From time immemorial, when Bory stretched across immeasurable lands, these lands were inhabited by peaceful people. The forests abounded in such an amount of game and undergrowth that it did not take much effort to feed all the inhabitants, so no one walked with an empty stomach. It is safe to say that the land they lived in was flowing with milk and honey.
But one day the earth shook. Gently at first, but over time, the shocks began to be felt more. Something huge was clearly walking towards their lands, and it was.
They were creatures that no one had ever seen in the vicinity - large, wild, with mighty weapons and clad in the skins of wild animals. They were as high as the largest oaks that covered the nearby forest. The hearts of the people who saw them for the first time froze with fear.
The tables, when they saw the nearby area, stopped, looked at everything from above, and decided to settle down. As you can probably guess, it didn't take long to force people to obey them. It was not a long war, just one short battle, but what did those few little daredevils mean against mighty beings?
The giants crushed their opponents to dust and made those who were buried in their huts waiting for the result of the clash, made their slaves. Since then, the peaceful land has changed beyond recognition. People, laboring in the sweat of their brows, had to provide food for their tormentors, and they starved themselves. The Stolen, on the other hand, played, hunted, and set off to distant lands for prey.
This state lasted for many years, and with everything they needed to be happy, the giants began to neglect their gods. Priests warned and exhorted them to return to the path of faith without much effect.
The more the priests of the giants explained, so as not to neglect the gods who impatiently waited for blood sacrifices, the wilder the revelations organized rebellious Stolems. It got to the point where they got drunk the most on their holidays, and then they would play the wildest frolics and mate wildly with their maids.
- What do we need gods for? - they asked - We are gods, look at these little people we run. It depends only on our will whether they survive until the next day. It is to us that they should offer sacrifices and worship us. The greatest celebration of the giants was approaching.
The captive population brought countless amounts of food from the surrounding fields and forests and dragged out countless barrels of alcohol. When it started to get dark, the Stolems began to dance as they did. They danced in circles, giant against the giant. Father with son, daughter with mother. Faster and faster and at some point as if by magic, they froze.
Their mighty feet seem to be chained to the ground. They stared at each other in surprise as their flesh began to harden. It turned out that the measuring cup changed and their gods decided to punish them in this way. Some of them called for help from their priests, who were watching it from the side. Some sobbed, and some cursed their gods.
The surrounding population heard the damned howl in the wilderness for a long time, but until it died down, no one dared to go and see what was happening. Only after many years, when the only thing that could be heard was the rustling forest, did a few daredevils go to the giants' camp.
What they saw was out of this world. Huge boulders are arranged in circles. Some are bent as if on their knees, others climbed up. It is said that the little stones are enchanted women, and the bigger ones are lusty Stolems.
This is how the powerful beings known as Stolems perished. Years passed, and the stones sank more and more into the ground. What you can see today sticking out of the ground are the heads of giants, because the rest has already been buried deep by the passing of time. So if you haven't seen this strange cluster yet, don't hesitate, because soon their remains may disappear for good.
The town of Odra, in the vicinity of which the stone circles are located, is a little over forty kilometers from Chojnice, and the road leading to them is wide and comfortable. So the journey passed quickly and efficiently. The last section leads through a beautiful old forest and driving the bumps alone gave us a lot of satisfaction.
The area of the "Stone Circles" Reserve covers over sixteen hectares and includes ten stone circles and twenty-nine barrows, some with a central stone, i.e. a Stella. Which makes it the second-largest building of this type after Stonehenge in Europe! The stones were driven into the ground to a depth of up to 2 meters. Together with what is sticking out, it makes quite big boulders.
Who built these stone buildings? When and why? And here it gets interesting, the answers are many, and each of them is more or less probable. From the boards placed in the reserve, we found out that the Goths are responsible for all this fuss. In the 1st or 2nd century CE they landed on the shores of the northern Baltic Sea and with time wandered to the area of today's Kashubia. They allegedly came from the legendary Scandinavian island of Skandza.
We learn about these mysterious people from excavations, including the Odra Mounds where the Goths buried the dead. Some scientists believe that although the remains of the Gothic dead lie in the stone circles, the circles themselves are much older and were only used by ancient peoples as magical places with supernatural powers. The fact that graves of many cultures have been unearthed among the mounds, as evidenced by the ornaments or everyday objects found there.
Anyway, stone circles were a very important place for their creators, building them had to be a lot of effort and required extensive knowledge. They probably served as the central meeting point for the elders when the most important matters concerning the tribe were discussed. Perhaps it was here that people contacted the old Slavic gods, the real ones who walked on the earth among people, with a hammer, ax, and fire forcing obedience and devotion.
In such a place it is easy to feel the sublimity of the old rites. The hum of mighty trees, the silence is broken only by the magical rhythm of the old songs, and the tension cleverly graduated by the shamans. No wonder after something like this people saw drowns, strikes, drawings, and edges around.
The arrival of the Goths with a pantheon of their own gods and mythical beings must have been very interesting. Can you imagine our duel with the others? The Slavic mighty Perun in battle with the Scandinavian Odin. The Slavic team would probably win because the match would be at our place, but you never know with the gods.
If you are curious about what happens to powerful gods when they are forgotten, I recommend a good book - American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Amazon produced a series based on it.
As for the circles, however, it gets even more interesting when we start looking for information about them in slightly less official sources. Here we find references to their cosmic origin, they were to serve as a landing site for alien stargazers or as part of a complex machine focusing the energy of the cosmos.
Somewhere in the middle, between dry scientific chatter and extreme fantasy, we find the information that appeals to us the most. It could be a kind of a calendar or a clock counting downtime to very important events, such as the winter and summer solstices, similar to the aforementioned Stonehenge.
Somewhere, I found information that the arrangement of the stones reproduces the arrangement of the stars in the sky at certain times of the year. I believe that people from the dawn of time tried to understand the world around them, this every day, easy and tangible one, but also reached further towards the stars, asking questions thanks to which we are where we are today.
You can walk between the circles without restrictions or prohibitions, but let's remember what the curator informs us before entering that the reserve is not only cold stones but also unique nature.
Among other things, the lichens that live on the surface of boulders are protected, some of them can live for hundreds or even thousands of years, remember this when you want to sit on one of the stones to draw their supernatural power through the back of your body. Apart from lichens, rare and beautiful heathers, blueberries, mosses, bushes, and trees grow around the stones and barrows.
I mentioned the power of stones for a reason. Many people believe that circles strengthen cosmic energy, and these places are called chakras. This is confirmed by dowsers who argue that there is an exceptional accumulation of energy in stone circles. They even drew a map, a plan where exactly the power bands run. There is also a theory that says that lines connecting all the circles discovered on earth run through the stone circles in Odry.
There are many similar circles in the area, after visiting the Oder ones, we went to Leśno, wherein the forest circles as old but not as impressive as those in Odry were discovered.
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