A Wind-God Known from Two Brief Mentions

Stribog is a god of the ancient East Slavs, one of the deities whose idols Prince Vladimir of Kiev is said to have set up in 980 before his conversion, according to the Primary Chronicle. His domain is usually reconstructed as the wind and the air, chiefly on the strength of the twelfth-century Tale of Igor's Campaign, which calls the winds the grandsons of Stribog, blowing arrows from the sea against the army.

Beyond these two brief mentions very little is securely known: even the meaning of his name is uncertain, read variously as the spreader (of wealth or of wind) or, connecting the first element to an Iranian word, as a father- or sky-god. He is often paired with Dazhbog in the sources, which has encouraged the guess that the two represented complementary powers. Stribog is a good example of how fragmentary the record of Slavic paganism is, surviving mainly in a hostile chronicle's list and a single heroic poem.