Far Far Away kingdom. Thirtieth state

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Fairy tales are a unique phenomenon, a kind of collection of folk wisdom that is passed on to the younger generation in allegorical form. But in addition to the edifying aspect, they seem to encode information about the world around them, in which the heroes have to overcome many obstacles. For example, Ivan Tsarevich is often forced to go after Vasilisa the Beautiful "… to the far-away kingdom, the thirty-tenth state." So let's find out: did it really exist and where is it?

Distant country

Stories about Marya the Artisan, Koshchei the Immortal, Ivan the Fool and Baba Yaga teach children not to succumb to difficulties, to fight for their happiness, to always act according to their conscience. The action of these allegorical stories often unfolds in some distant, different, magical land, where unprecedented miracles can occur, and animals speak in human voices. Of course, fabulous geography is by no means an exact science, although sometimes you can find quite specific descriptions of the nature of the mysterious distant kingdom.

According to the generally accepted idea, the fabulous number "far away" is equal to 27, because that is how much is obtained if 3 is multiplied by 9. And "thirty", respectively, is equal to 30. That is, in fairy tales we are talking about a very distant country, which can be reached if alternately cross 30 states, of which 27 are monarchies (kingdoms), and what form of government in the remaining 3 countries is unknown.

The right direction for the hero is always prompted by someone: Baba Yaga, the Gray Wolf, a magic ball, etc. Often on the way to the goal, Ivan Tsarevich (or the Fool) has to overcome various obstacles: insurmountable thickets, deserts, swamps or fiery rivers.

Just a month's journey

However, not all researchers believe that the far-off kingdom is located very far from Russia, since there people speak the same language as the hero of the tale. There is a version that the aforementioned numbers 27 and 30 denote the duration of the lunar and solar months, this is how much time is supposedly required for a walking trip to the distant kingdom.

If we consider that a fairytale hero or hero is able to overcome about 40 kilometers in a day, then the magic country could well turn out to be a neighboring principality, because it was about 1200 km from the starting point. For example, the distance from the city of Murom to the capital Kiev City, if you count in a straight line, is 957 km. For the hero Ilya Muromets, such a journey was not a big deal.

Without any information about how people live in the neighboring principality, ancient storytellers, endowed with remarkable imagination, could come up with magical or frightening images.

World of the dead

The most mystical version endows the distant kingdom with the properties of the world of the dead. The number "three" has always been considered magic, and even multiplied by 9 or even 10, it becomes a kind of pass to the next world, where all sorts of miracles are possible.

In this case, Baba Yaga appears to be something like a guide to the afterlife. She herself partially refers to him, it is no coincidence that she has one leg - a bone (that is, dead). And the hut on chicken legs is nothing more than a portal to another dimension, the border between the worlds.

This version is supported by the fact that the hero finds himself in the distant kingdom after Baba Yaga put him to bed, having previously evaporated in the bathhouse. That is, she prepared the body for the transition to the afterlife, washing it like a deceased.

On the moon

There is also a cosmogonic version of the nature of the distant kingdom. Supporters of this interpretation of fairy tales proceed from the fact that our ancestors encoded in them original messages to their descendants, containing amazing knowledge about the Universe and about the Solar System, in particular.

The fact is that the magical land we are looking for is not on Earth, but "… beyond the distant lands." Do you see the difference? But what if we take the diameter of our planet as a basis? Since the Earth is an ellipsoid, its equatorial diameter is 12,756.2 km, and the polar one is slightly less - 12,713.6 km. The distance from the Earth to the Moon at its perigee (the closest point of the orbit) is 356 thousand 104 km, and at the apogee (when the satellite of our planet is farthest) - 405 thousand 696 km.

It is surprising, but 27 diameters of the Earth (distant earths) is the distance from our planet to the Moon when it is at perigee, and 30 diameters of the Earth (thirty earths) is the distance from our planet to the Moon when it is at its apogee.

This version explains why a magical, fabulous country is now far away, now over thirty lands: after all, the planets endlessly move in their orbits, now approaching, now moving away from each other. And oddly enough, our distant ancestors might have known about this. True, the source of their amazing knowledge of the structure of the solar system is unknown.

Hyperborea

Some researchers prefer to look for the far-off kingdom not in space, but in time. They believe that the magic country, known to us from fairy tales, is the very Hyperborea that has sunk into the mists of time.

Judging by the legends of the ancient Greeks, the mysterious state located in the north could well have been the homeland of our ancestors. In his "Centuries" the medieval French predictor Nostradamus more than once describes the historical events that took place in Russia, calling our country Hyperborea.

It is possible that this ancient state was destroyed during the Ice Age. For example, the Russian folk tale "Crystal Mountain" from the collection of A. N. Afanasyeva describes how the far-off kingdom was half drawn into the inevitably approaching crystal mountain. And the hero saved his people and the princess (but what about without her?), Having obtained a magic seed. After lighting this magical item, the crystal mountain, very similar to a glacier, quickly melted.

This tale, apparently, reflects the hopes of people to prevent a climatic catastrophe, which may have ruined the mysterious Hyperborea, and its inhabitants were probably forced to move a little further south.

There are so many different versions: from completely logical to mystical, from historical to fantastic. So where is the far-off kingdom? Where heroes overcome obstacles and find love, and good triumphs over evil. Is this possible only in a fairy tale? That's the question.