Landscape and Memory in The Witcher 3

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an enormous game, providing endless fodder for thinkpieces. A lot of that writing has already been done, of course, but I haven't seen as much discussion of the environmental, historical, and surprisingly even the folklorical aspects of the game as I'd expected. I didn't survey the entire internet, of course, and if you know of good resources (please don't link to reddit, ugh) please share them in the comments.

I'll probably make a few posts of observations from The Witcher, but I want to start with an odd synchronicity. I'd had my eye on Simon Schama's massive tome Landscape and Memory for three years now, but only just this summer got around to checking it out from the library. I was a third of the way into Wild Hunt when I started reading, and was enthused to discover the first chapter was about aspects of Polish environmental history. In this post I'll summarize some of the many little revelations and connections I learned in that chapter. 

I have no prior familiarity with Polish history and folklore, so my understanding of these things comes entirely from the book (with some help from wikipedia) and therefore is woefully inadequate. Sorry, Poland. Let me know if I'm propagating any nonsense. All quotes are from Landscape and Memory, images from Wikipedia. 

Bison

One conspicuous absence is perhaps more noteworthy than anything actually in the game. Poland's wilderness, especially its old growth forests, is deeply associated with the Wisent, the little-known European cousin of the American Bison. Once common, the animal came ever closer to extinction as Europe was cleared for agriculture. In the 1500s, Polish scholar Hussowski claimed they were already limited in range to the forests of Eastern Poland. This may have been and exaggeration at the time, but it was essentially true by the late 1700s.

As a symbol of Poland's signature wilderness, the Bison, or Zubr, was also a totem of Polish nationalism:

the animal was depicted as a miraculous relic of a presocial, even prehistoric past- a tribal, arboreal world of hunters and gatherers, at the same time frightening and admirable. The bison became a talisman of survival. For as long as the beast and its succoring forest habitat endured, it was implied, so would the nation's martial vigor.

Engagement with bison in the hunt became emblematic of Poland's other living icons, the royalty. Polish kings hunted bison to demonstrate their masculinity and prowess, and to acquire trophies that legitimated their leadership. King Wladislaw hunted bison as a sort of ritual before battling German knights, and provided bison hide shields to his soldiers: the totem animal literally protecting the sons of Poland.

It was thus an important part of Polish nationalist natural history to police the uniqueness of the bison, under threat from both Thomas Jefferson's proclamations that the American Bison was a grander beast, and, as Schama describes, the "Two titans of Enlightenment natural history, 

Linnaeus and Buffon, who agreed on virtually nothing, were, in this case, of one opinion that the bison was merely a wild variant of domestic cattle, that its beard and belly-mane were not true characteristics but merely features that were associated with particular climates and habitats. The bison, they both opined, was not in fact a distinctive species at all. [Polish natural historian] Von Brincken was contemptuous of their taxonomic dogma, based on no direct observation. When they imagined they were describing the bison, they were in fact, he pointed out, describing the wild ox, or auroch, the shaggy animal found once, but no more, in the woods of eastern Germany as well as Lithuania and Russia. Polish vernacular, he wrote, understood the distinction better than these august zoologists; for the auroch was a tur, the bison always a zubr."

Bison are mentioned twice in the first Witcher novel, The Last Wish. Author Andrzej Sapkowski weighs in on this historic taxonomic debate with a scathing zinger:

"The horned aurochs or Taurus," she recited, "erroneously called bison by ignoramuses."

It is a bit conspicuous, then, that the bison is absent from The Witcher's wilderness (though its absence is not unusual; the game features only five wild land animals: crows, deer, rabbits, bears, and wolves), since it is both so characteristic of Poland, and so colorful in its own right. Schama cites Aristotle:

"[the bison]'s skin when stretched covers a seven-seat dining room," and gave birth within a high rampart of dung and defended itself by a copious voiding of scorching turds which it then kicked at its aggressors.

Seems like a great beast for an open world game to me! No more juvenile than mud-slinging water hags, and far less repulsive than bloating rotfiends. 

Bison did lend their name to one of Wild Hunt's alchemy herbs, bison grass. The plant (Hierochloe odorata) is real, as are most of the game's herbs (and they're usually even recognizably depicted, which tickles my nerd heart). With a range that spans much of the Northern hemisphere, bison grass is one of the few plants that both North American bison and European Wisent could have snacked on. The plant is the main flavor in a Polish specialty vodka that also takes its name from the bison: Zubrowka. In The Witcher 3, bison grass is used to make an oil for killing beasts, which is rather appropriate, if not based in any true biochemistry.

Historical Analogues

But why would I expect bison in The Witcher in the first place? Temeria and Redania are, at first glance, generic medieval kingdoms, neither of which is a blatant analogue for historical Poland. It's common for fantasy authors to model their medieval worlds on historical roots. Analogues for Rome are nigh ubiquitous, as are Hun-like horsemen and distant orientalist caricatures. Westeros is literally Britain, with Ireland turned upside down beneath it. So it's not unusual for Witcher to draw its history, landscape, and cultures from a distilled essence of Polish history. And, as with the folklore, setting the universe in historical fantasy-Poland is novel and interesting.

So what is the case for Temeria as Poland? The landscape in Velen is wet, riddled with small streams and wetlands. It resembles the floodplain of the Vistula on the Baltic shore of northern Poland. Like the delta of the Vistula, it's likely that much of Velen will be underwater as the sea level rises. Velen lacks only Poland's huge array of migratory birds (I remember only seeing crows and seagulls, though I believe others can be heard singing, at least).

Velen is a wet landscape, but more than that it is a landscape of warfare and occupation. Fields are filled with corpses, earth blackened by fire and littered with weapons. Gibbets outnumber trees along the roadsides. 

