“Christmas time” is not a birthday of Jesus Christ

I bet 90% of people, who celebrates Christmas, have absolutely no idea that this day has nothing to do with a birth of Jesus Christ or Christianity at all. What’s more, many times those “true believers” despise other opinions and deny everything – as soon as they hear something about Winter Solstice and why it is an old pagan festivity.

Unfortunately, it is the clear result of centuries old brain-washing of people who had no will to think by themselves.

I had no reason to write it all myself, as they are already well known facts acknowledged by historians, so I just did quick search on Internet and used first source I found about this topic, so here you are: Continue reading

The Battle of Saule 1236

Continuing on from my last post, let me tell you some more about the historical events mentioned on Skyforger‘s album KAUJA PIE SAULES, or translated to English “The Battle of Saule” (where Saule is a place near the Latvian / Lithuanian border).

KAUJA PIE SAULES – both the album and its title song – are dedicated to the battle between European Crusaders and Lithuanian / Semigallian pagan tribes. It was one of greatest battles won by Baltic pagan tribes and to commemorate the battle, in 2000 Lithuanian and Latvian parliaments declared September 22 as the Day of Baltic Unity.

So for those of you who are interested what’s behind that song I made this article. Though I must confess that I shamelessly took majority from Wikipedia page (because in short all was already there) and some excerptions from Māris Goldmanis blog. Māris is Latvian Historian and his very informative blog in English can be found here.
And his actual full article about Kauja pie Saules is here. Continue reading

Battle at Garoza forest.1287

There is the song from Skyforger album “Kauja pie Saules” (1998) called “Kauja Garozas silā/Battle at Garoza forest“. This battle occurred in 1287, in the nowadays Latvia territory, in Zemgale/Semigallia.
Not long ago (March of 2012) there was a special remembrance event held in Joniškis (Lithuania), so I decided to write about this battle.

Situation before the battle

The things were looking really bad for Semigallian pagans at that time – all surrounding tribes (Kurshi, Latgallians, Livs and Estonians) except Lithuanians, were already converted and subdued by invaded Crusaders. Their local built Livonian military Order and bishopric of Riga now finally had time and resources to attend all their attention on Zemgale and its still free pagan people.
After a few tries crusaders conquered Tērvete – the main stronghold and centre of Semigallians. That way they occupied some part of Zemgale and started to build own castles in strategically important places. Continue reading

Herkus Monte, the hero of Old Prussians

To continue the topic I started in a post about The Baltic Crusades, here you will find more about Old Prussians and one of their greatest hero: Herkus Monte. Also you will find  information about Old Prussian life style, religion and some of  the important events of those times, such as The Great Prussian Uprising (1260-1274).

This is writing by the Crusades historian William Urban, the Monmouth College Lee L. Morgan Professor of History and International Studies – one of the top U.S. experts on the Baltic Crusades and the Teutonic Order. I have only a little edited and added some small things to complete the story. Continue reading

What’s in this picture?

This is the cover artwork from our old demo Semigalls’ Warchant (1997 and re-released in 2005). It also can be seen  on album t-shirts, we have made with this picture. Now I want to tell you what exactly is what you can see in this picture.

It was painted by Rihards Zariņš back in 1920’s and it’s called – “Viestard’s fight with Crusader”.

Viestards (or Viesturs, Vestards, Vester, Viesthardus, Vestardus) was a famous Semigallian warchief from Tērvete land. Lately he became known as chief (kunic) of all Semigallia (Zemgale region today, see map). Continue reading