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The Lazarki Procession in Inyevo, Radoviš: Ritual and Tradition in North Macedonia
65-90Views:50Lazarus Day is an important springtime tradition among Orthodox Christians in the Balkans. In the Republic of North Macedonia, many villages mark the occasion with a ritual conducted by female performers, the lazarki. Traditionally, the lazarki visit each home in the village to bless family members by singing unique songs. This ethnographic work intends to explore and document the tradition in Inyevo, a lowland and upland community in the Municipality of Radovis. Compared to other villages in Macedonia, the lazarki in Inyevo perform two connected rituals conducted eight days before Palm Sunday. On a Saturday, the lazarki perform the willow picking and willow offering in the monasteries, while the traditional home visitations happen on a Sunday. In exploring and documenting the tradition, fieldwork was conducted between 27 and 28 April 2024. The fieldwork included interviews (i.e., with the performers, a local family, people in the village) and observation of the rituals performed by the lazarki. The Lazarki in Inyevo exemplifies a tradition evoking themes on gender, the contemporary role of women in rituals, and as a form of authentic expression of faith.
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The expulsion as historical turning point in the religious and cultural life of the German-Hungarian village Budaörs/Wudersch?
87-118Views:272The expulsion of the German minority in Hungary at the end of World War II started on the 19th of January 1946 in the small village Budaörs/Wudersch close to the capital Budapest. The village has become well-known in the interwar period for its flower carpets prepared for the feast Corpus Christi, made by its German-speaking population until over 90% of the inhabitants were forced to leave the country for the American occupation zone of Germany, a moment that has been long established as the historical turning point in the history and culture of the German minority in Hungary. The expulsion thus divides the tradition of making flower carpets for Corpus Christi into two eras. Previous research has often struggled with connecting these two eras with each other, when analyzing the development of the feast. The main goal of the research paper is to describe the situation of the Catholic Church in Hungary in the times of transition to Socialism, both on national and local level and to deconstruct the idea of the year 1946 being the one and only possible turning point when considering the changes in the tradition. A newly found source in the Esztergom Primatial Archives, an album with photos taken of the flower carpet in 1948, a present made for Cardinal Mindszenty, shows that the route of the procession has stayed the same, although changes in the number of observants and the lack of women wearing the traditional costume of Budaörs can be observed. These findings demonstrate a continuity of tradition and village life, straddling the supposed divide, and hence suggest a re-interpretation of the feast’s significance as demonstration of the catholic inhabitants’ resistance to the slowly establishing soviet system.
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Ancia Zarichanska and Folk Belief in Transcarpathia: A Comparative Perspective
7-28Views:26This study focuses on the historical figure of Ancia Zarichanska (Anna Poidyn), a spiritual mediator and charismatic healer from the Transcarpathian village of Zarichchia. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork (2018–2019) and qualitative interviews with local informants, the article examines the narrative construction of this woman in collective memory, as well as her magical abilities, ritual practices, and ascetic lifestyle. Her unusual behavior – including voluntary seclusion, visionary experiences, fasting, and selective social interaction - is interpreted as an expression of religious asceticism, deviant piety, and spiritual authority.
Central elements such as near-death experience, rebirth motifs, and prophetic healing are analyzed in comparison with European folk healers, visionary figures, and shamanic initiation processes. Zarichanska’s case demonstrates how spiritual legitimacy can be established outside institutional religion. Particular attention is paid to the cultural logic underlying the attribution of mystical authority, the emergence of local rituals such as “Hercna Wednesday,” and the ritual veneration of her grave as a site of popular devotion.
This study contributes to the ethnology of folk belief by showing how collective memory, oral tradition, demonological narratives, and religious-magical practices interweave to shape local forms of “folk sainthood.” The figure of Zarichanska is presented as a paradigmatic example of trans-cultural patterns of non-institutional spirituality, which fulfill identity-forming functions, especially in times of social transformation.
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Lore and the Process of Tradition: Locating the Place of Belief Narratives in Ka Phur Nongjri and Sohbar
89-102Views:264Since the earliest times, the villages of Nongjri and Sohbar, located in the Southern Khasi Hills of North-Eastern India, have had their own religious ceremonies, customs, ways of behaving and beliefs that they share in their practice and narration. Their beliefs in certain village deities are linked with the well-being of the entire village, and are said to have existed from the time these villages were established. In the beliefs of the inhabitants of Nongjri and the village of Sohbar, the deities, manifest themselves in various performances and folksongs, and therefore, have become part of the performance itself. Deities, often in the form of human beings, engage in conversation with the villagers. Folklore also tells us that during festivities the approval of the celebrations by village deities becomes the key aspect to foretell the particular nature of the coming year.
The lore gathered from the places considered for this study would provide us with a new perspective on belief narratives existing in the Khasi community, while continually locating the position of lore and various processes of tradition in the socio-cultural and religious milieu of both Nongjri and Sohbar. The narratives explored in this paper will also provide – in the Khasi cultural context – the essence of War-Khasi beliefs and rituals that have remained largely undocumented.
