No wind-gods play a significant part in the mythology of the North, but
the instinct to personify and systematize operated here too. Vindr ‘Wind’
appears in a twelfth-century verse catalogue of giants quoted by Snorri
(Skáldsk. 75, verse 421. 7). One genealogy grouped Sea, Fire, and Wind (Kári)
together as the three sons of the primal giant Forniótr.^88
In medieval Russia too the Winds could boast a pedigree, for in Igor 48 we
read of Ve ̆tri Stribozˇi vnutsi, ‘the Winds, Stribogu ̆ ’s grandsons’, that blow
(ve ̆yutu ̆) from the sea against Igor’s army. The god Striboguˇ is mentioned in
two other texts; his name, as noted in Chapter 4, perhaps means ‘Father God’.
In Slavonic folklore the wind is variously pictured as an old man blowing
through iron teeth, with a brother and sisters who also affect the weather,
or as a white horse. Propitiatory offerings are sometimes appropriate. In
Slovakia the ruler of the winds drives a cloud chariot drawn by fiery horses.^89
Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers report that the Baltic heathens
worshipped a god of the winds, or the winds themselves. The name Wejo-
pat(t)is, Wejpons, or Wejdiews is given, and for the Letts Weja Maat; that is, in
more modern spellings, Ve ̇jopatis, Ve ̇jpons ‘Master of wind’, Ve ̇jdievs ‘God of
wind’, Ve ̄ja ma ̄te ‘Mother of wind’.^90 Praetorius met a fisherman who had
made an image of Ve ̇jopatis and set it up on his boat: it was winged, with two
faces facing opposite ways, and the fisherman would raise his arms in homage
to it. Ve ̄ja ma ̄te appears dozens of times in the Latvian songs. Sometimes she
is addressed as if in prayer, though there is no longer a real sense of her as a
divine power. One song speaks of the wind’s horse.^91
The Gaels of the Western Isles of Scotland, whose hymns to the Sun and
Moon were noticed in the last chapter, are recorded as having had others
addressed to gods of the sea, the wind, the storm, lightning, and thunder.^92
FIRE GODSWe observed in an earlier chapter that PIE had both an animate and an
inanimate word for fire, *hn
̊
gwni- and *péh 2 u
ˆr
̊. The first was applicable to fire
(^88) Flateyjarbók i. 219 (Fundinn Nóregr), Orkneyinga saga 1; cf. Skáldsk. 27.
(^89) Vánˇa (1992), 115.
(^90) Matthaeus Waissel, Paul Einhorn, Matthaeus Praetorius, in Mannhardt (1936), 243, 468 f.,
472, 481, 542. We saw in Chapter 3 that Lithuanian gods’ names are often made with -patis= IE
*-potis, and that Latvian tends to turn them into Mothers.
(^91) Jonval (1929), 16 and nos. 464–98. There is also a Mother of the North Wind, Ziemel ̧a
ma ̄mulin ̧a, LD 31724 = Jonval no. 500.
(^92) Carmichael (1928–59), iii. 271.
- Storm and Stream 265