What was the culture of death like in Lithuania before baptism? According to archaeologist Gediminas Petrauskas, it included the burning of the dead, as well as burials in water and even trees.
What was people’s relationship to death in pre-Christian Lithuania?
Even without studying history, we all know that life expectancy used to be shorter back then. People often lived for 20 or 30 years. Death was certainly not as shocking as it is now – it was always there.
Archaeologists find the remains of a lot of dead teenagers and young adults. Until the development of medicine in the 19th century, people were plagued by debilitating diseases and epidemics. Most of the deaths were of infants and children, but there are not many of their graves because they were not usually buried in the community. Young mothers also often died of infections and weakened bodies.
Death was close at hand, so the attitude towards it was quite different. But although life expectancy was much shorter, people could still survive for a long time. Our Grand Duke Vytautas died in his eighties. Archaeologists cannot tell from the bones if a person was older than 55 years old when they died, but there were certainly people in their fifties.
We, archaeologists, find countless things that were buried together with people – their very best things, such as spears, axes, and jewellery.
In a late 9th-century document, the travelling merchant Wulfstan described the local funeral of a Prussian nobleman. It was a week-long feast, with drunkenness and bidding for the deceased’s possessions.
Ibn Fadlan, an Arab envoy who attended the funeral of a wealthy Viking nobleman in the 10th century, described the same thing in his account: he witnessed a huge celebration, even an orgy.
Death and the afterlife used to be perceived very differently than in Christian society. Death was a passage from one world to another; it was not the end of life. For soldiers, dying in battle was not so terrible because people believed in an afterlife.
One of your main research interests is the custom of burning the dead in medieval Lithuania. What was the meaning of burning the body then? When did this tradition appear?
The role of fire was very important. In Baltic mythology, it is said that fire was needed to help free the spirit.
The first wave of the custom of burning the dead started around 1000 BC. The second wave started around the 5th century and spread to different Baltic tribes at different times. From the 13th-14th centuries, it became a unifying custom.
In general, the burning of the dead is very typical of Indo-European peoples and non-Indo-European cultures – from India, Nepal, Bali, all the way to our own lands. In Nepalese culture, there was partial burial, where part of the unburnt body was chopped up and buried in the bottom of a stream, and another part was burnt and scattered in the stream. To us in Western civilisation, it would seem barbaric, but to them, it meant making the journey easier for the deceased.
In modern Lithuania, the wave of cremations is no longer driven by religion. For some, it is cheaper, for others, it is simply easier because seeing a dead body and seeing an urn at a funeral are two different emotions.
Is it true that various burial methods were used in pre-Christian Lithuania?
Yes. The interesting thing is that what we see from archaeological finds is not the whole picture of burial customs. There were many of them. We know from folklore and mythology that there may have been exotic burial practices, such as raising the deceased on a tree and leaving them to decay or to be eaten by birds, or scattering bones and ashes to the wind or on the ground.
A so-called “witch tomb” of the 14th-15th century was even found in Christian medieval Kernavė. A number of such graves were discovered in Poland. A very interesting feature here is that the dead are beheaded, and their head is placed between the legs. We know from historical and folklore sources that this was believed to be one of the ways to prevent the dead from haunting relatives. [...]
The water burial hypothesis was first raised in Lithuania in 1983, when archaeologist Vytautas Urbanavičius, while exploring the Obeliai burial site, found a place in the lake with burnt bones, pot shards, and around 2,400 other finds. At that time, the archaeological community was very sceptical about this hypothesis.
Later, in 1993, several pits with burnt bones were found in Marvelė river in Kaunas. And in 2008, burnt bones from the 14th-15th century were found scattered in the lake in Elektrėnai. There were many of them: men, women, and children, all of different ages. This was the first well-documented find of burial in water.
A few years later, bones and a denarius with a portrait of Grand Duke Jogaila, dating to 1387-1390, were found scattered in the riverbed of the Kernavė river. This proved that burial in water was taking place also after the baptism of Lithuania. This was the beginning of the search for an answer to the question of why people were buried in water.
In the ancient Lithuanian concept of the afterlife, two elements are central: fire and water. Very often, a stream or other body of water separated settlements from the burial site. Various fairy tales mention how the characters enter the afterlife through a well, stepping into the water. In folklore and mythology, the spirits of the dead also lived in water.
Did the Balts believe in reincarnation?
It is difficult to say because there is a lot of room for speculation in religious and spiritual matters. We can guess, but we cannot say for sure.
Gintaras Beresnevičius, who researched the Balts’ concept of the afterlife, spoke of metempsychosis, that is, rebirth into a different state, such as a plant, animal, or bird. [...]
What changes did Christianity bring to the burial traditions of ancient Lithuanians?
The main change brought about by Christianity is a change in the way of burial. Christianity and the burning of the dead are inherently opposed to each other because burning contradicts the rebirth of the body.
But Lithuanian Christianity was different from Polish, German, Italian, or Mexican Christianity. Cultural things also determine religious things. [...] Up until the 17th century, people were buried with their belongings in Lithuania, which is completely un-Christian.
The old customs persisted even after the advent of Christianity. For example, although Mexicans are among the most devout Christians in the world, their current death cult and the Day of the Dead festivals are reflections of their old pre-Christian culture.
The burning of the dead reappears in the second half of the 19th century. At that time, there was a huge development in medicine, a new awareness of hygiene, and a rapid increase in the human population. The major European cities had huge problems with epidemics and overcrowded cemeteries, and the idea that decaying bodies were the source of contamination was born.
As a result, the model of a crematorium presented at a fair in Venice in the second half of the 19th century led to the revival and spread of the custom of burning the dead. Christianity officially recognised cremation in 1971.
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