Ok guys, I speak "some" Ukrainian but I'm Northern Italian and unfortunately I've never been that great when it came to learn the Cyrillic alphabet.. ç_ç
This time I came home from Leopoli (which is the Italian name of Lviv/Lwów/Lemberg/Lvov xD) and with me I brought many things, these two though are puzzling me a little bit and I know here we have an awesome Slavic user/player base so I know I'll get all the help I need! XD

The thing on the right - I really don't know what it is. It was in the same box as the other one but really.. I know only that it's made of wood, it's a spiked hammer (?),, but I don't have a clue if it's related to Ukrainian culture or whatever else.. or what's the use of it.. ahah xD And the other one.. it actually should smell like lavender, but it doesn't smell at all so I'm wondering.. what's inside? XD I just know they come from the Karpaty, the woman that gave us those things lives in Slavske (Славське, thanks wikipedia).

Thanks ahah <3

View attached image.
6 years ago

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Thing on the right is a (scaled and wooden of course) Hetman Mace, symbol of Hetman's power.
Text on the thing to the left: "Little bag of WEALTH from Carpathians". It's like a joke-amulet that should bring you wealth.

6 years ago
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That's crazy, I would NEVER have got to those conclusion.. never heard about the Hetman title, probably 'cos I graduated as a middle-ages historian focusing on Western Europe.. and Wikipedia says it's more a Renaissance and 16th century thing.. but all in all we barely study anything about Eastern Europe even here in Italy =\
Thank you so much!!

6 years ago
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Glad to help)

6 years ago
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thanks a lot =)

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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Thanks so so much ahah! Well, no lavender inside.. that's why it doesn't smell xD
Thank you again for helping me! I really couldn't figure anything out =P I never saw those "money pouchs" in Lviv or other cities before ahah xD

6 years ago
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6 years ago
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Yeah, we used to rename every single city in the whole world XD
Since Latin has been used until French came during the XVIII century as a lingua franca, our ancestors (not only here in Italy of course xD) liked to rename everything to make it sound more Romance.. or at least Greek-sounding given everything that the Latins took from the Ancient Greeks..
So you can find tons of city names no more used which are nowadays used only by comedians, but on the other side there are dozens of city names still officially used today as a heritage of our ancestors' renaming customs.. xD
Leopoli is directly taken from the Latin Leopolis, which simply translates Leo I of Galicia's name (Leo = Leone, "lion" in Italian, "polis" stands for "city/town" in Greek of course), who made Lviv the capital of his kingdom! Venetian merchants so called Leopolis Leo's new town in the XIII century =P

6 years ago
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Well, here there's always fast and thorough help for everything, it seems! Thanks for having helped me a lot to figure out these small gifts =P

6 years ago
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Closed 6 years ago by helevorn23.