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The Definition of the Museum at the Intersection of Tradition and the Digital World
103-120Views:19This study explores the evolving definition and role of museums in the digital age, focusing on the intersection of tradition and technological innovation. It illustrates the challenges of reaching a universally accepted concept by highlighting the historical development of the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) definitions. The paper emphasizes that museums have always played a central role in preserving cultural heritage and facilitating education, but their tasks and methods have changed significantly over time. The 21st century has brought new expectations, including digital accessibility, audience engagement, and lifelong learning. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital transformation, prompting museums to expand their online presence and educational offerings. The research discusses how virtual exhibitions, digital databases, and interactive technologies can enhance the relevance and outreach of museums. It also outlines the importance of international and national strategies in supporting digitisation efforts and cultural inclusion. Today, museums must adapt to societal needs while maintaining their core functions of preservation, education, and authenticity. The paper concludes that redefining museums requires balancing traditional knowledge mediation with modern, interactive approaches. Ultimately, museums are cultural hubs whose sustainability depends on their ability to innovate and connect with diverse audiences.
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The Saddle: Our Eastern Cultural Heritage
149-193Views:233The study summarizes the most important knowledge about the saddle, the eastern heritage of Hungarian culture, based on the results of the research and an exhibition. Animal husbandry, especially keeping horses, has always played a very important part in Hungarians life. Saddling horses was significant up until the middle of the 20th century in Hungary, we have information about it from noblemen, the aristocracy, the upper social stratas, as well as from peasants and market town inhabitants. Objects and memories connected to riding culture, riding as a way of life, were present in the memory of the upper social classes and in folklore. There were different types, varieties of saddles, just as there were varieties of almost all the objects in our culture, depending on who used them and for what purposes. In general we can say that as the terms and conditions of life changed so objects were transformed and developed. The same is true for saddles, they belong to a group of objects which gained their final, almost perfect shape very early in time, so very few changes were made to them. The saddles used by Hungarians were very suited to riding. The big advantage of wooden saddles is that they spare horses. There are two basic types of saddles usually known as the western and eastern types. From a professional point of view, on the basis of examined material, we speak of the pommel-sole/panel type and the fork-side panel/bar type. The Hungarian saddle belongs to the Eastern type. A unique and famous variety of the Hungarian saddle is the Tiszafüred saddle. Light cavalry equipped with Hungarian harness spread around Europe, so Hungarian type saddles (Hussar saddle ) were an essential part of military equipment. Nowadays there is an increased interest in the riding tradition, and the historical past, and attention is focused on the Hungarian wooden saddle that has been used successfully over the centuries.
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Review on the Macedonian Wedding Singing
29-46Views:14The wedding as a rite of passage in Macedonia is a living tradition that preserves numerous and various evidence either on the social relations of the traditional community or the changes of this complex family-customs and ritual cycle. The characteristic of this complex is that it abounds with many ritual-magical actions, the basis of which is the apotropaic character.
The most significant signs, according to which it is possible to determine the boundaries of the local singing style, include: the constancy of the traditional wedding scenario, the commonality of the wedding repertoire and the types of musical-poetic structures.
Remains of the former characteristics of social life are deposited in the entire wedding complex: the former rights and duties of the woman and her position in the village community, as well as the old beliefs of magical and religious character.
The main characters in the wedding ceremony, apart from the bride and the groom, are: the father-in-law, the mother-in-law, the best man, the groomsman, the bride's brother, the brother-in-law and other participants, who are called wedding guests or in-laws. For them, during the entire wedding ritual, songs are sung, related to the entire ritual process and have a precisely determined ritual place and performance time. Their performance is related to four time-space segments of the wedding.
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Legends of a Transylvanian Shrine to the Virgin Mary
43-68Views:172My paper presents a legend tradition related to a well-known Hungarian (Transylvanian) place of pilgrimage. Csíksomlyó (Miercurea–Ciuc/Sumuleu) – currently part of Romania ‒ has become a significant place of pilgrimage in the 20th century, similarly to Austria’s Mariazell, Spain’s Santiago de Compostela, the Orthodox Church’s Athos, or the main international shrines to the Virgin Mary (Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje). Around this famous pilgrimage place known from the 15th century a thematically rich legend circle has developed over the centuries, typical of Hungarian folklore, which abounds in historical and narrative traditions. At the centre of the group of legends stands the statue of the Virgin Mary, of gothic origin, the miraculous reputation of which is complemented by several historical legend themes (foundational traditions, wars, heroes and saints, crime and punishment and other legend motifs inspired by the sacred place). I highlight the most important historical perspectives, the chronological characteristics, the geographical distribution and, above all, the typological diversity of these legends. The legend circle of the shrine of Csíksomlyó in Romania is the totality of the related narrative traditions, that is to say, both the hundred-year-old miracle stories found in written form in different historical sources, and the recent folklore texts collected from oral tradition. Although the time and the circumstances of the records differ significantly, the aim of the narration and the topic of the legends are the same. The legends about the shrine – separated into the given thematic groups – are an organic part of the Catalogue of Hungarian Historical Legends.
