Let's start with something a lot of you may not have heard of. The tale of Jurate and Kastytis, a Lithuanian story about two star-crossed lovers. Ring a bell? Probably not.
I first heard this myth about a year ago, shortly after my grandmother gave me a pendant with a piece of Baltic amber (that is, amber found in the Baltic Sea). I don't know why, but shortly after any time I learn something new, related webpages and books and TV documentaries have a habit of cropping up. It's like I have some sort of psychic connection with the worldwide repository of information we call the Web.
The story begins with a young fisherman named Kastytis. He was casting his nets out at sea (as any fisherman is wont to do), when the sea goddess Jurate rises from the waves and calls to him. He goes to her, and upon taking a closer look at this strange young man (must have been incredibly handsome), she falls head over heels in love.
Well, Perkunas (the chief god of the Lithuanian pantheon, similar to Zeus but not quite the same) was in no way happy about this. He, as a god, believed that gods and mortals had no right to mingle. Divine blood and all that. So he called forth a storm that killed Kastytis and destroyed Jurate's amber palace beneath the sea. The fisherman's body washed up on the shore, and Jurate wept bitter tears (also of amber) for her lost love. I suppose this legend is to explain the abundance of amber in the Baltic. It is said, and I believe, that Baltic amber is magical.
It's also a great story.
The translation to a poem telling the story can be found on this page:
http://members.efn.org/~valdas/maironis.html
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