When reading this book, the distant past of the Slavic peoples suddenly turns out to be unexpectedly close. For some reason those distant centuries do not seem like deep antiquity at all. Perhaps this is because much of the early medieval history of the eastern, western and southern Slavs was deposited in legends and traditions, fairy tales and epics, already well known to the reader, especially the young. Where and when was the first mention of the Slavs? What do the myth of Hyperborea and the miracle island Buyan have in common? Who really is Baba Yaga? Which of the princes of the Eastern Slavs is fictional and which is real? Why did foreign eyewitnesses consider the Slavs wild and dark?