24
merely through farmland but also through
surviving farmstead trees, foundation stones,
and sometimes wells or ponds. Where none of
those left any trace on the land, memories and
ancestral connections were stored in the earth:
they can be found in fragments of pots or
plates, broken window glass, or broken bricks,
for example. (Vaitkevičienė 2013: 64).
Figure 4. The site of the Radzevičius Homestead in the
Antaniškiai Village, Šiluva Eldership, Raseiniai
District. The inscription on the cross reads: ‘This is our
Native Place. The Radzevičius Family.’ (Photo by V.
Vaitkevičius 2015.)
Due to changes in lifestyle and other cultural,
social, and economic circumstances, most
former farmsteads were not revived in the late
20
th
century. Farmlands or growing forests
stretched over these former sites, and a sense of
the sacred became associated with these sites.
This picture is close to the phenomenon of
apidėmė found in historical documents: those
were fields turned into farmlands and pastures,
and occasional untouched small plots of land
in their surroundings (which in the 16
th
century
were under the protection of goddess
Apidėmė,
and in the 20
th
century, the Virgin Mary).
Holding family or neighbour reunions,
building memorial stones with names of the
former residents and rhymed inscriptions,
planting trees or groves, or consecrating
crosses or small chapels (Figure 4), were
means with which the people of contemporary
Lithuania
entrusted
themselves
to
the
protection of the farmstead sites and of those
who had lived and died there (or had moved
from there), and also specifically to the
protection of the Most Holy Virgin Mary.
Thus, for example, 87-year-old Salomėja
Eitavičiūtė-Lubienė from Kūlupėnai (Kretinga
District) believed that Mary lived in a small
chapel mounted in a tree on the site of her
native farmstead and protected the place:
– How did it come into your mind to mount a
chapel in a tree?
– Because it was necessary. How else? No
parents and no home place will be left.
Nobody and nothing.
Nobody will protect
the native home. And somebody has to take
care of it, somebody has to be there. Mary
[has] to protect us. When nobody is [living]
there any longer, just the fields are left.
But the place that was left has to stay there.
(Field research data of March 2013.)
In comparison, in 1984, the Blažys family put
up an inscription on a small chapel in their grand-
parents’ farmstead in Pušinava (Radviliškis
District):
Saturated with blood and tears, land
of our parents, be generous (field research data,
June 2013). In Palmajė (Ignalina District), on
the outskirts of the Paukštė family farmstead, a
stone cross stands with an inscription:
In
Memory of Parents’ Land (field research data,
August 2013). The Poškiai family, on the site
of their family home, in the fields of the
Gulbinai Village (Radviliškis District), planted
two birch trees with a memorial stone between
them. An inscription on the stone reads:
In the years 1926–1959, Pranciškus and Ona
Poškiai lived there, worshipped God, raised
children, and got through thick and thin.
Lord, reward them in eternity. (Field research
data, August 2014.)
Summary and Conclusions
The reference point of the present research is a
toponym complex represented in forms such as
Apidėmė,
Apydėmė, and
Apydėmai, all well-
known in Lithuania. As evidenced by the
historical
data, these toponyms
began
spreading around 1547–1557, when the Volok
Reform
was launched,
and referred to the sites
of former farmsteads, relocated to settlements
25
measured in Voloks. The application of the
name of the goddess
Apidėmė, attested in the
first collection of Protestant sermons from the
second half of the 16
th
century and in the
treatise on Samogitian gods by Jan Lasicki,
meant that the Volk Reform’s changes in land
administration and division were not merely of
an economic and social character. Rather, one
can
assume that, as part of their spiritual and –
most likely – religious life, human affection for
their place of residence intensified and
increased. Based on Greimas, the affection for
one’s historical
apidėmė, usually a one-and-a-
half to two hectare residential area, rested on
people’s connection with fire and a fireplace.
The site of the relocated, collapsed, or possibly
even incinerated farmstead was the abode of
the family hearth deities. Importantly, it was also
the abode of ancestral souls, souls which could
not be left without the protection of the gods.
The name of the goddess
Apidėmė is
ultimately an epithet: it in fact describes the
abode of the deity which coincides with the
spot of black ground on the site of a former
home or farmstead. It is difficult to judge either
the nature of the goddess or her field of
activity. To some extent,
Apidėmė belongs to
the spirits acting in a specific home or place.
However, we cannot identify her with the
deities who determine the destiny of family
wealth, happiness, and health:
Apidėmė is a
kind of reflection of positive material and
immaterial good in the place where life (hence
rituals and sacrifices) once took place but was
interrupted.
Apidėmė is
like a trace of sanctity,
still lingering in the earth, water, stones and
trees, even though these are no longer tended
or augmented by inhabitants.
For the first time, this paper has discussed
similarities between the historical
apidėmė,
which once received veneration, and memorial
sites that emerged during periods of land
ownership and use reforms in the 20
th
century.
Sites of farmsteads, demolished, relocated, or
else transformed into arable fields, fallow
lands, or pastures for collective farms under
Soviet occupation, deserve particular attention.
Those places and the protection of the souls
that lived and died there – or who had moved
away – are mainly entrusted to the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and they are marked with
memorial stones, trees, crosses, and small
chapels. These folk beliefs and customs are a
living and significant part of contemporary
Lithuanian culture and of the identity of the
Lithuanian people.
Vykintas
Vaitkevičius
(vykintas.vaitkevicius[at]
gmail.com) Institute of Baltic Region History and
Archaeology, Klaipėda University, Herkus Mantas
Street 84, Klaipėda, Lithuania
Notes
1. For comparison, Sirvydas translated the Polish
śiedlisko into the Latin
sedes [‘an abode, a place of
residence’] and
area [‘a square, a yard’] (Pakalka
1997: 353).
2. Cf.
apy-danga [‘a cover, a top’] (LKŽe,
s.v.
‘apydanga’).
3. Cf.
apy-gardė [‘the place around an enclosure/a
cattle shed’],
api-daržė [‘the place around the
vegetable garden’],
api-kaimė [‘the environ, parish’]
(LKŽe,
s.vv. ‘apygardė’, ‘apidaržė).
4. Given the fact that the statistical indicators hail from
the Soviet era, actual figures ought to be higher.
5. For a village resident of the 20
th
century,
apidėmė
would mean a plot of land between two farmsteads,
jointly managed by two neighbours or community
members (LKŽe). That, of course, does not deny the
possibility that in the past those were dwelling
places.
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