#i liked vampires then i found out abt them having slavic roots

[everythingsinred]

@tardytothepardy replied “Is there like, one kinda monolithic Slavic vampire story that Dracula draws from or is it a combination of all kinds of stories?”

sorry for doing a separate post but i think ive been wanting to scream about this interest of mine for YEARS so.... ill try to be brief but i have SO many thoughtS!

ill try to specify what i mean by saying: vampires as we know them are actually ONLY slavic (or generally eastern european, because romanian and some greek and hungarian influence is undeniable and they aren’t slavs).

that might be controversial of me to say but its true. vampires are a part of slavic folklore and they dont exist in other cultures (slavic vampires are not all called vampires, bc vampir is the serbian word for the creature and other languages have different names but theyre essentially the same monster). that is NOT to say that creatures similar to vampires dont exist in other cultures. they sure do! blood-drinking demons exist in plenty of cultures, but that makes sense. humans of all cultures have always considered blood to be a symbol of our humanity and vitality. a creature that drinks that is pretty terrifying and an intuitive story to tell across cultures. but just like the demons of christianity look different from demons in japanese or mayan cultures, the “vampire”-ish creatures in other cultures arent really vampires in the same sense. i have no issue calling them vampires if were talking abt creatures that drink blood, but they are essentially different creatures. 

the “classic” vampire, or the “dracula” that everyone thinks of, is pretty simple: a (sometimes wealthy) dead person (walking corpse) who uses their fangs to feed on the blood of living humans in the night and sleeps in a coffin during the day. they have shape-shifting abilities, able to turn into animals. they can be kept away with certain plants, like garlic, and can be killed with a stake to the heart, decapitation, or burning them to ashes (ideally all of the above, just to be safe).

every single bit of that is SLAVIC, or eastern european. the basic eastern european vampire looks pretty much the same throughout the cultures, with a little bit of variation. the biggest changes come from how exactly they come to be.

i made this post bc i was signing up for spring classes and one class was about the myth of the vampire, which immediately interested me until i saw the curriculum, which is basically just sucking bram stoker’s dick, to be crude about it, and no reference to the cultures he used to make his dumb point. (lookie how influential he was!) the reason why i despise dracula with my whole chest is because it’s pretty clearly (at least partially, since the book is a whole thing with other themes) a xenophobic allegory for the risk that eastern european immigrants posed to the “clean and civilized” west, particularly britain. the eastern europeans, having already brought darkness and evil upon their own lands, are being drawn to the pure west, where they will corrupt the british women!  i am really shocked by how few people are able to see just how blatantly xenophobic dracula is, but whatever. an essay for another day (and i did write abt this for school actually). 

what people dont know--sadly--is that dracula is NOT the original vampire story. its not even the first WESTERN vampire story. 

this is where ill answer your question: no, slavic vampires arent a monolith, but theyre pretty similar in crucial ways. vampires stand apart from other monsters because in most folklore they used to be human. thats what makes slavic vampires different from the blood-drinking demons from other cultures. theyre zombies, essentially, which is why they sleep in coffins: they werent properly buried or baptized.

the balkan vampire mass hysteria has to do with major historical vampires (petar blagojevic and sava savanovic, namely). “real life” vampires. stories of real dead people allegedly coming back to life after being buried and causing the deaths of others in their village. people in the balkans would stake every corpse prior to burial to prevent a vampire from rising.

bram stoker took this hysteria (that gained attention because a large part of the balkans was in the austrohungarian empire, so westerners quickly found out abt it) and used it to vilify eastern european immigrants. its very important to note that bram stoker NEVER visited romania, knew nothing about romanian or slavic culture, and yet wrote a whole book where a romanian count is the main villain, pulling influence from romanian and slavic folklore without consulting any slavic or romanian people.

anyway, the way more fun thing to talk abt is how DIFFERENT slavic vampires can be, because slavs are scattered over a very large section of land (most of europe actually). the vampires in russian stories ive read dont actually have fangs! they would slit their victim’s throat and drain it into a bucket and drink it after. the vampires in the balkans often have fangs, meanwhile. many traditions have vampires rising from the dead bc of improper burials/not being good enough orthodox christians/being bitten by another vampire (another thing that is huge in pop culture nowadays). in serbia, theres plenty of traditions for keeping vampires away, using hawthorn branches and incense. our vampires have always been attractive and seductive. theres even a story (i think its russian) where a young woman falls in love with a vampire and even considers marrying him until she finds out he drinks blood! thats not something bram stoker made up either. 

russian vampires come to be because someone died without being unbaptized or without being faithful to orthodox christianity. this explains the popular idea of the crucifix repelling vampires as they are an “unholy” creature. vampires are linked with christianity in very interesting ways i wont get into rn.

the thing is vampires were essentially an invention to explain the unexplainable: that sometimes corpses dont rot the way u think they should, that people die randomly and without obvious cause, etc. so you have region-specific lore that is more general so people can understand why these things happen and how to protect themselves. basically a rundown of what the creature is, how it comes to be, and how to kill it or prevent it. 

BUT there also specific folktales that help bring the creature to life. (think of how baba yaga is a general threat to children bc she exists in the world of slavic folklore as a being who eats kids, but she also exists in detailed stories where she plays a usually villainous but at best morally ambiguous role). one of my favorite books of all time, The Forests of the Vampire, is an anthology of slavic folktales, mainly witches and vampires, which are our biggest monsters. ive been reading that book over and over since i was 8 so its definitely something i would recommend checking out for specific folktales, about vampires as well as baba yaga. telling all those stories myself would make this post way too long.

conclusion: i rly rly love vampires. ive loved them since i was a little girl. i loved twilight and anne rice and amelia atwater-rhodes and true blood as well as any YA vampire u could throw at me. i have no problem with the further evolution of the vampire myth. vampires becoming heroes, being sympathetic, being humanized, falling in love, being different are all things i LOVE. vampires of today’s pop culture are wonderful and i have a lot of affection for them. always have! write vampires! draw vampires! daydream about dating a vampire or becoming a vampire or even killing a vampire, i support that!

i only hate that dracula vilified eastern europeans using their own folklore against them, turning them into a monster aiming to corrupt and destroy the pure west. i just want dracula to be forgotten. i know that wont happen but ill explain why i hate it to as many people as i can so they can understand how harmful it is that an eastern european myth was appropriated by a westerner so he could make a xenophobic point, and that HIS story is the one remembered, not ours.

im sorry @tardytothepardy for replying with such a lengthy post but. i couldnt help it. if i felt less strongly abt it i wouldve been able to cut down more. sorry. ;-;