The allure of villains from Slavic folklore

Ahead of the release of her novel The House of Frost and Feathers, Lauren Wiesebron digs into the allure of folkloric bad guys.

Slavic folklore was born of interminable winter nights huddled around the hearth, with tales of heroes and heroines setting out to face the unknown in the dark and disturbing forest. There the trees pressed close, and the cold winter winds hide their perils. It is in these places that the villains of Slavic folklore thrive, and there are many.

I was inspired by three of these villainous characters when writing my novel The House of Frost and Feathers, all of which manifest our awe and fear of forces that can lead us away from ourselves, and our own wild natures. 

Meet Baba Yaga

Let’s start with Baba Yaga, the direct inspiration for my central character Baba Zima. Baba Yaga is not a true villain—at least, not all the time. She’s a highly mutable character, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic from Slavic folktales. She’s unpredictable, sometimes taking the guise of a helper, sometimes a hinderer. And when she does offer help, it’s often after the hero(ine) passes a test to avoid ending up as her next meal.

I love Baba Yaga for many reasons, not the least of which was that she was so different from the parade of repetitive female villains I read in the German and French fairytales of my childhood: the evil stepmothers and witches with a preponderance for kidnapping. Baba Yaga is powerful in her cronehood, wise in the ways of the wild forest, and living life on her own terms in a way that was difficult to imagine for a highly introverted young person.

(Drawing of Baba Yaga’s chicken-legged hut from Nova Lorya; source)

I loved incorporating Baba Yaga’s confidence, power, and cunning in Baba Zima. She is also a character with ambiguous morality, with both wildness and wickedness, and also has questionable intentions and deep secrets. One thing is clear: both Baba Yaga and Baba Zima serve themselves. Playing with Baba Yaga’s mutability (does she want to help you, or eat you?) was one of my favorite things about writing Baba Zima, and I found it easy and joyful to write her voice—probably because it came from somewhere deep within that delighted in speaking and acting on whims alone, with the independence, wry carelessness, and sometimes cruelty that comes as a consequence. 

Introducing Koschei the Deathless

Koschei the Deathless, evil and ostensibly immortal, is one of the true villains of Slavic folklore. He appears as the chief antagonist in several folktales. My favourite is Marya Morevna, where Koschei kidnaps the titular character and spends the rest of the story evading the clumsy attempts of hapless Prince Ivan to free her (which he would have been able to do much faster if he had listened to the advice of the much more competent Marya Morevna).

Koschei has the epithet of ‘Deathless’ or ‘Immortal’ because he keeps his death hidden on the tip of a needle, and the needle in an egg, and the egg in a duck, and the duck in a hare, and the hare in a locked chest, and the chest buried on the mythical island of Buyan. Talk about Russian nesting dolls! To kill Koschei, Ivan needs find and break the needle that holds Koschei’s death. If the concept sounds familiar, it’s because this was the inspiration behind Voldemort’s horcruxes.

(Photo by Mariusz Słoński on Unsplash)

Because Koschei is difficult to kill (though the heroes try their hardest), and because he keeps on resurging from tale to tale, he belongs to the life and death cycles that were so important for the Slavic worldview. To my mind, a lot of the fascination with this character comes from how he tries to remove himself from his humanity, but still desires human companionship (by kidnapping princesses?) and perhaps love. I warmly recommend Catherynne Valente’s incredible interpretation of the relationship between Marya Morevna and Koschei in her exquisite novel, Deathless. That tension between death and life, covetousness and love, makes him one of the most enduringly captivating characters in Slavic folklore. 

Here comes Nightingale the Robber

Nightingale the Robber is a much more obscure villain than the flashy Koschei and Baba Yaga. He appears in an epic poem from the 17^th century about the hero Ilya Muromets, under the guise of Solovei, or Nightingale. He has human and bird features, lives a nest, and would kill travelers (while decimating half of the forest!) with his powerful whistle.

This is a classic monster with both human and animal characteristics, the blending of which can range from unsettling to terrifying. Nightingale the Robber’s animal features and murderous whistle, elicit fear and anger from the valiant knight of the story, who ends up slaying him.

Even though I paint him as the murderous bogeyman in my story, he’s not a simple bloodthirsty monster. In the original poem, he has a family and human roots under the monstrous surface.

(By Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (1876-1942), Public Domain)

Folklore explores the complexity of human nature

In the icy North, one enters the forest with prayers and incantations on one’s lips, to protect against the perils that hide within, as well as those on the brutal edges of our own unconscious. Baba Yaga, Koschei the Deathless, and Nightingale the Robber are just three examples from the wide spectrum of villainy of Slavic folklore, displaying the complexity of human nature.

Just like the dark and wintry forest that takes centre stage in many of the tales, these villains are forces that challenge heroes and heroines to confront their deepest fears and desires. As readers delve into The House of Frost and Feathers, I hope they see echoes of these timeless figures who remind us that in a world where not everything is as it seems, where the unknown has the power to grant us blessings or confuse or bewilder us, there are rich and shadowy realms waiting to be explored, both within and without ourselves. 

The House of Frost and Feathers by Lauren Wiesebron is out on 16 January 2025 through Hodderscape.