Description

Location: Popovo ezero (Popovo lake, Priest's lake,2270 m. above the sea level) , Pirin mountain, Bulgaria

Generally I don't post landscapes with so many details but I'm now starting a series with photos from my excursion to Pirin mountain during the summer holiday.

If you find long descriptions boring you can skip the rest of the text. It's only for those of you who are eager to learn some interesting facts about the nature and culture of a country, which I'm sure sounds exotic to most of you.


Pirin mountain, a glorious glacial landscape of peaks and lakes, offers some of the finest walking in Europe. Pirin has acquired an Alpine relief - rocky marble or granite peaks and cliffs, deep cirques, well shaped glacier valleys and numerous lakes. Northern Pirin is the home of the highest peak, Vihren (2914m), of 60 others above 2500m, and of all glacial lakes (140-150 in number).
The mountain has had different names through the centuries. From the Thracian Orbelus (Orbel), meaning “snowy mountain”, through the old Slavic Judenitsa (meaning the fairies, which in the minds of the common people populated the mountains). Then came the later Slavia name Perun, connected with God Perun, who - according to the Slavic mythology - was supposed to have resided on Mt. Vihren and to have send fire in the form of lightning and thunder. The Turkish name it acquired later, Beride, means “spread out”. According to the latest research, the name Pirin comes from the Haetic “perunash” - meaning “the rock” and the Thracian Perintus or Pirintos.

About the lake:
The old name of Popovo ezero is Papaz giol and means priests’ lake. It has a Turkish origin and is connected with different legends.
On of them tells that a local priest has thrown himself into the lake after Turks had carried away and raped his daughter. The priest has drowned but his kamelaukion has emerged and turned into a small island.
Another legend tells that God Perun (the supreme god of the Slavs) has lived with his wife Eho and his sister Perunika in the mountain. After the Conversion of all the Bulgarians to Christianity, a local priest decided to find the pagan God Perun and expel him from the mountain. The priest was told that the God lived on the peak of Djano near a large lake. To reach the lake he had to climb up along the river of Retije. When he reached it he saw that there were not only one but 3 peaks and he didn’t know which one was Djano. The priest started to pray to his God to help him find the right peak. When God Perun heard the prays of the priest he got angry and threw the priest in the lake. On the surface of the lake remained to float only his kamelaukion that turned into an island. Since then the lake has been called Popovo lake.