something that bothers me when reading folklore and archaeology studies, especially those that focus on about the last 2000 years of european history, is the constant emphasis on a theoretical proto-indo-european shared root.
i definitely wouldn't deny that PIE plays an important role in the study as a hypothetical ancestor culture and language, and i appreciate it a lot, but a lot of studies treat not only PIE as something that is objectively fixed and certain, but also the hypothetical common ancestor of whatever figure they're describing as completely certain.
because of this assumption, they then also go on to assume that it is completely valid to treat all the figures they've deemed 'cognates' to be the same figure (holda = grýla = befana = mokosh = perchta, for example), with little to no nuance to go along with that.
and again, while i appreciate the study of comparative religion, i think there's something to be said about the constant emphasis on a hypothetical, pan-european past harboring a lot of danger. the fascination and fixation on an easily homogenized, pan-european identity springing from a single point of cultural origin FEELS like a slippery slope into fascism's mythologized, glorious past.
i wish we could have comparative religion in folklore and archaeology without needing to claim that mokosh and frau holle are just two names for an identical deity, or some such thing, because they're just not, and we can't prove that they ever were. i feel skeptical about the desire to prove that they ever were, at least in our current social climate
