The mountain as a living being

To the shepherds, Velebit meant presence and meaning, not just a space for daily life. It had its temperamental moods, its hidden places, its mysterious beings. Thus, a lightning bolt striking a kuk — a steep, exposed pinnacle — was no accident. A water spring that dried up did not run dry on its own. Livestock that began to die off — someone or something stood behind it.

A shepherd who understood the forces of the mountain — and who knew how to approach them — stood a better chance of survival than one who ignored them.

Mythological lore of the southern Velebit Podgorje

Around the hearths and beside the huts, stories were told of fairies, werewolves and spirits circling the cabins at night. Beliefs were at their most vivid precisely among the shepherds, who spent most of the year on the borders of the known world — where the wild begins and the tame ends. The stories were not entertainment. They were guidelines for life — warning, teaching, connecting the past with the future.

Researcher Mirjana Trošelj recorded them on the terrain starting from 1977, directly from narrators who still carried this magical-mythical world within them as a living reality. Her work encompasses thirty pieces of oral lore, two mythical poems and a study of ritual processions — all recorded in the original idiom of the narrators.

→ Read the mythical tales of southern Velebit Podgorje
(Available only in Croatian.)

Worldview that created mirila

The continuous seasonal migration between the Podgorje villages and the mountain was the very foundation of the Velebit shepherds' worldview. People lived in the rhythm of nature, in harmony with the altitudes and the seasons.

Mirila are the fruit of this perspective on the world.

To a person who believes that the soul does not vanish immediately with the body, that places exist where the living and the dead meet — it makes perfect sense for the deceased to be measured and laid upon the earth on the way to the grave. To mark that trace with stone. The mirilo is the point where the soul stands upon the earth one more time before leaving the known space forever.

Movement, stone, the rhythm of the seasons, stories by the hearth — all of this shaped a people who discovered signs within their surroundings. From this discovery, mirila were born.