Lithuania's Myth of Origins

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Castle Fairy Tale, 1909, M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum

In 1909, when Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis painted Pilies pasaka (Castle Fairy Tale), Lithuania was experiencing a cultural rebirth. For forty years, the tsarist authorities had banned books and publications in the Lithuanian language and the ban had only recently ended. During those decades, the language survived mainly in the countryside, kept alive in the songs of peasants and in illegal books that smugglers brought across the border hidden in their bags. Educated people spoke Polish or other slavic languages. Some intellectuals worried that Lithuanian might disappear completely, becoming just another dead language that only scholars would remember.

In this atmosphere of saving the language, Čiurlionis came to believe strongly that the real essence of Lithuania could be found not in the official family histories that connected Lithuanians to Rome or to ancient warrior tribes — but in folk songs and fairy tales. These represented a kind of cultural memory that existed separately from written history. In Pilies pasaka, a fortress sits on top of a mountain. You can only reach it by difficult, winding paths. This image connected to an old Lithuanian belief that after death, the soul must climb a steep mountain to reach the next world. The weight of earthly things makes the climb harder. He wasn't trying to show these myths clearly in his paintings — he was painting the feeling they gave him, the sense of something very old and difficult to understand. Through these old tales and symbols, Čiurlionis seemed to be searching for a connection between the Lithuania of peasant songs and a deeper, older past.

But which past? The question had different possible answers, each with its own vision of what Lithuania had been and could become. Čiurlionis was painting at a time when these various stories had not yet been separated, when the past was still open and mysterious. Over the centuries, different stories about Lithuanian origins had built up, one on top of another — each responding to the pressures of its time, shaping how Lithuanians understood themselves in relation to the empires and kingdoms around them. These were not just academic studies but stories with real political consequences, shaping how Lithuania positioned itself among the powers of Europe, how the nobility understood their status and privileges, and how ordinary people understood their connection to the land and to each other. These origin stories deserve careful examination — not as strange beliefs from a naive past, but as serious attempts to solve the problem of identity in a world where power, legitimacy, and survival depended on who you claimed to be.

Roman myth

In the 15th century, a theory appeared claiming that the Lithuanian high nobility came from Roman aristocrats who had moved to Lithuania. The legend centred on a figure named Palemon (also called Polemon or Publius Libon). According to different versions of the story, Palemon fled Rome with five hundred noble families and settled along the Nemunas River. Different accounts placed this exodus at different historical moments: some during the civil wars between Julius Caesar and Pompey, others during Nero's reign, and still others during the time of Attila the Hun. The theory became widely recognised in Lithuanian society and in the chronicles of neighbouring states, presented as historical fact for approximately four hundred years. The legend did not claim Roman descent for all Lithuanians, but specifically for certain noble families who traced their family lines back to Palemon's companions.

The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz is usually cited as the first to record this tradition in writing. However, he emphasised that he was documenting an already existing oral story rather than inventing it. In his account, Długosz noted that the origin of the Prussians and Lithuanians, though they were similar ethnic groups with similar languages, was explained through different traditions. He found this inconvenient but did not try to hide it. He described how the Roman newcomers, upon arriving in Baltic territories, settled not in the best coastal lands or where rivers join, but rather in "forests, abandoned places, riversides, open areas and swamps." This detail suggests the oral tradition contained elements that didn't entirely fit the triumphant story one might expect from a made-up legend of noble origins. The legend itself described Palemon sailing up the Nemunas River until reaching the Dubysa, where he and his followers found abundant forests, wildlife, and fish. There Palemon's sons — Borkus, Kūnas, and Spera — established settlements: Borkus near where the Jūra and Nemunas rivers meet, Kūnas at the meeting of the Neris and Nemunas (thus founding Kaunas), and Spera further inland near Lake Spera.

The emergence of this theory in the 15th century was closely tied to Lithuania's position within European political and cultural structures. At the end of the 14th century and beginning of the 15th, Lithuanian intellectuals traveling abroad encountered Latin more and more frequently. They could not help but notice similarities between Latin and the Lithuanian language. This linguistic resemblance led them to investigate Roman history and culture more deeply. Lithuanian scholars also observed parallels between ancient Roman religious practices and those of pagan Lithuania. The theory developed gradually from these observations, proposing that the Lithuanian language was essentially a dialect of Latin that had changed over centuries. For a newly Christianised state seeking integration into Western European civilisation, the question of origins carried significant weight. A connection to Rome — however distant or mythical — offered a way to position Lithuania within the Latin, Catholic world rather than the Eastern, Orthodox sphere. The competition with Poland added another dimension: demonstrating ancient, noble origins allowed Lithuanian elites to enter closer union with the Kingdom of Poland as equals rather than inferiors.

