,” said his wife, “I am tired of being in that crystal box. I will stay here for a while. You go on and come back for me in the evening.”

And so he did, but his great horse hardly bore him more than a few minutes when it began to trip under him. “You bag of brass!” bellowed Svyatogor. “How is it you cannot ride in a straight line?”

His horse turned its head to him and spoke in a human voice. “Svyatogor, I have always borne you and your wife, but now I have to bear two warriors and a warrior horse to boot?”

Surprised, Svyatogor reached into his pocket, and there he saw a warrior, and a warrior horse! “Where are you from, brave youngster? What name and place do you hark from?”

“My name is Ilya Muromets, Ivan’s son. I wanted to come to see the great Svyatogor for myself, for it is said that he no longer rides on mother Russia’s lands, no longer does he come to teach us youngsters the art of war.”

The great warrior answered him, “Oh, I would gladly ride on dear mother Rus, but she no longer bears me. I am not allowed to ride to holy Russia, only to walk the peaks here in the north, in the holy mountains. Come, ride with me on the peaks, on these holy ridges and mounts.”

And they did, riding together, learning much from each other, and soon they became friends of the heart, even exchanging the crosses that each wore on his chest. Svyatogor asked, as they rode through that wild country, “Tell me, Ilya, is the strength in your arms great or small?”

Ilya answered, “It is not great, Svyatogor. I am only still a stripling.”

Svyatogor boasted, “Well, then, hear what kind of strength I have. If there were a pillar in the bones of earth as wide as the earth itself, reaching all the way to heaven, and if, in that pillar there were a golden ring, I would take that ring and flip the entire earth upside-down!”

They rode like this, speaking, conversing, learning from each other, for a long time. One day as they rode together, they saw a wondrous thing. A giant coffin of stone lay in the cliffs, its cover lying akimbo next to it.

“Come, Ilya Muromets,” said Svyatogor the Great. “Come, lie down in the coffin for good measure!”

“No, Svyatogor!” said Ilya, “‘Tis a dangerous thing to do, to lie in a coffin before your time.”

“Come, my friend! Surely you are no coward!”

Ilya lay down in the coffin, but it was far too big for him.

“Here,” said Svyatogor the Great, “let me try it on for size.” And he did. It was just the right size for the mountainous warrior. “Come, brother of my heart, cover me with the coffin’s cover.”

“No,” said Ilya, “this is nothing to jest with! What sort of a joke is it to bury yourself alive?”

Svyatogor, no longer laughing, took the cover himself and thrust it on top of the coffin with him still inside. Suddenly, wonder of wonders, the cover and the coffin grew together into a single piece of unbroken stone. Svyatogor the Great pushed against the stone, tore at it, straining with his great arms, but all for nothing.

“Ilyusha! Get me out!” he cried.

Ilya pushed, he pulled, he broke his fingers on the stone. He ripped his knees trying to pry the lid off the coffin.

“My brother! Ilya Muromets!” cried Svyatogor. “Take my great sword, the work of Krasnoiar himself. Hew apart the stone with it!”

“How can I do that, Svyatogor? I cannot even lift your mighty sword!”

“Lean down, closer to me,” said Svyatogor, “and I will breathe some of my bogatyr might into your lungs.” There was a tiny crack in the stone, and Svyatogor breathed into it. Ilya felt the strength double in his bones in his mighty body.

He lifted the sword and swung it as hard as he could. The cliffs shook, the stones around them ground to powder, but in every place that the sword struck the coffin, a metal band appeared, holding the lid fast.

“Lean down close to me!” said Svyatogor. “I will breathe even more of my bogatyr might into your lungs!” Svyatogor breathed into the crack.

Ilya breathed in, feeling the strength inside himself quadruple, and he struck at the coffin length-wise. The cliffs shook, the mountains bent like tree trunks, but in ever place that Ilya struck the coffin, a metal band held the lid even faster.

“Lean down closer to me,” said Svyatogor a third time. “I will breathe into you all the rest of my bogatyr might.”

“No, Svyatogor,” said Ilya Muromets, “I have no need of such strength, or my bones will no longer be borne by mother Rus herself.”

Svyatogor lay there, silent for a time. Then he answered, “You are wise, Ilya Muromets. For if I had breathed my last breath into you, it would have been the breath of death. You would have died, and with me you would have lain here for all of time. But now, farewell, little brother. Take my sword, for you alone can bear the work of Krasnoiar the great smith. As for my horse, leave it here with me. Tie it to my tomb. No one can manage her except for me.” And Svyatogor, the greatest warrior Rus had ever known, fell silent for the final time.

