SVIBOR - The Meaning and the Origin of the Word

Svibor was, according to the Old Slavic mithology, the god of light, wisdom, fertility and battle victory. He was also called Svebor, Svevid, Sutvid, Svetovid, Svantovid...

Svibor is also mentioned by old writers, such as Procopius, Helmold, Adam of Bremen, Saxo Grammaticus. According to those sources, he was the foremost divinity, "the strong knight" from whom other gods derived, such as Perun the Thinderer, the god of fire Svarog (Svarožić), the god of Sun Daboga (Dažboga), the god of livestock Volos and other deities. The largest shrine consecrated to Svibor can be found on the northern peninsula of the island of Rügen on the shores of the Baltic, the shrine being destroyed in 1668.

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The glagolitic script is a Slavic script derived from the Greek cursive script around the middle of the 11th century. St. Cyrill is mentioned as the author of the script. Presumably, he used this script for the translation of the holy books to Old Slavic.

The glagolitic script appears in two forms: the rounded and the cuneiform. It is assumed that the differences evolved in a later period. The oldest known remnant of the script is The Plate of Baška, which shows certain roundness, however the cuneiform glagolitic script is the specific Croatian form. It was common in Croatia from the beginning of the 12th centruy, being most frequent in the coastal regions (Istra, Croatian Seaside, Dalmatia, the islands of Zadar and Kvarner, foremost the islands of Krk, Cres and Lošinj). However, it could have been found in the inner regions of Lika and Krbava, reaching as far as the river Kupa, even Međimurje and the Slovene regions.

It reaches its renaissance among the Croatians in the 14th and 15th century. The most beautiful and the majority of the glagolitic scripts date from that period (The Vatican Missal from 1315 according to which the SVIBOR sign was created).

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