The Roman myth served not only as a genealogical claim but also as a way of defining Lithuanian statehood and territory. The legend's structure reflected a three-part vision of the Lithuanian state: Lithuania proper (the lands beyond the Neris River), Samogitia, and the Navahrudak region. This geographic framework was not accidental: the myth described how Palemon's descendants gradually expanded from their initial settlements along the Nemunas and Dubysa rivers, moving across the Neris and establishing control over Samogitia. They eventually incorporated Navahrudak lands after they were devastated by Tartar raids. The narrative consistently emphasised the unity of these three regions under Lithuanian rule, with power traditionally passing through Palemon's family line. Interestingly, the myth portrayed the newcomers not as conquerors who displaced local populations, but as settlers who integrated with existing inhabitants and this detail suggests the legend was addressing the multiethnic, multilingual reality of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The political function becomes clearer when considering that the myth likely originated among the culturally diverse nobility of Lithuania proper. This included both Catholic Lithuanian-speakers and Orthodox Slavic-speakers who shared territorial origin and social standing as markers of belonging rather than language or religion alone.

The Roman origin theory was accepted as historical fact until the 18th century. It was only in the mid-1700s that Józef Aleksander Jabłonowski, a Polish-Lithuanian historian, became the first to systematically question whether Palemon had existed. This marked the moment when intellectuals began to doubt the legend. Yet the myth's persistence for roughly four centuries suggests it fulfilled functions beyond simple genealogical pride. It provided Lithuanian nobility with a framework for maintaining political independence from powerful neighbours — Muscovy, Livonia, and Poland — while simultaneously justifying closer integration with Poland on equal terms. The story repeated in chronicles, diplomatic correspondence, and family genealogies became part of how Lithuanian elites understood their place in Europe. However, the Roman myth was not the only origin narrative circulating in the region during this period. Alongside it, and sometimes overlapping with it, developed the Sarmatian myth — a different genealogical claim that would eventually extend beyond Poland to include Lithuanian nobility as well, though through a different logic and with different political consequences.

Sarmatian myth

While the Roman origin myth circulated primarily among Lithuanian noble families, a parallel genealogical claim developed with broader reach and deeper political results. The Sarmatian myth said that the Polish nobility came from the Sarmatae, an ancient warrior tribe from Asia that moved west. They settled in the territories northeast of the Black Sea before moving into what became Polish lands. The term "Sarmatia" itself came from ancient Roman geography, referring to the large region inhabited by people believed to be ancestors of the Slavs. Polish historians of the 15th and 16th centuries, including Jan Długosz and others, developed and popularised this legend. It quickly moved beyond simple genealogy to become a complete political and cultural ideology. Unlike the Roman myth, which remained largely a matter of noble family lines, Sarmatism evolved into a shared system for the entire noble class of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: gradually extending from Polish to Lithuanian nobles as well. Where the Roman myth provided prestigious ancestors for specific families, Sarmatism offered something broader: a shared identity that could bring together Poles, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, and other groups under the Commonwealth's multinational structure. This broader appeal helps explain why Sarmatism gradually overshadowed the Roman myth among Lithuanian nobles. By the 17th century, claiming Sarmatian ancestry offered more political advantage than Roman descent — it connected Lithuanian elites to the entire Commonwealth nobility rather than separating them through a distinct origin story.

