Expert: Sergey Feduleyev - 1/28/2005

Question
I am having to do a paper for the University of Iowa on Russian/Slovik Water Gods.  I know of Bannik and Rusalki but need a few more and there are not many sources.  Could you give me some exact name so I would be able to research better or even some sources to find the information.

thank you

Answer
I have found a couple of links for you.
Information is actually quite poor.
http://www.e-paranoids.com/s/sl/slavic_mythology.html
http://www.bigpedia.com/encyclopedia/Slavic_mythology
http://wikipedia.startplane.com/Slavic_mythology
http://www.geocities.com/mabcosmic/polish/pspirits.html

What you are looking for, are:
Kupala - god/goddess of Water and also of dew among other stuff.
Zmey or Yascher. All the links are missing information on him. Sorry. His name means 'pangolin' or 'dragon'. He was a god of deep waters and underground, very important in Poland but lesser in other regions.
Rusalka - water spirit, sometimes a ghost of a drowned woman.
Kikimora - one of the versions is an ugly woman from the swamp.
Bannik - a spirit that lives in banya - bath house.
Vodyanoy - male water spirit living in a whirlpool.
Only first two are real gods, the rest are just spirits and folklore characters.

Keep in mind that you can find different spelling and contradictional information. That's because Slavs lived all over Eastern Europe with lots of different languages and beliefs.