Ilya Muromets, leaning on that great sword of Svyatogor, stood there. He didn’t want to move; he didn’t want to speak. Perhaps his elder brother would whisper a final parting, a final word of wisdom, a final blessing. Three days and three nights, Ilya Muromets stood there, but Svyatogor said not a word.

The next morning, wiping away tears, Ilya Muromets put on Svyatogor’s sword and left the holy mountains for all time. It was time for him to take his place along the borders of mother Russia; it was time for the land to welcome her new protector, the younger brother of Svyatogor the Great.

This season we’re delving into a different genre. A genre of epic heroic poetry in Russia is a strange and fascinating thing, enough for me to get lost in more than one rabbit hole as I was doing research. I might share some of the fascinating tidbits as we go through this season, but there was one thing that really struck me in an unexpected way this morning. I was watching an interview with a scholar of Russian epic poetry. They’re called byliny in Russian.

And he showed the interviewer a fascinating map. It had all the places in the world where a native—or you might even say indigenous—tradition of epic poetry existed. The first one, the most obvious one, is Greece and the surrounding areas. Africa had some traditions, Russia, parts of Europe. But do you know what area has absolutely no trace of a single epic historical poetic tradition? Well, you may have guessed by now. Yes, the Americas. Oh, sure, there are very strong story-telling traditions in the Americas, with wonderful stories and myths—I’m not arguing that—but there is no epic heroic tradition. None at all.

Now, I found that to be unexpectedly fascinating. You know me: I’m big on heroism in storytelling. What does it mean to be a hero? Who is a hero? Is a hero born or made? The kinds of things I examine in my fantasy novels. The kind of things popular culture is absolutely riveted by, and not only in the largely paint-by-numbers explanations of heroism, in the Avengers-type Marvel movies and shows, but also in the counter-culture, if I may be excused a controversial term, that explores the darker side of heroism. Things like the recent Amazon series, Invincible and The Boys, and stories like Watchmen and the upcoming Jupiter’s Legacy.

You may have noticed that the recent trend is to downplay heroism, either as internally corrupt or hopelessly misguided. Another perhaps more interesting trend is to suggest that heroism is about an internal feeling of self-worth that is potentially reachable to everyone, as long as you have the proper key or as long as you know the proper technique of mental and emotional gymnastics to bring it out from within you. You may guess what my opinion is of those kinds of heroic stories.

There are fewer and fewer stories, though, you will notice, about genuine heroism, traditional heroism, and what that might be. I thought initially that this was a function of superhero fatigue, or maybe a reflection of a cultural moment that has found the surging patriotism of the immediate post-9/11 era to be a bag of lies and half-truths. All perfectly understandable. What I hadn’t considered was this: What if our problem, our superhero problem, our hero problem, is that America, even in its precolonial manifestation, had no tradition of epic heroic verse. So with that in mind, let’s start considering heroism and its importance for a culture, for a society and the way it views itself.

There are certain patterns of structure—or maybe modes of behavior is a better way of saying it—that nearly every epic heroic tradition shares. I’ve talked before about this interesting manifestation, this parallelism in different parts of the world. Like Tolkien in his essay on fairy stories, I’m intrigued by the possibility that certain story structures, such as the hero’s journey—and, no, not, for the record, Joseph Campbell’s version of it—reflect a commonality of human experience across time and space that seems to defy historical and evolutionary interpretations.

Tolkien suggests, you will remember from last season, that there is something ineffable in the fact that stories across cultures sometimes share a kind of eucatastrophic rhythm, if you will: a structure that looks like the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. And he believes that this is part of mankind’s innate prophetic expectation of the coming of Christ in the flesh. That’s the theological idea at the heart of Tolkien’s work.

But let’s come back to the more mundane and everyday, and let’s examine some aspects of heroic poetry that are universal, regardless of geographical location, regardless of time in which these stories were told. Heroic stories told in poetry often share certain modes of behavior. For example, there is a conflict between us and them, whether the them is a monster or a human invader. This is absolutely essential, and in that conflict, the monstrous other, the they, is almost always presented as impossibly huge and terrifying. In the Russian stories, you often have dragons with many heads, for example.

But in the process of the story unfolding, something very interesting happens. By following certain universally accepted moral norms—by the way, accepted within the world of epic poetry—the hero is able to overcome the size difference simply by being a hero. As a Russian expert on this subject, Nikita Petrov, says at the moment of the battle, the hero grows and the monster shrinks, and the audience, knowing this to be a part of the natural rhythm of things—or maybe even the way that reality represents itself, as Jonathan Pageau might say—the audience breathes a sigh of relief. They recognize that this is the proper way for a story to be told, not because they have been conditioned to it necessarily, but rather because these stories have always been told this way.

