Menuo Juodaragis: Kernave, Lithuania

Note: the links are mostly to pic­tures I took at the festival…

Black horned moon. The symbol of the fest­ival is a com­plex of runic let­ters topped with a cres­cent moon and a leap­ing stag. The site is Kernave, Lithuania, in the middle of the forest. My first impres­sion is that I’ve stepped back in time. A clear, deep voice is singing dark melod­ies. It sounds like a slowed-down Dead Can Dance, tra­di­tional instru­ments and woven threads of tale wrapped around myth.
I wander the site some­what awe-struck. In the middle of the field is the camp­site of medi­eval re-enact­ors. (And, yes, hawkeye, some of them seem some­what con­fused about the region they’re in.)
Huts have been built to hold lec­tures on fairy tales and ancient magics, herbal medi­cines and myth cycles; video install­a­tions and indus­trial art­works; spaces to work rituals and drum. There are rune mark­ers (1|2) planted in the ground, stark against sky and forest.
I read my little pro­gram and check out the names of groups and their descrip­tions. Sounds like I’ve missed some very cool stuff on the Friday but there’s heaps still to come.

I mosey down to the place where they sell CDs from a tent and note one that I think would make a good present for someone: it’s called Quark Gluon Plasma and is described as tribal trance exper­i­mental in the book­let. The woman tells me that if I want it signed, the guy jump­ing up and down over there is Trolis, the artist. I walk over to him. He is tall, with long golden hair, loose with occa­sional random plaits, wear­ing a green smock dress thing, smil­ing beatific­ally. I intro­duce myself. He signs my CD. We talk. He shows me jew­ellery he makes and explains that the symbol of the man with the sun in his belly is from a 4000 year old scand­inavian cave paint­ing. I think I’m fall­ing in love. There is that strange close­ness, slightly awk­ward. I keep smil­ing insanely. So does he. He asks whether I’ve seen the ancient hill fort in Kernave. He tells me I have to see it before I go, it’s an ancient place of power. I should have said: I’d love to see it, will you take me there? But I can’t help feel­ing I’m intrud­ing: he’s in five dif­fer­ent bands here, all his friends are here, surely I’m keep­ing him from some­thing? Like a fool, I excuse myself, tell him I’ll catch up with him later, that I’ll be at the gig of his band, Siela. His real name is Eval­das. I get his phone number and e‑mail, give him mine.
In the after­noon, there are folk sing­ers and groups from all over: Osimira from Belarus, Visi Veji (All Winds) from Latvia, Kul­grinda from Lithuania, extraordin­ary voices, amaz­ing instruments.
The re-enact­ors are hit­ting each other with swords in the middle of the field in the pour­ing rain. At least that’s authen­tic! I shel­ter in the ancient crafts tent and see stun­ning brass torcs and cloak pins. I buy two spiral-ended pins that would be linked with three chains across the chest of a tra­di­tional 11th cen­tury Baltic outfit, just like I saw in the Museum of the His­tory of Latvia.
As the day wears on, there is Henry’s girl­friend, Dj Chi­mera, spin­ning just the sort of dark­wave elec­trogoth that I love. I’m in heaven. As dark­ness falls, brands are lit on the towers.
Almost 8. Time to wander back to the main stage for Siela. Front row. Eval­das is unbe­liev­able sexy, having changed into long black leather pants. I am turn­ing into a sad fangirl. The music is great too.
After­wards, I go round the side of the stage, but I stumble when I talk with him and end up sound­ing like an idiot. He leaves to pack up stuff. In another hour, he will be on stage again with his goth­metal band, Obtest. He’s changed again, now wear­ing medi­eval gear. Sigh. I try to catch him after this gig, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I head off to check out the techno with Fiona, an Eng­lish woman from the youth hostel in Vil­nius, who I met com­pletely by acci­dent at the fest­ival. It’s a little hard­core for both of us and we want to be in the right spot for the mid­night ritual anyway, so we head into the Winds Hut. There are already lots of people there with their drums, but we find spots close to the fire. I send sleazemon­key an SMS to get ready for energy head­ing his way.