Sarmatism was not just a genealogical claim but a complete worldview that shaped political ideology, daily life, and cultural identity. The Sarmatian lifestyle showed itself visibly in distinctive national dress that paradoxically combined xenophobic rejection of Western fashion with enthusiastic adoption of Eastern styles. The żupan (a type of gown), kontusz (an outer garment), and the saber worn on a belt all reflected Persian and Turkish influences, adapted through Hungarian models. This embrace of Asian aesthetics extended to architecture, weaponry, and decorative arts, creating a visual culture that set the Commonwealth's nobility apart. Yet they positioned themselves as the defenders of Christendom protecting Europe against the very Islamic civilisations whose cultural elements they enthusiastically borrowed. Geographically, the Vistula River served as a crucial marker in maps and written accounts. It functioned as the boundary between ancient Germania and Sarmatia Europea, much as the Nemunas River anchored Lithuanian claims in the Roman myth. At the ideological core of Sarmatism stood the concept of "golden liberty" — a republican system in which the nobility, regardless of wealth or land holdings, possessed equal political rights. The principle that "a nobleman in his cottage is equal to the lord of the realm" distinguished the Commonwealth's political structure from the absolutist monarchies emerging elsewhere in Europe. This ideology emphasised personal freedom, the right to elect kings, and resistance to centralised authority. The same system that was proud of avoiding absolutism through mechanisms like the liberum veto — which allowed any single noble to cancel parliamentary proceedings — became vulnerable to manipulation by magnate oligarchy and eventually fell into political paralysis. The democratic structures designed to protect noble freedom instead led to anarchy, as decision-making became nearly impossible when any individual could block new laws. By the 17th century, the gap between Sarmatian ideals and Commonwealth reality had widened significantly, though the nobility continued to consider their political system as superior to all others in Europe.

By the second half of the 18th century, Sarmatism faced growing criticism from Enlightenment reformers who viewed it as an obstacle to modernisation. The term "Sarmatism" itself appeared during this period not as self-identification but as a negative label applied by critics. King Stanisław August Poniatowski's reformist newspaper Monitor attacked Sarmatian culture as backward, provincial, and ignorant. Writers portrayed it in comedies as outdated and barbaric. Samuel Bogumił Linde's Dictionary of the Polish Language in the early 19th century defined Sarmatism simply as "a lack of good manners, rudeness." The Enlightenment critique portrayed the Sarmatian worldview as everything preventing Commonwealth’s progress — xenophobia, contempt for trade and urban life, attachment to outdated customs, resistance to rational reform. Yet this negative judgment would not last unchallenged. Following the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 18th century, when the Commonwealth stopped existing as an independent state, the Romantic generation of the 1820s and 1830s undertook a dramatic revival of Sarmatism. Poets like Adam Mickiewicz and others discovered in the Sarmatian past the core of Polish identity and the foundation of the very liberties for which 19th-century Poles fought. Mickiewicz argued that pre-partition Poland had been the most democratic and freedom-loving country in Europe, and this Sarmatian tradition of freedom led Poles to struggle not only for their own independence but for the freedom of all nations. What the Enlightenment had criticised as backward provincialism, the Romantics revalued as authentic national culture — the manor houses, religious customs, connection to the land, and knightly values became sources of cultural continuity when political statehood had vanished.

Unlike the Roman myth, which lost political significance by the mid-18th century and faded from active use, Sarmatism demonstrated remarkable persistence well beyond the Commonwealth's disappearance. After the partitions, Sarmatian culture survived particularly strongly among the lower nobles of the eastern territories — in Lithuania, Ukraine and other states — where manor life and traditional customs continued largely unchanged under imperial rule. Even today, Sarmatism continues to surface in Polish cultural production: in modern Polish language, the word "Sarmatian" functions as a form of ironic self-identification and is sometimes used as a synonym for Polish character.

Both the Roman and Sarmatian myths, despite their different paths, shared a common function: they connected Lithuanian and Polish nobility to prestigious ancient civilisations, providing historical legitimacy and cultural prestige through claims of origins from classical antiquity. Yet alongside these imported genealogies, another thread of identity persisted throughout the centuries — one rooted not in Rome or the Asian steppes, but in the pre-Christian Baltic past. The pagan heritage of Lithuania, though suppressed after Christianisation and often romanticised by later chroniclers, never entirely disappeared from cultural memory. In recent decades, this pagan identity has experienced a remarkable revival, emerging as a contemporary form of self-identification that contrasts sharply with the earlier myths. Unlike the Roman and Sarmatian legends, which eventually faded or became objects of ironic distance, the return to pagan roots represents an active, ongoing process whose final form and significance remains to be seen. The pagan revival also differs fundamentally in scope and function: while the Roman and Sarmatian myths served primarily to explain noble privileges and connect elites to prestigious civilisations, the pagan revival claims to represent all Lithuanians equally. This shift from aristocratic genealogy to national heritage reflects how identity construction changed in the modern era — no longer through noble descent, but through shared cultural roots accessible to everyone.