This sort of thing definitely happens in the story of Ilya Muromets and Svyatogor. Svyatogor is a monstrous figure, even if not necessarily an evil one. Ilya Muromets seeks him out not to conquer him but to learn from him, but as he should have known from his previous experience of giant warriors in episode one, giant warriors are prone to manifest their power in dangerous ways. The image that’s always used in these particular kinds of stories is the ring that’s stuck in the bones of the earth by which the monstrous warrior picks up the earth and swings it around.

So he hides—Ilya hides initially, in Svyatogor’s pocket—a trope, by the way, that occurs in many different epic traditions across the world as well. It’s only later that the two warriors exchange crosses, at which point their sizes have become equal; otherwise, how could Ilya have put on a monstrous cross? After, Ilya shows himself not to be afraid of the great Svyatogor, while also acknowledging with respect the great warrior’s superior strength.

Interestingly, the size difference suddenly and mysteriously reappears at the end, when we encounter the huge coffin. Ilya doesn’t fit, while Svyatogor does. Then the size difference again reasserts itself, when Ilya is unable to lift Svyatogor’s sword. It is only when Svyatogor offers to share his might by sharing his breath, which in some versions of the story is much more visceral and intimate: it’s by having Ilya lick his sweat—which is pretty gross, which is why I didn’t include that part in my telling of the story. [Laughter] But it’s only by this intimate sharing of stuff that Ilya is able to lift the sword.

However, this moment, when the two warriors again become equal, it becomes again a moment of conflict. This is surprisingly revealed in the moment when Svyatogor admits that he was willing to kill Ilya at the last moment, in a shocking manifestation of Svyatogor’s wildness, his otherness, which we thought disappeared but never really did. There’s something beautiful, something mysterious about this final conflict which ends with the death of Svyatogor and the growth of Ilya Muromets. The ambivalent relationship between Ilya and Svyatogor is actually a touching reflection, I think, of Russia’s age-old relationship with its pagan past. Much of Russia’s Christianization was contentious. Perhaps for that reason a good amount of pagan superstition continues and persists in Russian culture, because it’s the tendency for cultural trends to survive in the shadows when they’re forcibly uprooted by a newly ascended culture. Most of us probably have heard, after all, how Prince Vladimir had the idols of Kiev publicly flogged before being tied to horses’ tails and dragged in the mud. No peaceful transition here! Yeah, that’s the historical version of the Christianization of Rus, of Russia.

But Ivan Ilyin, our faithful philosopher, has made the argument that the folkloric tradition, which is a kind of repository of the spirit, preserved the Christianization of Russia in a different way. The image of Ilya, who is the quintessential Christian warrior, weeping over the tomb of Svyatogor, who was the greatest manifestation of the old pagan order, symbolized by the fact that he’s no longer allowed to walk on the hallowed ground of Christian Russia—this is thus the Russian people’s thousand-year-old memory of the transformation or transfiguration of culture from pagan to Christian, from old to new. It had to happen, or maybe it was even fated to happen. After all, the coffin was there, waiting for Svyatogor to lie down in it. There’s a bit of determinism, a bit of fatalism to that scene. But its passage is not without sadness, similar to the sadness of the purported Christian monk, anonymous, looking back wistfully on the exploits of Beowulf in the famous epic poem, and the still-tragic loss of that fifth-, sixth-century pagan civilization.

This ability to love the transformation that the new culture brings, the transformation of Christ, while still respecting the passage and end of the old culture is spectacularly lacking in every manifestation of all the cultural wars that we are going through right now in America. And it’s really sad, and again I ask the question, which I hope to answer someday: Is this because America never had a tradition of epic heroic poetry?

Next time we’ll consider the qualities of a hero and how they reflect not on the conflict between self and other, but rather the universal aspects of human experience that tend to unify contentious opposites and transform them into something new.

Thank you for listening. If you’d like to find out more about the exciting and dangerous world of Slavic fairy tales, check out the Raven Son epic fantasy series, which is inspired by these stories. If you find yourself moved by these fairy tales, consider becoming a patron of the podcast. Your contribution will go a long way towards supporting independent creators like me and Natalie and will make it possible for more episodes than the current limited format of ten episodes per season. Visit patreon.com/nicholaskotar for more information.

This show was edited and its beautiful music is originally composed by Natalie Wilson at nwcomposing.com. In a Certain Kingdom is a listener-supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio.