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What this episode is about
Part 3 of my Witcher series goes down into the crypt, to the Striga, the very first monster of the Witcher saga. Behind her is one of Europe’s oldest myths, which reaches back to the Romans and turned up again in a Polish field in 2022.
The birth of a hero and a monster
In December 1986, the magazine Fantastyka published Andrzej Sapkowski’s short story “Wiedźmin” (“The Witcher”). King Foltest has fathered a child with his sister, and she rises from the crypt as a striga. Geralt is supposed to free her by keeping her away from her sarcophagus for one night, until the third crow of the rooster.
Roman Zmorski, 1852
Soon after publication came an accusation of plagiarism. Nearly the whole plot already appears in Roman Zmorski’s 1852 fairy tale “Strzyga.” The spirit of the two stories is different, though. In Zmorski, the pious orphan boy Marcin wins through prayer. In Sapkowski, a paid, calculating professional does. The same frame, told by two different worlds.
An owl from ancient Rome
Aleksander Brückner showed that “strzyga” is a loanword from the Latin strix. In the Fasti, Ovid describes these night birds that drink the blood of children in their cradles. The Italian strega, the Romanian strigoi and the Albanian shtriga come from the same root.
Two souls, two hearts, two rows of teeth
According to Polish folk belief, some people are born with two souls. When such a person dies, one soul lives on in the body. The ethnographer Szymon Gonet documented signs for spotting them, such as a second row of teeth, in 1897.
The graves of Drawsko and Pień
Against the strzyga, people used beheading or a sickle laid across the throat. In 2014, Lesley Gregoricka and colleagues studied the vampire graves of Drawsko: the dead were locals, not outsiders. In 2022, a team led by Dariusz Poliński found a young woman in Pień with a sickle at her throat and a padlock on her foot. The reconstruction of her face shows no monster, just a young girl.
Gogol and Paul Barber
The scene of a night vigil beside a dead woman who rises already appears in Gogol’s “Viy” from 1835. In Vampires, Burial, and Death, Paul Barber explains why opened graves seemed to offer proof of vampires: what people saw were normal stages of decomposition.
Who was the monster?
The people who became strzygas were the ones who were different: the child with two rows of teeth, the unbaptized child, the sick woman. In the end it is the mercenary Geralt, not the pious hero, who asks the right question.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the Striga in The Witcher come from?
From the Polish folk legend of the strzyga, which Roman Zmorski wrote down as a fairy tale in 1852 and Sapkowski picked up in 1986.
What is a vampire grave?
A burial with measures meant to stop the dead from coming back, such as a sickle across the throat or a severed head. Well-known examples come from Drawsko and Pień in Poland.
More in the lexicon: Striga.
About this episode
It’s the very first monster of the Witcher saga – and the moment Geralt became a hero: the striga, a cursed princess who rises from her crypt by night. In Part 2 of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of “The Witcher,” we uncover where this creature truly comes from.We follow the trail from Andrzej Sapkowski’s debut (1986) back to Roman Zmorski’s fairy tale “Strzyga” (1852) – plagiarism accusation and all – then on through the Roman owl-demon strix in Ovid, to the disturbing folk belief in two souls, two hearts and two rows of teeth. We open the “vampire graves” of Drawsko and Pień, hear the literary echo in Gogol’s “Viy” – and ask, at the end, who the real monster was.📖 Further reading & sources: • Roman Zmorski: “Strzyga,” in: Podania i baśni ludu w Mazowszu (1852) • Andrzej Sapkowski: “Wiedźmin” (in: Fantastyka, 1986; collected in “The Last Wish”) • Magdalena Roszczynialska: “Nowa baśń: ‘Strzyga’ Romana Zmorskiego i ‘Wiedźmin’ Andrzeja Sapkowskiego” (2003) • Ovid: Fasti, Book 6 (c. 8 AD) – the strix and the boy Proca • Aleksander Brückner: Mitologia słowiańska i polska (etymology strix → strzyga) • Szymon Gonet: “Strzygonie,” in: Lud, vol. 3 (1897) • Henryk Biegeleisen: Śmierć w obrzędach, zwyczajach i wierzeniach ludu polskiego (1930) • Kazimierz Moszyński: Kultura ludowa Słowian, vol. II (1929–1934) • Jarosław Kolczyński: “Jeszcze raz o upiorze (wampirze) i strzygoni (strzydze),” in: Etnografia Polska 47 (2003) • Gregoricka, Betsinger, Scott & Polcyn: “Apotropaic Practices and the Undead,” in: PLOS ONE (2014) – Drawsko cemetery • Prof. Dariusz Poliński, Nicolaus Copernicus University Toruń – Pień excavation / “Zosia” (2022/2023) • Nikolai Gogol: “Viy” (1835) • Paul Barber: Vampires, Burial, and Death (Yale University Press, 1988)#Striga #Strzyga #TheWitcher #Witcher #SlavicMythology #Vampire #Folklore #Zmorski #Gogol #GreyTalesA note: this episode deals with historical folk beliefs around death and burial. If these themes feel heavy for you right now, take good care of yourself.