When a totem pole mysteriously appeared on a popular coastal path in south-east England, local speculation as to who was responsible for it ranged from art pranksters to aliens.
The 8ft (2.4-metre) wooden pole, erected on the clifftops on the North Downs Way in Kent, between Folkestone and Dover, has particularly provoked interest for its inscription with the name Perkūnas, the Baltic god of thunder.
Keen to keep the artwork situated in the Capel-Le-Ferne nature reserve, Kent Wildlife Trust is in the process of applying to Dover district council for retrospective planning permission. But its appeal to find the artist behind it has so far proved unsuccessful.
Dr Francis Young, an Oxford University historian and folklorist specialising in the history of religion and belief, said the pole, which is thought to be carved from a single tree, appeared to suggest a Lithuanian link to its origins.
“Perkūnas is perhaps the best known Baltic god,” he said. “That is his Lithuanian name. He’s the same as the Slavic god Perun. He’s one of the top three or four gods in Baltic mythology but not the most important. He’s equivalent to the norse god Thor and also wields a hammer.”
Young, author of Pagans in the Early Modern Baltic: Sixteenth-Century Ethnographic Accounts of Baltic Paganism, said little is known about the appearance of the original pagan totems as there are no surviving illustrations of them.
But he said the mystery sculpture seemed to match the descriptions of totems by 15th- and 16th-century Christian missionaries in Lithuania, the last country in Europe to stop practising paganism, as well as research into comparative east European mythologies.
“Sometimes [the totem] was carved out of a living tree or one that had just died,” Young added.
Jerzy Sikora, a medieval archaeologist at the University of Łódź, noted on Twitter that the Kent totem looked similar to the Wolin Svetovit, a ninth- or 10th-century wooden carving depicting Svetovit, a Slavic god of abundance and war, found in Poland in 1974.
Young concurred that this might be the inspiration for the Kent sculpture, given the lack of other source material.
But he said the location of the new totem was unusual as the sculptures were traditionally placed in forest groves.
Ian Rickards, area manager for Kent Wildlife Trust, said he liked to suppose that the totem had been erected to protect recently reintroduced red-billed choughs, birds which have been absent from the wild in Kent for over 200 years due to habitat loss and historical persecution.
“I’d like to think someone was invoking this god to protect the birds nesting on the chalk cliffs in the recent wet and windy weather,” said Rickards, who has visited the carving twice since its sudden appearance in late July.
“Lots of people who walked past stopped to admire it. The whole post has been covered with what looks like intricate waves with a totem head with a metal cap on top. It’s an art piece and well engineered. The size and weight of it means it would have taken a lot of effort to get it up there in the dark.”
Young said Perkūnas was a positive figure who was invoked for protection against stormy weather. “Even in the 19th and 20th century, folklore lingers on and people invoke him when going out in the rain,” he said.
Patrick Knill, 57, a support worker from Folkestone, who visited the totem pole on Tuesday, said it reminded him of a prop from a dark metal band rather than an authentic Lithuanian artefact.
He described the sculpture as nicely designed but lacking some of the folksiness of Lithuanian sculptures he has seen. “It’s a bit more Dingley Dell. There’s nice fluting on the sides. People in Folkestone are used to art objects around the place. Are they making a pitch for next year’s triennial?”