Pagan myth

The organised practice of pre-Christian Lithuanian religion ended completely in the early 15th century. Between 1387, when Lithuania officially accepted Christianity, and 1413, when Samogitia followed, the official foundations of the old faith were systematically destroyed. Cult centres were broken down, sacred fires that had burned for generations were put out and flooded to prevent restarting, sacred forests were cut down and converted to farmland, and the priesthood that had passed down religious tradition and performed official sacrifices was eliminated. The last high priest, according to legend, died in 1414 in Samogitia, where he had been hiding. With the destruction of these organisational elements — religious centres, professional priests, official cult — the traditional religion could no longer function as a coherent system. The mechanism that had connected gods, myths, rituals, and communal worship was broken. Yet the disappearance of organised paganism did not mean the complete erasure of pagan beliefs and practices. What remained after the collapse of institutional religion were gods, myths, individual rituals, and sacred sites — stripped of their organised structure but continuing in the consciousness of those raised under the old religion and unwilling to fully abandon ancestral ways. The rulers themselves seemed to recognise this reality: when the extreme christian missionary Jerome of Prague began cutting down too many sacred woods and people complained, Grand Duke Vytautas simply sent him out of the country. Baptism was one matter, but the destruction of forests rooted in ancestral authority was apparently another. From the 15th to the 18th centuries, these fragments of the old religion survived and transformed at the household and village level. Without central authority or professional priests to maintain traditional beliefs, what had been a unified religious system split into countless individual "household mythologies" and "family religions." What sources from the 16th century forward increasingly described as "customs," "superstitions," or "ethnographic curiosities" were the remains of a faith that had lost its social and communal foundation but kept meaning at the intimate scale of family and village life.

The transformation of Lithuanian paganism from organised religion to folk practice showed itself most visibly in what happened to the system of gods itself. The hierarchical system of sovereign cosmic gods that had structured the old religion collapsed, and in its place appeared a confusing increase of minor gods with narrow, specialised functions. A 16th-century source by the Polish writer Jan Lasicki presented seventy-six names of Samogitian gods — an abundance found nowhere else before or after. Alongside recognisable divine names like Perkūnas (thunder), Žemyna (earth), and Žemininkas (earth's master) appeared what can only be described as "mythological details": gods watching over flour poured into a container, gods of fermentation, mosses, lambs, whispering, even the blue colour and possibly the broom handle. These were not inventions but rather the result of what one academic called "spontaneous, uncontrolled religious mythological development" occurring as the old system broke apart. Gods previously belonging to different hierarchical levels were drawn onto a single level, indirect names became separate divine names, and peasant communities selected from the abundance of tradition whatever served their immediate agrarian needs — protection for crops, livestock, rain, and harvest. Beginning in the 1570s, Jesuit missionaries arriving in Lithuania documented these survivals with great concern. Bishop Merkelis Giedraitis reported in 1587 that Samogitians "commonly sacrifice to thunder, worship snakes and consider oaks sacred" — practices coming, he noted, "more from ignorance than from ill will."What the Jesuits encountered was not systematic or "reactionary" paganism attempting to resist Christianity, but rather following of ancestral customs deeply embedded in rural life. The so-called "snake worship" that appeared repeatedly in reports was simply the worship of living creatures kept in homes and fed milk, domestic animals protected and respected, presumably due to associations with harvest and life forces. By the early 18th century, Jesuit reports documented the final fragments: peasants invoking the names of Sun, Moon, Lightning, Fire, and Bread in healing rituals — no longer a cult but rather magic words and divinations that would continue in folklore well into the 20th century.

