Mirila thumbs – Velebit

If you set off along the road from Starigrad towards Veliko Rujno on Velebit, you will come across unusual stone monuments. Most people will assume they are some kind of old, unenclosed cemetery that has stood here in isolation since who knows when. The “graves” keep spreading further up the hillside, so it looks as though the “cemetery” has no boundaries at all. We are at one of the sites with mirila!

Mirila are not graves, but stone monuments that are the remnants of the intriguing funerary customs of the nomadic herders who inhabited this region for centuries. In olden times, the deceased were carried from the Velebit meadows to distant cemeteries where they were buried. The bearers were allowed to set the deceased down only once, in order to rest. This was usually somewhere halfway to the cemetery. Since these were herding areas, with houses scattered across the meadows, mirila are also found at several locations on the slopes around Starigrad and Ljubotić. When they laid the deceased on the ground, they would mark out and delimit the feet and head with two stones. This was called “taking the mira,” or “measuring the deceased.” The people of this region believed that the soul of the deceased remained at that spot, while only the body was buried in the grave. That is why no special significance was attached to the graves, whereas the headstones of the mirila were decorated with reliefs. The space between the two stones would be paved.

Although on many of the monuments we see Christian relief motifs, most of them contain elements of pre-Christian beliefs. The symbolism of the solar cult is especially prominent. These old beliefs are an intriguing blend of Old Slavic mythology and beliefs dating back to the time of the pre-Roman peoples — the Liburnians, the Iapodes and the Illyrians. After the Romanisation of this region, the mountains still remained “no man’s” land, a guarantor of freedom against the encroachment of feudalism, which had turned most of the people in the lowlands into serfs. Seen in that context, mirila take on an entirely logical form of honouring the deceased, for why would a soul be “imprisoned” in some grave “down there” if in life it had lived free upon the heights?

Mirila are mentioned as early as the 12th century in the area around Trogir, and in the 16th century in Ravni kotari as well. In summer, people from Ravni kotari drove their livestock to graze on Velebit, and so the customs spread too. To this day, mirila have been preserved only on the southern slopes of Velebit. The first accounts of mirila on Velebit date from the 17th century, but the oldest carved dates still visible today are from the 18th century. The custom of making mirila in this region died out in the second half of the 20th century. To save them from decay, work began during the 2000s on restoring the sites, building a hiking trail and promoting them for tourism. The funerary customs associated with mirila are today intangible cultural heritage, and a total of around 2,500 mirila have been recorded at various sites in Croatia.

If you are passing through Starigrad, the nearest site with mirila is only a few minutes’ drive uphill. There is a large car park beside the road with an information board. From here a beautiful view opens up over Starigrad, the sea and the islands. In the surroundings there are quite a few mirila with interesting reliefs. For those keen on a bit of physical activity, a circular trail has been laid out, passing through the site at Opuvani dolac.