Svyatogor

The byliny about the giants are studied outside both the Kievan and the Novgorodian series, on the grounds that they connect to a pre-Christian cult of Mother Earth rather than to any court. That placement is why he is easy to miss from a registry built out of the Kiev cycle, and it is also why he matters: he is the oldest-looking layer the Russian epic has.

Domains

• prodigious strength

Relations

• outmatched by: Mikula SelyaninovichThe kind is non-symmetric and directional because the encounter is. It is not a feud and not a rivalry — it is a test the giant fails once, conclusively.Reference treatment of the meeting of Svyatogor and the ploughman, and of the bag with the weight of the whole earth in it that Svyatogor cannot lift. (secondary)
• associate of: Ilya MurometsDeliberately the weakest available kind. They travel together in the cycle and in most versions Svyatogor's strength passes to Ilya at his death, but the bylina record is inconsistent about what passes and how, and 'companion' would assert a settled bond the sources do not settle. Non-symmetric, so nothing is written onto the pre-existing Ilya record.Reference treatment: the tale 'Ilya Muromets and Svyatogor' forms part of the Ilya Muromets cycle. (secondary)

Sources

• Svyatogor is the giant bogatyr of the Russian byliny whom the earth cannot carry, and who cannot lift the small bag holding the pull of the earth.: Reference treatments of Svyatogor, of the byliny cycles, and of the bag of earthly weight. (secondary)