Veles
Also known as: Volos
Mythological Narrative
Veles, also written Volos, presided over cattle, wealth, contracts and the world below. The chronicles call him the "cattle god" (skotii bog); since the Old East Slavic word for cattle also meant money and property, merchants counted among his worshippers. While Perun's idol stood on the prince's hill in Kyiv, later sources place an idol of Volos down by the trading quarter of Podil on the riverbank.
In the treaties of 907 and 971 between Rus and Byzantium, the pagan side swore by both Perun and Volos, warriors taking their oath on weapons and gold. The twelfth-century epic Tale of Igor's Campaign calls the legendary singer Boyan "grandson of Veles," which suggests he was also patron of poetry and prophecy.
The linguists Ivanov and Toporov, working from folklore, reconstructed a duel between the thunderer and a serpent, casting Veles as Perun's adversary: one wields lightning in the sky, the other coils as a great snake among the roots by the water, and their combat releases rain. The reconstruction has been influential, though no medieval text states it directly. After Christianization his herding functions passed to Saint Blaise (Vlasii), whose icon peasants hung in the cowshed and on whose February feast cattle were fed blessed bread.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## Attestation
The *Russian Primary Chronicle* has the Rus' swear by Volos, "the cattle god" (*skotii bog*), together with Perun and their weapons, in the treaties of 907 and 945. Unlike Perun, Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl, and Mokosh, Veles is conspicuously absent from the six idols Vladimir sets up on the Kiev hill in 980. Later medieval and early-modern hagiographic tradition associated with Vladimir's baptism places a Veles idol separately, on the lower ground of the Podil district by the river — a detail that postdates the Primary Chronicle itself and should be treated with more caution than the 907 and 945 treaty text.
## A modern reconstruction, clearly labelled
The absence of Veles from the hill, and his separate association with lower/wet ground, underlies Vyacheslav Ivanov and Vladimir Toporov's influential 1974 reconstruction of a cosmic conflict between a sky-based Perun and an earth- or water-based Veles, echoing comparable Indo-European storm-god-versus-serpent combats (Indra/Vritra, Thor/Jörmungandr). No medieval Slavic text narrates this combat; it is inferred from later folk tales, place names, and comparative mythology, and is presented on this site strictly as a scholarly reconstruction. Later folklore also associates Veles with poetry, magic, and (via the 12th-century *Tale of Igor's Campaign*, which calls the poet Boyan "Veles's grandson") skilled speech, though the *Tale*'s own authenticity as an unaltered 12th-century text has been debated by some scholars.
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Veles.
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