In both Lithuanian and Latvian mythology, he is documented as the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, fire, war, law, order, fertility, mountains, and oak trees.

Lithuanian Perkūnas has many alternative onomatopoeic names, like Dundulis, Dindutis, Dūdų senis, Tarškulis, Tarškutis, Blizgulis, etc.

In a triad of gods Perkūnas symbolizes the creative forces (including vegetative), courage, success, the top of the world, the sky, rain, thunder, heavenly fire (lightning) and celestial elements, while Potrimpo is involved with the seas, ground, crops, and cereals and Velnias/Patulas, with hell, and death.

[7] Perkūnas is pictured as middle-aged, armed with an axe and arrows, riding a two-wheeled chariot harnessed with goats, like Thor[8] or Celtic Taranis.

[10] References to the "oak of Perkūnas" (in Lithuanian, Perkūno ąžuolas; in Latvian, Pērkona ozols) exist in a source dated to the first half of the 19th century.

Some myths mention four sons of Perkūnas (Latvian: Perkona dēli; Lithuanian: Perkūno sūnūs),[11] who, apparently, are connected with the four seasons or with the four directions of the world (east, west, south and north).

Perkūnas pursues an opponent in the sky on a chariot, made from stone and fire (Lithuanian ugnies ratai).

On his heavenly chariot Perkūnas appears in the shape of a gray-haired old man with a big beard of many colors, in white and black clothes, holding a goat on a cord in one hand and a horn or an axe in the other.

They include an axe or sledgehammer, stones, a sword, lightning bolts, a bow and arrows, a club, and an iron or fiery knife.

The culmination of Perkūnas' hunt for his opponent is a thunder-storm; it not only clears the ground of evil spirits, but returns the stolen cattle or weapons.

The Latvians also sacrificed cooked food before meals to Pērkons, in order to prevent thunderstorms, during which honeycombs were placed into fires to disperse the clouds.

Günter Grass, in his second novel Dog Years (1963), alludes to Perkūnas ("Perkunos") as a symbol of the dark human energies unleashed by the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

Two other alternate history timelines feature a Perkūnas-worshipping Lithuania surviving into the 20th Century, out of diametrically opposing points of divergence.

In Poul Anderson's Delenda Est, the alternate Lithuania arose in a history where Carthage defeated and destroyed Rome and there was no Roman Empire.

The Lithuanian folk music group Kūlgrinda released a 2003 album titled Perkūno Giesmės, meaning "Hymns of Perkūnas".

[13] Saule, Pērkons, Daugava is a Latvian choir song composed by Mārtiņš Brauns, based on a 1916 poem by Rainis.

In August 2023 a tottem pole carved with the writing "Perkunas 2023" appeared above the white cliffs of Dover in the South of England, UK.