The question of what had actually existed in pre-Christian Lithuania became a matter of intense academic and public debate during the occupation period. In the mid-20th century, Lithuanian academics divided sharply over fundamental questions: Had Lithuanians possessed a true pantheon with hierarchies of personal gods and professional priests? Had they built temples and carved idols, or were these romantic inventions? Should late sources documenting pagan survivals be rejected entirely as unreliable, or accepted as preserving authentic tradition? The argument, particularly between figures like ethnographer Pranė Dundulienė and historian Juozas Jurginis, echoed an earlier 20th-century argument between writer Vincas Krėvė and folklorist Jonas Balys. Lithuanian society followed these debates with considerable interest, and the ruling authorities allowed the discussion to develop freely for revealing reasons: it demonstrated a high level of academic work in occupied Lithuania, drew attention away from Catholicism, and showed that the government was not entirely against nationalism — at least not to historical materialist nationalism focused on the distant pagan past rather than the Catholic present. It was within this context, in the 1960s, that the contemporary Lithuanian neopagan movement Romuva appeared. Founded by ethnologist Jonas Trinkūnas, the movement initially operated under the disguise of a folkloristic organisation devoted to collecting ethnographic evidence for research purposes. Unofficially, however, members were investigating the national folklore heritage with the clear aim of exploring and bringing back to life the pre-Christian faith of the Baltic people. Romuva's founding principle rested on the belief that the ancient worldview of Lithuanian ancestors, though suppressed by the Church, had been preserved in oral form — in old songs, tales, and traditions — and passed down through generations as an uninterrupted spiritual heritage.

Romuva's religious path is based on ancient Baltic polytheistic mythology and includes concepts of harmony (Lithuanian: darna), ethical living, respect for ancestors, and reconnection with the natural world, which is considered to reveal the presence of divinity. The movement strengthens its claim to authenticity through reliance on academic sources — citing well-known Lithuanian academics such as archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, folklorist Norbertas Vėlius, and historian Gintaras Beresnevičius — and by including traditional customs and folk songs into ritual practices. Yet Romuva's perspective on Christianity is notably negative, viewing it as foreign ideology that suppressed traditional practices and caused alienation from the natural world. Through this "Us versus Them" opposition, the dominant Catholic religion is represented as an unauthentic, external foreign agent and explicitly separated from Lithuanian identity — a rhetorical strategy that continues to create considerable tension with the Catholic Church, which views Romuva's growing influence in heritage politics as a genuine threat to its cultural authority.

The contemporary pagan return in Lithuania reflects broader post-independence developments in which the end of strict anti-religious policies created space for diverse spiritual movements and intensified competition over national identity and heritage. This growth appears rooted in several factors: heritage politics and the reconstruction of pre-occupation identities; a shift among young nationalists who increasingly choose neo-paganism over Catholicism, claiming it as Lithuania's "original" religion; and ecological activism that frames pagan spirituality as reconnection with nature and the land. The pagan return operates on multiple levels simultaneously — as religious practice for committed followers, as heritage preservation for cultural nationalists, as ecological activism, and as a form of resistance to what many perceive as foreign Christian pressure. The pagan return directly challenges the existing cultural order. It represents the only one of the three origin myths examined that is still causing discussion, actively evolving, and capable of reshaping contemporary Lithuanian self-understanding.

Closing Reflections

These three origin stories show how identity must be constantly built and rebuilt, how it changes in response to new political realities and cultural concerns. Identity is never simply inherited or discovered; it is put together from available materials, shaped by present needs even as it claims to represent timeless truth. The Roman myth appeared when Lithuania needed legitimacy in a Christian European order; Sarmatism grew when a multiethnic Commonwealth required unifying symbols; the pagan return gained strength when post-independence Lithuania looked for separation from foreign pressure and reconnection with something seen as authentically local. Each myth appeared at the moment it became useful, and each faded or changed when those conditions shifted. This does not make them false, but it does make them dependent on circumstances — responses to specific historical pressures rather than discoveries of essential truth. Yet this dependence on circumstances does not reduce their power. These myths shaped real political structures, justified real privileges, inspired real devotion. They determined who could marry whom, which lands belonged to which families, how communities understood their relationship to the divine and to the earth. Myths operate in the world regardless of their historical accuracy; what matters is not whether Palemon really fled Rome or whether contemporary rituals really copy pre-Christian practices, but rather what these stories accomplish in the present. Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Lithuanian origin myths is their multiplicity — the fact that Lithuania has never settled on a single foundational narrative but has instead built up layers of possible pasts, each existing uneasily with the others. This suggests something fundamental about Lithuanian identity: not a fixed one waiting to be uncovered, but an ongoing negotiation, a conversation across centuries about what it means to belong to this place, this history, this complicated heritage.

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