Gathered from oral tradition across the Caucasus, this collection presents eighty-nine tales of the Narts — a tribe of bold, flawed nomad warriors whose exploits, feuds, and encounters with ancient gods form a mythology often likened to Greece's for the region's peoples.
The Nart tales do for the peoples of the Caucasus what Greek myths do for the West: they form a common store of heroes and stories a whole region draws on. Neighbouring peoples tell them as shared property, not as one nation's possession.
Stories told today can carry traces of a very old way of life, offering glimpses into the deep past of the ancient Indo-European peoples. Specialists argue the social order of the tales' imagined warrior society echoes that ancient inheritance.
In these tales the heroes are brave, bold and good-hearted, yet the same figures also act out of envy, cruelty and violence. Admirable virtues and ugly vices sit in one character rather than being split between heroes and villains.
Heroes, heroines and monsters pursue their destinies through a chain of exploits, but they do not act alone: ancient gods often step in and shape the outcome. Human daring and divine intervention together decide how a fate unfolds.