Or Let’s Dig Into the Slavic Inspiration Behind My Dark Urban Fantasy Novel From the Cradle to the Grave
It’s not a secret that one of my major inspirations for writing—both horror and fantasy—lies in Slavic folklore and mythology. If we want to be more specific because the word “Slavic” really means a lot of different countries and cultures (not just Polish and Russian, which are the usual suspects for Slavic fantasy), it’s the South Slavic folklore, and even more specific, Croatian. I grew up on South Slavic folk tales from the former Yugoslavia, and it stuck with me more than anything else. Coupled with my love for our beautiful, rural landscapes and quite a turbulent history, it was unavoidable to show up in my work.
I’m completely aware that Croatia is a small country with a small language, which makes it harder to share our culture with a bigger audience. Our sources are scarce, mostly existing only in print editions, and rarely in digital format (though we’re getting better at both sides and I feel it’s easier for us to research our folk tales and traditions nowadays than it used to be when I started writing). This is why I love writing these “story behind the story” segments, sharing the inspiration I know is harder to find on the Internet, especially in English.
So now I’m working on a whole feature dedicated only to the rich inspiration that infused my Slavic fantasy novel, with a dash of mystery and a pinch of horror, From the Cradle to the Grave. In the next few weeks, I’m going to share the magical beings, gods, and monsters from our tales and myths, who show up to stir trouble in my book.
Starting with a very popular duo for Croatian fantasy—krsnik and štriga. Just a disclaimer before I continue, keep in mind that folklore is fluid, and even saying that something is from Croatian folk tales is not enough. It’s not even enough to say I based something on tales from the Istria peninsula, as is the case with these two, because their stories vary from village to village. There can be more subtle or more glaring differences. To write it all down would be a scientific paper, for which I’m not remotely qualified. I’m just a writer who loves to read and research folk tales and to share them to the best of my abilities.
My main source on štriga and krsnik that inspired my writing is the amazing book Vile s Učke (literal translation: Fairies from the Učka, the mountain separating the Istria peninsula from the rest of Croatia) by Evelina Rudan. If you understand Croatian, my warmest recommendations for this book.
“And what’s a štriga if not a krsnik’s reflection?” – From the Cradle to the Grave
The krsnik and the štriga are basically the same thing with one big difference—their morality alignment. Where a krsnik is considered to be a village protector, a štriga is considered to be a monster. Both are a person usually born en caul (inside an intact amniotic sac)—though there can be other unusual birthing elements marking the baby, depending on where the story is told—said to have magical powers. The most common power in all of the tales is shapeshifting into animals, and it can be any animal, but some of the most popular are dogs, wolves, and bulls. For the štriga, typical animals can also be cats, mice, and flies, you know, those that are considered to be plague-bringers.
The other powers can be control over the weather or the state of animals and people. The krsnik can heal injuries and sickness, and štriga is the one bringing the disease. If a štriga ‘cursed’ the land with draught, a krsnik can call upon the rain. And as you can see, these powers, as well as their moral alignment, put them in opposition. The interesting thing about both the krsnik and the štriga, in my opinion, is how in the stories you can’t have one without the other, and you can’t define one without using the other. So the shortest explanation the tales can give us for the krsnik is that ‘it’s a person born with magical abilities who fights the štriga’, and for the štriga that ‘it’s a person born with magical abilities who fights the krsnik’. The fights usually take place in the middle of the night, at crossroads. If the krsnik is a white wolf then the štriga is a black wolf, etc. Always born enemies, their whole purpose is to fight the other.
Krsnik’s powers mark him as a protector or monster-hunter, keeping the people safe and helping them with various problems. This is why in contemporary Croatian fantasy they usually have a more traditional hero’s role, going on adventures, solving mysteries, and fighting bad guys. Most notably, my dear friend and colleague Igor Rendić has an urban fantasy trilogy, A Town Called River (in English!), with a krsnik as a main character, his adventure very similar to the superhero narrative. Including the fact that the first book reads like an origin story in which our protagonist, Paul, learns he’s a krsnik who inherited the obligation to protect the city of Rijeka from creatures lurking in the night and in nightmares—since Igor used another one of the possible krsnik powers, which is walking in the dream world, to create his own dreamscape canon.
The other big recent Croatian krsnik book is the award-winning historical Slavic fantasy trilogy Između orla i lava by Ana Cerovac, the first book literally called Krsnik. In this trilogy, Ana wove the folklore, history, and cultural heritage of the Istria region into the storytelling as accurately as possible, while also bringing in her fresh new voice to the familiar and lesser-known tales. And outside of the novels, both krsniks and štrigas can be easily found in short stories published in various anthologies and magazines. And as an editor of the Slavic Supernatural anthology, I was happy to include a story with a Slovenian version of the krsnik, Kresnik and Zlatorog, by Rober Norok.
On the other hand, the štriga’s role in folk tales and in fantasy is that of a monstrous woman, a shapeshifting witch. Though, of course, contemporary writers play with subversions, giving new twists to expectations. Ana’s trilogy is a great example of giving us a new perspective on štriga and her role in the story. Zmajska zora by Milena Benini is an urban fantasy novel with a štriga as a witchy protagonist and a krsnik as a love interest in a sort of enemies-to-lovers (but not really) scenario. I also love this more subversive approach to the štriga, especially aware of the way restrictive gender norms and patriarchal society shaped folklore. Because, a štriga is usually a woman, and a krsnik is usually a man, and ‘štriga’ as a word is in some regional dialects used as a curse word against women. If someone wanted to say that a certain woman is an “evil bitch”, they would say she’s “a štriga”. Some folk tales do try to sympathize with a štriga, in a bit patronizing way, saying she can’t change how she was born, that it’s just in her nature.
This all means that the concept of a štriga is very dear to me. I absolutely love monstrous women, the fear and the disruption they bring to the patriarchal society, the fact that you can’t mess with them. They’re powerful and cool, and can turn into any animal, what’s there not to like? On the other hand, I’m not a huge fan of krsniks, seeing them as sanctimonious protectors of the status quo. Which you can easily see when reading my work, especially From the Cradle to the Grave, where I played a lot with both krsniks and štrigas, building up on the folklore base, but bringing in my own interpretations and twists to their stories and powers.
“Unfortunately, anyone who tasted štriga’s blood would experience a hard-to-control bloodlust. Her grandma had told her once about finding a woman who’d been tricked into drinking a štriga’s blood and in her frenzy she had eaten her own children.” – From the Cradle to the Grave
I hope you had fun reading this and I absolutely recommend the titles I mentioned earlier. If you want to see even more of krsniks and štrigas but through the fantastical lens, and you didn’t get a chance to do so before, check out my Slavic fantasy novel From the Cradle to the Grave, perfect for fans of sapphic power couples and monstrous women. The main character, Nana, is not only married to a powerful štriga, but also works as an educator keeping magical teens safe—including a young krsnik ready to fight everyone, and a painfully shy young štriga who only wants to disappear.
And if you’re interested in folk tales, horror (especially queer horror), or speculative fiction in general, subscribe to my haunted newsletter where I share even more book recs and folk tales while I research for my work.
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