What does the road to the Russian world of the dead look like?
Imagine a fiery river with a shaky, glowing bridge thrown over it. The main character fights a monster on it, defeats it with difficulty, chops it into pieces and throws them into the river below… Is this a scene from a modern blockbuster? No! It’s a fragment of a Russian folk tale (or epic).
The bridge is called ‘Kalinov’ and the river is ‘Smorodina’. Most often, the hero is Ivan Tsarevich, Ivan Popovich, Ivan the Peasant's Son or the hero Ilya Muromets. And the monster is either Nightingale the Robber, Serpent Gorynych or Chudo-Yudo.
The fiery Smorodina River separates two worlds – the living and the dead, the real and the otherworldly, the territory of good and evil. Its name is indirectly connected with the berry: Smorodina comes from the word ‘smrad’ (‘stench’), ‘ono smerdit’ (‘it stinks’),. By the way, the berry is also named so because of its pungent smell.
The name ‘Kalinov Bridge’ also has nothing to do with the viburnum berry bush and its fruits. Folklorists agree that ‘Kalinov’ comes from the verb ‘kalit’ (‘to heat up’). That is, the bridge is hot, red-hot.
Crossing the fiery river on the Kalinov Bridge to the other world and back for the main character is always a test, an initiation, overcoming death, fear, transition to another, higher status. References to the Kalinov Bridge were found in folk funeral lamentations for the same reason, as a place where the soul of the deceased goes.