At the beginning of Wild Hunt, Velen is a freshly minted vassal state to Nilfgaard, the vast, rich, and well-equipped invading empire. Before the invasion, Velen was a province of Temeria; with Temeria fallen, Velen became Nilfgaard's battleground with Redania. Kings and heroes scheme and plot, but Velen bears all the consequences. This is a familiar pattern in Polish history; the actors at various points have been Russia, Germany, and even Napoleon's France. The only thing setting apart Witcher's fictional version is the infestation of corpse-eating monsters. 

Poland, frequently swept aside by larger armies, has often found empowerment and agency in guerrilla warfare. Vernon Roche and his band of exiled rebels in Redania, taking refuge in an idyllic forest cave, are familiar figures in Polish cultural history. The gibbets and gallows used by imperialist governments repressing such rebellions are equally familiar. Perhaps hanging was a convenient form of public execution used across medieval Europe, but it was striking to me, playing through Velen and reading this chapter, how prominently Schama seemed to tie this gruesome landscaping to Poland's history under the thumb of imperialist powers.

Polish partisans are not the only people who have sought refuge in the nation's forests. Schama (from Britain) is Jewish, and his lens on Polish history is framed by a trip he took to find the graves and homes of his Polish Jewish ancestors. Much has been made of the conspicuous whiteness of The Witcher's universe. Apologists claim that race issues in Poland are historically between white ethnicities, with Jews chief among the oppressed classes. Are The Witcher's elves, dwarves, and halflings to be read as allegorical representations of Jewish and Romani minorities? I'm not sure how respectful this is to those communities (who are literally dehumanized for rhetorical purposes), but I do buy the argument broadly. It certainly doesn't excuse the lack of PoC in Wild Hunt, and it doesn't mean that the depiction of race is well-handled (it feels quite uninspired to me), but it at least provides appropriate historical points of reference.

While plenty of historical oppression in Poland was carried out by native Poles, it is probably not a coincidence that Witcher's Church of the Eternal Fire worships the metaphorical instrument of the Holocaust. Polish Jews fleeing Nazi ghettos took refuge in the forests, forming

 " a primitive community of equals, living in pits covered with branches and moss, or abandoned woodsman's huts. . . . Calling themselves 'wolves,' the veterans went on nocturnal forays out from their pits to the woodland villages to try to procure oil, soap, candles." 

These sylvan rebels, latest in a long lineage driven to militant, primitive extremes by a long-standing ethnic conflict, resemble Witcher's Scoia'tael elves even down to the wildlife moniker.

(From the intro cinematic of Witcher 2)

Poland's Romantic Culture

Artists in the Romantic period were captivated by ancient woodlands, and were committed to a new form of political nationalism. Composers incorporated folk tunes into symphonies, writers penned folk tales into short stories, and poets re-imagined the stories of culture heroes. They self-consciously set out to create or redefine the myths and narratives of their nation. Poland's most prominent Romantic poet was Adam Mickiewicz. His work draws on Polish history and woodland motifs to support a national identity threatened by imperial powers, and to explicitly support the cause of Polish freedom and independence.

Mickiewicz wrote several poetic dramas that could be tangentially relevant to Witcher. Konrad Wallenrod "explores shifting allegiance in a continuing borderland war." Pan Tadeusz "makes the landscape itself the carrier of memory. Things that are buried but will not stay interred; a nature that proceeds, season to season, birth to death to birth, indifferent to the revolutions of state and the bickering of dynasts." But it is his poem Dziady that CD Projekt writers reference directly.

In the Witcher 3, Geralt meets a man from the depths of Polish history, a pagan herbalist and soothsayer. Among the Pellar's many responsibilities, is a ritual to appease angry and left-behind souls and facilitate their passage to the afterlife. Geralt assists the Pellar in carrying out this rite, known as Forefather's Eve. The Pellar's dialogue quotes directly (I am lead to believe) from Mickiewicz' poem, whose title in English is Forefather's Eve. Witch Hunters from the Church of the Eternal Fire arrive and try to stop the rite; Geralt, in defending the Pellar, symbolically joins the Polish freedom fighters to whom the poem is dedicated.

The Leshy

The world of the Witcher doesn't evoke the woodland arcadia of Mickiewicz, with its hoary oldgrowth tress, elaborate ritual hunts, and ancient bison. The only truly dense forests are in Skellige; the mainland is largely garbed in shrubby second-growth forest and open heath or bog. Witcher draws less from Polish forest tropes than cultural ones. The forests may not be as majestic as Bialoweza, but they are still home to Polish nature spirits and rituals. Schama depicts the Leshy as

"native wood-fauns, blue-blooded, green-eyed, green-whiskered . . . who would lead [Poland's] enemies astray, take them captive, and release them only after humiliation of ritual inversions. The chastened pursuers would have to exchange their right and left shoes, wear their tunics backward, and be sent packing from the forest." 

Witcher's Leshens are protective and territorial, but they have no more patriotism than other wild animals. One side quest, fittingly called In the Heart of the Woods, pits a traditionalist council of elders, who venerate the Leshen as a positive, if not benevolent, force whose harsh tests strengthen the village with a frontier vigor, against a rationalist upstart who sees the Leshen as a simple murderer. The player gets to choose which ideology to support, placating or killing the Leshen and reaping the consequences in village politics. The scenario and the town's discussion is a microcosm of changing visions and values of wilderness at the cusp of the Enlightenment.

Conclusion

There are a million more things to say about the Witcher as a fantasy work in general, and I'll hopefully get to those some time soon. But I've already gone on way too much just limiting myself to Landscape and Memory references, so I apologize for that. These references are not as clear-cut as these inspiration posts usually are (Wild Hunt includes dozens of easter egg references that are far less ambiguous). Hopefully you learned something interesting one way or another.