Case file · Sacred site
The breaking of the Rambynas altar stone
On the sacred hill of Rambynas above the Neman, a German miller broke up the great sacrificial stone in 1811 to make millstones; legend says the workers were injured and the miller came to a bad end.
1811 CE · 55.08, 22.04 · status: legend
The account
The stone, first described in 1769, was said to have been placed by the thunder god Perkūnas, and the laumės had cursed it so that misfortune would follow if it were damaged. From the 1880s the writer Vydūnas organised midsummer festivals on the hill, and Lithuanian neo-pagans still meet there on 23 June.
The sceptical view
The destruction is recorded; the curse and the miller's fate belong to legend.