A devotee of the Jor Soo Gong Naka shrine with skewers pierced through her cheeks takes part in a procession during the annual Vegetarian Festival in Phuket on September 27, 2022. The festival, back after two years of hiatus because of the Covid-19 pandemic, features religious devotees who slash themselves with swords, pierce their cheeks with sharp objects and commit other painful acts to purify themselves, taking on the sins of the community. (Photo by Manan Vatsyayana/AFP Photo)

Charlotte fights a monster with a “wand” in her bedroom in Laure Fauvel's “Terreurs”, 2014, in Paris, France. An imaginative photographer has brought to life monsters that haunt children's nightmares. Armed with sticks, wands and swords the eight and nine year-olds appear to be getting the upper-hand against the villains. Parisian photographer Laure Fauvel, 22, said: I wanted the children not be victims and to fight the monsters. (Photo by Laure Fauvel/Barcroft Media)

A devotee of the Chinese Jui Tui Shrine has his face pierced with metal rods during a street procession during the annual Vegetarian Festival in the southern Thai town of Phuket on October 19, 2015. During the festival, which begins on the first evening of the ninth lunar month and lasts nine days, religious devotees slash themselves with swords, pierce their cheeks with sharp objects and commit other painful acts to purify themselves, taking on the sins of the community. (Photo by Nicolas Asfouri/AFP Photo)

Dr. Hannah Cobb from The University of Manchester looks at a viking sword during a viewing at CFA Archaeology of artefacts discovered from the first fully intact Viking boat burial site on October 18, 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Festivalgoers on June 29, 2025 enjoy the final day of Glastonbury Festival, where Rod Stewart wowed the Pyramid Stage crowd in the legends slot, with Olivia Rodrigo down to headline the Pyramid Stage. (Photo by South West News Service)

Passengers from the ferry sinking off South Korea's southern coast are rescued by the South Korean Coast guard in the water off the southern coast near Jindo, south of Seoul, on April 16, 2014. Almost 300 people were missing after a ferry sank off South Korea on Wednesday, the coastguard said, in what could be the country's biggest peacetime disaster in nearly 20 years. (Photo by AP Photo)

A Sikh devotee carries on over-sized religious sword during a religious procession to celebrate the birth anniversary of the first Sikh Guru or master, Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism in Amritsar, India, 05 November 2014. The birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji will be observed on 06 November. (Photo by Raminder Pal Singh/EPA)

This Strange Russian Cartoon Shows Mario's Nasty Side and bogatyr or vityaz is a stock character in medieval East Slavic legends (byliny), akin to a Western European knight-errant.