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Paper short abstract

The paper examines Ukrainian folk tales where Frost, Sun, and Wind act as moral agents. Focusing on the tale “The Sun, the Frost, and the Wind,” it shows how elemental forces reflect cultural hierarchies of power, survival strategies, and ethical meanings in Slavic oral tradition.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the role of natural elements as moral agents in Ukrainian folk narratives, with particular attention to the tale commonly known as “The Sun, the Frost, and the Wind.” In this story, a peasant is forced to engage with personified elemental forces, whose judgments shape his fate. The analysis highlights the paradoxical outcome: while Frost and Sun display recognizable qualities of severity or warmth, Wind receives the greatest respect – not for benevolence, but for sheer strength and danger. Such a hierarchy of values underscores how folk culture interprets natural forces less through the lens of ethical virtue than through their capacity to affect human survival.

Drawing on textual and motif analysis, the study situates this tale within a broader corpus of Ukrainian folklore where natural elements function as arbiters, judges, and distributors of punishment or reward. It argues that these figures cannot be reduced to decorative personifications; rather, they embody a moralized vision of nature, in which environmental powers are inherently active, animated, and ethically charged. By presenting nature as both threatening and protective, Ukrainian folk tradition encodes strategies of adaptation, endurance, and moral judgment that are integral to its worldview.

In doing so, the paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersection between ecological perception and moral order in Slavic oral tradition, offering insight into how communities conceptualized their relationship with the elements not merely as physical realities but as agents of justice and power.