Nav (Slavic folklore)
souls of the dead, as well as the name of the underworld in Slavic mythology
Nav (Croatian, Czech, Slovak: Nav, Polish: Nawia, Russian: Навь, Serbian: Нав, Slovene: Navje, Ukrainian: Мавка, Mavka or Нявка, Nyavka) is a phrase used to denote the souls of the dead in Slavic mythology. The singular form (Nav or Nawia) is also used as a name for an underworld, over which Veles exercises custody—it is often interpreted as another name for the underground variant of the Vyraj (heaven or paradise).
Etymology
The words nawia, nav and its other variants are most likely derived from the Proto-Slavic *navь-, meaning "corpse", "deceased". Cognates in other Indo-European languages include Latvian nāve ("death"), Lithuanian nõvis ("death"), Old Prussian nowis ("body, flesh"), Old East Slavic навь (navʹ) ("corpse, dead body") and Gothic 𐌽𐌰𐌿𐍃 (naus, "dead body, corpse").
As souls or spirits
The nawie, nawki, sometimes also referred to as lalki (Polish language; all plural forms) were used as names for the souls of the dead. According to some scholars (namely Stanisław Urbańczyk, among others), this word was a general name for demons arising out of the souls of tragic and premature deaths, killers, warlocks, the murdered and the Drowned Dead. They were said to be hostile and unfavourable towards humans, being jealous of life. In Bulgarian folklore there exists the character of 12 navias that sucked the blood out of women giving birth, whereas in the Ruthenian Primary Chronicle the navias are presented as a demonic personification of the 1092 plague in Polotsk. According to folk tales, the nawie usually took the form of birds.
As an underworld
The phrase Nawia (Polish) or Nav (used across Slavic tongues) was also utilised as a name for the Slavonic underworld, ruled by the god Veles, enclosed away from the world either by a living sea or river, according to some beliefs located deep underground.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nav (Slavic folklore)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.