A Mythology of Tears: An Amber essay

The continuity that unites myth, legend, and story together is often the collapse of the sacred. From the wellhead of myth that reflected a profound interest in amber, the greatest gem of the ancient world, came a multitude of amber legends, and from that multitude, a multiplicity of stories.

Nicias of ancient Greece, the Athenian statesman, was unhappy with the myth of the "Tears of the Heliads" as an explanation of amber's origin. In that story, Phaethon, the son of the Sun God, would meet his death by Zeus, following his foolish attempt to fly the sun chariot by himself. Cast down to his death into the great northern sea, Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliads, journey to the shores of that sea and weep in their sorrow, standing on the cold sea’s edge. For a thousand years they weep, until Zeus, upset by their continued sorrow, turns them into poplar trees which weep amber.

Nicias, an early scientist, tells his own story of how the blunt rays of the hot sun, falling onto dark soil, cause the soil itself to sweat. It is this sweat that flows like tears, he says, and which, when it runs into the sea, becomes amber. The golden light of the ancient world, he concludes, is born from the tears shed by the dark heart of the earth.

Sophocles, too, weaves his own tale of tears and the origin of amber. He states that it is the sisters of Meleager, personified by the great white birds that fly from Greece to the Indian Sea, who weep into the sea and cause that wonderful gem to appear.

Whether reacting against a mythology of tears, or retelling such mythology with different characters, no scholar would debate that the "tear" has been the strongest symbol associated with early amber stories. Natural, teardrop-shaped, raw amber lumps have been known and esteemed since humans first gathered amber. These lumps, rather a crude word for beautiful gourd-like shapes with amazing textures, are often only as big as your thumbnail. They offered to the ancient world a view of a whole form of amber rather than a fractured or broken piece.

But that “whole” form alone does not give rise to so many stories of tears, all wept by women, who were either goddesses or women who had somehow entered that boundary of transformation that separated the eternal from the mortal.

It is their tears, which are wept from loss and given back into the world by their continued compassion and sorrow, that seem to be the mythological origin of this little gem that I love.

The Balts, the nation of tribes who occupied the greatest of the amber areas, also see amber as a gem born of tears. The Lithuanians tell of the tragic love between Jurate, the Goddess of the Sea, and a mortal, a handsome and courageous fisherman. Their love is destroyed by the God of Thunder, for it breaks the natural order of things.

Jurate, chained to a fragment of her once great amber palace, is left alone through eternity to weep, shout, and churn the sea in her frustration for those few moments of great happiness. Yet from that very remembrance of her momentary love comes her constant gift of amber.

The Norse, who traded amber and prized it as a symbol of immortality, spoke of beautiful Freya, the immortal who saw the amber necklace “Brisingamen,” as bright as the sun, among other necklaces in the workshop of the black dwarfs. Unable to buy it with silver or gold, for something so great must be given not purchased, she offered herself as a bride to the four dwarfs and thus was married at night, four nights consecutively, she who was still Odur's wife and the mother of two fair daughters.

Freya, upon discovery, seeks Odin's forgiveness and is bound by him with another amber necklace called "Disdain," which speaks when one does something against the established order of things. Freya, with “Disdain,” leaves Asgard and journeys throughout the world weeping for her lost lover Odur and for his rejection of the continuing possibilities of her love. Freya's tears become gold when they fall on rock. They become amber when they fall into the sea.

Such is the nature of amber. In the majority of the great tales it is born from that which touches the tragic or the broken. It is born from the tears of the female world. It is born from such tears that reenter the world when the female world is changed by a decree of power.

In 1987, Ingrida and I were told a Latvian myth regarding amber by Georgs Romulis, for the myth still forms a basis of traditional Latvian amber design. It is about the Great Wedding of the Daughters of the Sun, and of Saule’s, the female sun’s, tears. It is a myth that weaves together compassion, sacrifice, and loss, and adds to them, a small but profound promise.

The world of amber is built upon profundity, not the least of which is the healing and guarding power of women’s tears. For their tears, in the largest sense of the word, first shape amber’s heart. If one would question why they are women's tears then one forgets the great polarities of the ancient world, the very healing qualities of amber, and the ancient age of the amber trade.

Quietly, I must say that it gives me great comfort to know that somewhere out there, in the multiplicity of our world, are Sirens who sing and, even if they do not sing for me, yet they grace the world with their beauty as their traditional feathers of amber wrap about slender and taloned feet.

Yet as still as they are now, in this little town far from the sea, it is said that they will sing rich and fruitful songs when an ancient soul finally does leave this world. I will wait patiently for these songs. And, while I wait, I will acknowledge them: all the women who sing and who weep. For what can one do but sail upon a sea that embraces all that is memory, that embraces as paramount all that is love, in a world that knows sorrow.

Next week: Vintage amber highlights from our most recent trip to Latvia.

The Nature of the Folk Arts

As Ingrida and I travel through Northern and Eastern Europe during the summer we search for folk art for the store. True folk art goes beyond simple well-done crafts. In its best form, a folk art piece becomes an artifact whose basic nature must combine cultural authority, authenticity, and transformation.
In Northern and Eastern Europe the makers, specifically the designers, of the applied arts of leather work, textiles, metal work, woodwork, ceramics and jewelry are held in high esteem. Often they have been raised on traditional form and encouraged to find from it the wellspring of the new.
Likewise, it is within traditional form that a folk artist is raised. They simply do not leave it. The “new” for them becomes a way of re-perceiving the traditional, of using the traditional to aid the present.
It is the spirit of the folk artist that actually begins the creation of a folk piece. It is a spirit that knows tradition. One which goes beyond the simple possession of that knowledge by applying it in a masterful form. Through it all, the continuity of the past must be validated and embraced and the reality of one’s time incorporated. Folk art is a living thing.
The master folk artist in Northern and Eastern Europe is not an “outsider” artist. Rather, he or she has a job where they must, again and again, enter into a larger whole. Continuity with the past and community with the present gives the folk artist a foundation of identity.
In all the folk artists we have met, it is this immersion in the continuity of a people, through the history of their craft that sets them apart from a regular artist.
Often, the great folk artists don’t see themselves as artists, nor do they live easily with that adjective applied to them. Instead of judging their work as good or bad, they judge it as right or wrong… as correct.
Cernavskis, among the greatest of Latvia’s Latgalian ceramicists, Galkins, ranked as a great goldsmith, Romulis, Latvia’s premier amber master, and Kalnina, an archaic bronzesmith, have risen to such recognition by the very regard of Latvia’s people.
Their commitment has given them an authenticity. To their authenticity, the people have granted authority.
The mythological markings on a wood-fired vase, on a wedding sash, on a maiden’s crown, on a child’s hanging crib, or on an old man’s bronze bracelet, speak of a larger world.
The color, the shapes embracing form, the pattern of ornamentation, the number of repetitions and divisions, speak of a larger, greater world, and one that has been handed down, through training and inheritance.
Yet it is in the very human world that such “larger” things have always been made, with fire and earth, with water, plant and stone. The folk artists are these makers. One after another through time.
As Ingrida and I travel, we don’t look for the famous. We seek those whom the people turn to when the common world becomes a world of celebration or sorrow.
We don’t look for the large and boastful, rather we look for the convincing.
We look for something alive in the moment, which has the power to transform the moment, and touch its gentle rapture to a larger story.

--Sean McLaughlin, 2004.