Case file · High strangeness
The invisible riders of Polotsk
The Primary Chronicle tells of a 'marvellous wonder' at Polotsk in 1092: at night demons rode the streets like horsemen, unseen, wounding anyone who went out; people said 'the dead (navi) are killing the people of Polotsk'.
1092 CE · 55.49, 28.77 · status: account
The account
The riders then appeared by day, only their horses' hooves visible, and the plague spread from Polotsk to Drutsk. The chronicler adds that many people died in Kyiv that winter. The navi, the restless dead of Slavic belief, give the episode its name; it is one of the earliest dated 'wild hunt' type accounts from eastern Europe.
The sceptical view
Usually read as an epidemic explained through belief in the hostile dead.