Utopiec (plural ''Utopce''),
Vodník or Topnik is a name applied to
Slavic spirits of water. The ''utopce'' are spirits of human souls that died drowning, residing in the element of their own demise. They are responsible for sucking people into swamps and lakes as well as killing the animals standing near the still waters.
Slavonic water spirits of the drowned dead remained a popular element of rural Polish folklore at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, as shown by
Władysław Reymont in his Nobel Prize-winning novel
''Chłopi'' (The Peasants). Its story takes place during the 1880s in
Congress Poland
Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established w ...
and follows the everyday life of the peasantry in a typical Polish village. In the tenth chapter of book two, some of the characters gather together to exchange stories and legends, in one of which the ''topielica'' (feminine form of ''topielec'') is mentioned.
A more recent example of the ''utopiec'' in Polish popular culture is the comic book series
Lil and Put, where the two titular characters are constantly at odds with an Utopiec living in a pond next to their village. He is never directly seen and possesses magical powers.
Utopiec is the official Polish translation of the ''Drowned'', a monster and hostile entity from the video game
Minecraft
''Minecraft'' is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus Persson, Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java (programming language), Java programming language, the ...
.
See also
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Vodyanoy
In Slavic mythology, ''vodyanoy'' ( rus, водяной, p=vədʲɪˈnoj; lit. ' efrom the water' or 'watery') is a water spirit. In Czech and Slovak fairy tales, he is called ''vodník'' (or in Germanized form: ), and often referred to as '' ...
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Rusalka
In Slavic folklore, the rusalka (plural: rusalki; , plural: русалки; , plural: ''rusałki'') is a female entity, often malicious toward mankind and frequently associated with water. It has counterparts in other parts of Europe, such as th ...
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Kelpie
A kelpie, or water kelpie (Scottish Gaelic: '' each-uisge''), is a mythical shape-shifting spirit inhabiting lochs in Scottish folklore. Legends of these shape-shifting water-horses, under various names, spread across the British Isles, appea ...
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Kappa
Kappa (; uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ; , ''káppa'') is the tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless velar plosive sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 20. It was d ...
References
Slavic legendary creatures
{{Europe-myth-stub
Water spirits