I pull out my cloak pins and join in the rhythms as if they’re clap­ping sticks. Around mid­night, one woman starts a dron­ing chant and slowly all the women around us pick up har­mon­ies. I follow the pat­terns of one of them and then notice a gap in the rhythm where one woman is adding an occa­sional “heh, heh”. The next time that gap comes around, I sing a deep, “heya, heya”. She coun­ter­points me on a higher note next time, and together we start an exchange. The men are drum­ming and the women’s voices weave around them, rising and build­ing as dif­fer­ent women join in and follow and pick up each others’ melod­ies. As far as I can tell, it is all just non­sense syl­lables, but it could be phrases in Lithuanian. It’s amaz­ing. Slowly, we let it drop down to whis­pers so you can hear the drums, then back up, then round it off together, sig­nals with eyes, sig­nals from the men to the women, from the women to the men, between us all. I can’t help it: I zagreet, even though I’m the only one. After all, it’s an arabic tra­di­tion I’ve learnt at Wood­ford, this women’s wail­ing call, not some­thing from here at all. I take up my travel talis­man and breathe into it the energy and breath of the space. I light a candle for peace and place it on the rocks around the fire. So mote it be.
Fiona wanders off to find Will, the other Aus­tralian here, and I wander around hoping to bump into Eval­das. Sure enough, I do… “How are you?” I ask. “I’m won­der­ful,” he replies. “I’ve just met the woman I was sup­posed to meet.” “And it’s me,” says a small woman just near him that I hadn’t noticed until then. “I’m too late then. I was hoping it would be me,” I say, now that it’s all too late. “It’s never too late,” he says. But I have no idea if he’s just being philo­soph­ical or whether he’s saying he’s open to ideas…
The three of us wander over to where they’re build­ing an enorm­ous bon­fire, as it’s get­ting quite cold. She’s a social worker, it turns out. He keeps touch­ing her, hold­ing on to her, and she keeps laugh­ingly dan­cing out of his reach. I can’t tell what’s going on, but when they talk to each other in Lithuanian and dis­ap­pear off to dance without really saying good­bye, I know I’m not a part of it. I can’t help but feel he was ripe for the pick­ing and if only I’d been more for­ward… but I already have my tick­ets to leave for Tallinn and she is a local. They have a future where I would have been a whirlwind.
The huge bon­fire finally catches alight. There are whole trees on this thing and scary amounts of petrol. I have no tent, so it’s either stay up all night or pray it does­n’t rain and sleep next to this thing. There’s music till 5 and then the sun­rise ritual anyhow.
I’m too tired to dance, so I sit next to the fire and listen to the techno from the nearby tent. Fiona appears again and we talk until 3.30. She wants to go back to her tent to sleep, so I prom­ise to wake her for the ritual. I snooze by the fire. I have set my phone alarm to wake me, but dis­turb­ingly I am woken at about 4.30 by skin­head types singing some­thing rous­ing that sounds to me like each verse ends with “Sieg Heil”, but in Lithuanian. It’s enough to get me up and gone, anyhow. I wake Fiona and we head over to the mound next to the river. Folk sing­ers from Gostauta, a Lithuanian group, lead us through the songs. I don’t under­stand a word, but Fiona trans­lates a little where she can. One song is a greet­ing to the river god, another to the sun, another to the forest spir­its. The songs go on and on, beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing, as the sun rises and the river sings behind us. Then we do tra­di­tional spiral dances, and even­tu­ally head down the hill together, singing a part­ing song.
Fiona invites me to crash in their tent for a while and so we sleep until 10-ish. There is a ridicu­lously huge pan frying eggs for the masses, so we grab break­fast and settle in the sun to watch folk dan­cing and listen to more singing. I try to listen to a talk by Lithuani­a’s high priest of the hea­then com­munity “Romuva” talk­ing about har­mony and sanc­tity, but it’s all in Lithuanian… It’s amaz­ing to be in his pres­ence anyway.
On my way back past the Witches’ Hut, I hear music I like the sound of. There’s noth­ing on the pro­gram, but people from Kul­grinda, Osimira and Gostauta are jam­ming. It’s fant­astic. Des­pite my tired bones, I just have to dance. Drum­ming and wild flutes, Lithuanian bag­pipes and fiddles, goat horns and other, longer twistier horns with weird unearthly voices.
Unfor­tu­nately, the CD shop isn’t open today… but there’s a Web site. This could be dangerous…
Even­tu­ally, it’s time to go. We stop by the hill fort in Kernave, but without my expert guide, it’s hard to inter­pret what we’re look­ing at.
As chance has it, there are no direct buses from Vil­nius to St Peters­burg. So, that night I travel from Vil­nius to Tallinn, Esto­nia, an unplanned stop, a place I wanted to go to, but thought I would­n’t have time for.