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Paper short abstract

The legend of Rada’s immurement in Kratovo, North Macedonia, evolves from a foundation sacrifice to digital and tourist narratives. It links humans, non-humans, and architecture, showing how folklore shapes memory, embodiment, and landscape.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the transformations of the immurement motif in South-East European folklore through the case of Rada’s Bridge in Kratovo, North Macedonia. In the legend, Rada is immured in the bridge’s foundations as a foundation sacrifice to secure the bridge’s construction. Her body mediates between human builders and non-human forces, weaving together woman, water, and architecture.

Over time, the narrative has undergone significant shifts: from its origin as a foundation sacrifice, through patriarchal readings portraying Rada as a silenced victim, to contemporary circulation in digital media and tourism, in which Rada often appears less as an individual than as a spectral presence hovering between myth and landscape. An entanglement-oriented analysis illuminates how Rada’s story persists at the intersection of embodiment, river and landscape, architectural materiality, and digital reanimation. The immurement motif continues to function as a site where cultural memory, ecological imaginaries, and narrative transformation converge, revealing the enduring power of folklore to mediate and reimagine human and non-human relationships.