The sky over Bulgaria

The Great Bear in Bulgarian Tradition: the Kolata and More

In Bulgaria the Great Bear is best known as Kolata (“the cart”), a figure people saw as an ox-drawn cart. An ethnographic dictionary records other local names and shows that villagers used it to tell the time at night. Today the same seven stars remain the easiest way to find the Pole Star.

Seven stars, many names

The Great Bear is one of the most recognisable patterns of the northern sky. One astronomical clarification matters here. The seven bright stars we usually call the Great Bear form an asterism (an easily recognised star pattern), while the constellation Ursa Major (Latin for “Greater Bear”) is larger. According to the IAU (International Astronomical Union) there are 88 constellations, and Ursa Major is among the largest, covering about 1,280 square degrees. See also Great Bear in the encyclopedia.

The traditional Bulgarian name Kolata (“the cart”) shows that people saw in this figure a vehicle rather than an animal. The image, also called Golyamata kola (“the Great Cart”), is recorded in different parts of the country.

What ethnologists recorded

Our best verifiable source is the “Речник на народната духовна култура на българите” (Dictionary of the Folk Spiritual Culture of the Bulgarians). It collects regional names and notes where each was recorded. The entries show the following:

• Golyamata kola (“the Great Cart”) is recorded in Dyadovo (Plovdiv region), and in the variant Golema kola in Sachkova and Lopusha (Sofia region).
• Kalesnitsite is a name for the Great and Little Bear in an entry from Slivnitsa.
• Haiduti (also spelled Haidutsi, “outlaws”) and Haramii (“bandits”) are names for the Great Bear registered in Porominovo and Vaksevo. So the pattern was also read as a band of outlaws, not only a cart.
• Malkata kola (“the Little Cart”) is the name for the Little Bear, according to entries from Samokov and Svishtov. It resembles the Great Bear but is smaller.

This list is not complete. Different regions had their own words and often tied them to what was closest to everyday life: carts, teams of oxen, riders.

There are also popular retellings in which Bulgarians saw the wheels of a cart, the oxen in front of it and a wolf attacking them. A planetarium handout presents it this way, but it gives no specific ethnographic record, so we treat it as a popular retelling rather than an established fact for the whole country.

A clock for the night

According to the same dictionary, the Great Bear is a circumpolar constellation by which villagers determined the time of night. The entry is from Chirpan, Razgrad and Beloslav. The logic is simple. The figure slowly turns around the celestial pole, and its position during the night hints at the hour. A shepherd or ploughman with no watch could use the sky.

Astronomically this is easy to explain. For an observer in Bulgaria the seven bright stars of the figure practically never set. That is why the figure is visible on almost every clear night of the year, although its position changes with the seasons.

The road to the Pole Star

For orientation, use two stars of the figure’s “bowl”, Dubhe and Merak. If you draw an imaginary straight line from Merak through Dubhe and extend it about five times the distance between them, you reach the Pole Star (Polaris). It is the brightest star of the Little Bear and stands very close to the north celestial pole, so it points roughly north. More about it in Pole Star.

The dictionary also records folk names for the Pole Star itself: Polyarka (Draganovo, Gorna Oryahovitsa area) and Popat (“the Priest”, an entry referring to the Pole Star). The names Svinarkata (“the Swineherdess”) and Valk (“Wolf”) also appear in the list of names, but we do not draw further conclusions from them.

What we do not claim

There are hypotheses that ancient sanctuaries or settlements were aligned with particular stars. We found no verifiable source proving this for the Great Bear, so we do not assert it. We prefer to keep a clear line: recorded names and uses are ethnographic fact, while broader interpretations remain hypotheses of individual authors.

How to find it this evening

Go to a dark spot without strong lights nearby and look north. Look for a four-star quadrilateral and three stars forming a “handle”. Give your eyes a few minutes to adapt. Then call it whatever feels closest – Cart, Dipper or Bear. For more observing ideas see How to watch the sky, and for other Bulgarian names see Folk names of the stars.

The same group of stars has gathered different stories: a cart, a band of outlaws, a bear. It is a lovely reminder that the sky is shared, yet every people and every village reads it in its own words.

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