Guardians and Boundary Spirits of Home, Wood, Mound and Water

The Slavic household guardian lives behind the stove or under the threshold, and a family moving house was expected to invite him along with embers from the old hearth. The page records that a neglected domovoi turns mischievous or malicious, which sets the pattern of reciprocity that the rest of the trail repeats.

The Scandinavian farm guardian is a small bearded figure in a red or grey cap who receives porridge with butter, traditionally on Christmas Eve. The page notes that forgetting the offering can turn him destructive, a farm-sized version of the domovoi bargain.

Where the domovoi keeps the house, the leshy rules the Slavic forest and its wolves like a landowner. The page lists the signs that give away his human disguise, such as a left shoe on the right foot and no shadow, and records that belief in him persisted into the twentieth century.

The hairy, goat-legged salvans of the Ladin Dolomites watch over grazing animals and help respectful shepherds, but punish cruelty to animals. The page notes that the name descends from the Latin silvanus, linking an Alpine legend to a Roman woodland god.

The Scandinavian huldra looks fully human from the front but has a hollow back or an animal tail, and is tied to the mountain summer pastures. The page records the tradition that marrying a human in church removes her tail, so she is both a threat and a possible wife.

The South Slavic vila is a long-haired nature spirit of forest, mountain, cloud and water who can grant healing and prophecy or strike with illness. The page records that the epic hero Marko Kraljevic has a vila as sworn blood sister, and that her help is not unconditional.

The Irish sidhe take their name from the fairy mounds, many of them prehistoric burial monuments, in which they are said to live. The page records that they are neither simply good nor evil, and that the lone hawthorn, the fairy thorn, was left unfelled by cautious farmers.

The Sardinian janas are female spirits said to live in the domus de janas, the rock-cut chamber tombs of the prehistoric Ozieri culture. Oral tradition makes them night weavers on golden looms and sometimes guardians of hidden treasure, a later folk reading of a much older burial landscape.

The Maori taniwha belongs to deep water, rivers, lakes and harbours, and may be a dangerous being or a kaitiaki, a protective guardian bound to a waterway or hapu. The page says plainly that which taniwha belongs to which community is knowledge held by those communities and is not asserted here.

The Australian bunyip lives in swamps, billabongs and waterholes and has no single fixed description, appearing as dog-like, seal-like, feathered or tusked across different regions. The page records that the variation comes from many distinct language groups each contributing its own account, with drownings near a waterhole attributed to it.