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Hannā Diyāb’s “A Sultan of Samarcand”, an Eleventh-Century Old Georgian St. George Legend, and the Construction of an Early Modern Fairy Tale
7-22Views:267Of the sixteen stories Hannā Diyāb told Antoine Galland to help the elderly scholar complete his 12-volume Mille et Une Nuits (1704–1717) six were omitted. This article examines one of the six discarded tales, “A Sultan of Samarcand”. Rediscovered by Hermann Zotenberg in the late 1880s, translated soon thereafter into English by Richard Burton, it was contextualized historically as a product of Eastern Christian narrative tradition by Joseph Szövérffy in 1956 and categorized typologically by him within the Aarne–Thompson tale-type index, as it then existed. Kevin Tuite’s recent research and translation of an eleventh-century Georgian religious legend supports my hypothesis that the Christian St. George legend supplied the story’s core episode. The role of reference works is introduced inter alia to illuminate their role within knowledge creation in general and in the discontinuities of “A Sultan of Samarcand” research in particular.
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Memory and Enculturation
253-274Views:228It may be safely stated at present that the triad of past, tradition and memory has accelerated at an incredible pace. Memory seems to keep the events of the past alive for ever shorter periods of time. Rites, memories and remembrance are now handed down as written sources in the form of textbooks. How does the narrative of the teaching aids that have emerged in the 21st century then evolve and what are/have been their achievements in the construction of national identity? How do hon- és népismeret [Our homeland and its people] textbooks function as tools for building a national community? The subject hon- és népismeret taught in grade schools examines and discusses national culture and the processes of cultural reconstruction in a rather specific cross-section. Beyond exploring the interdependence and interlocking of the context and practice of ‘knowledge creation’/‘knowledge transmission’ in primary educational institutions, this paper aims to explore some salient observations on its generational relationship to memory. The importance of this subject and textbook is/has been undeniable, both as a tool for national and social community-building on the one hand and as a tangible archive of the process of heritage transmission/patrimonization on the other hand.
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The Concept of Dissimilation in the Study of Inter-ethnic Marriages within Homogeneous Meskhetian Turkish, Azerbaijani Marriages in Turkestan
95-114Views:211While analyzing the preservation of cultural heritage is more straightforward in homogenous households, inter-ethnic marriages present a captivating lens through which to examine cultural integration, social identity, and the preservation of tradition within diverse societies. This study explores the dynamics of inter-ethnic and homogeneous marriages among Meskhetian Turks and Azerbaijanis in Kazakhstan, applying the theoretical framework of dissimilation theory. By drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2024 which involved 45 interviews from two research villages, Turki Poselkasy and Kentau, located in the Turkestan province in the southern part of Kazakhstan, the research investigates the historical context and contemporary realities faced by these communities. In doing so, it highlights differences in culture, language, and social norms that can influence the formation of both mixed and homogeneous marriages among minority groups in the region. The theoretical background of the study is grounded in dissimilation theory, which posits that individuals in inter-ethnic marriages tend to distance themselves from their own ethnic groups to establish new identities within the context of their relationships. Through interviews and surveys conducted across diverse settlements, the study explores social identities and groups as well as concepts of cultural and social differences including gender dynamics, to uncover the intricate mechanisms of dissimilation.
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Post-UNESCO Effect: Chhau’s journey from Cultural Sentiment to Commercialization
69-88Views:277Chhau, a traditional masked dance form of West Bengal has been enlisted as ‘UNESCO- Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, 2010’. In 2015, UNESCO along with the MSME of Government of West Bengal developed a ‘Rural Craft Hub’ in Chorida village of Purulia district centring Chhau. Consequently, tourism in the area got international and national patronage. This entire phenomenon encouraged the commercialization of the traditional dance and craft form associated with Chhau as a result of heritagization. Unfortunately, the implication of the heritagization happened in a flawed fashion which eventually led to folklorization and institutionalization while compromising their contextual significance. The paper explores how heritagization ensures the sustainability of intangible tradition like Chhau while leading to folklorization and institutionalization of performance and craft. The paper also documents the history and ritualistic significance of Chhau to draw a lucid comparison between the traditional form and the form which is the result of folklorization. The paper establishes that the Heritagization- Folklorization- Institutionalisation are intertwined with each other in the context of Chhau. From the interviews of the tourists and locals associated with Chhau, it is evident that the organization concerned with policy making should keep it in mind that an enormous distortion of craft and performance comes along when the target buyers in the market are alien to the traditional context. In such a scenario, the contextual significance of a craft form can be kept intact if the targeted buyers can be made aware of the contextual and functional relevance of the folkloric element that they are consuming in its modernized version.
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The Traditional Village Represented in Romania’s Open-Air Ethnographic Museums
205-216Views:215This paper work is a very brief presentation that brings the reader into the front of the most important open-air museums from Romania and tries to emphasize the value of their identity. This work is, in fact, a presentation of an extensive doctoral program, after which we will publish a book, and we hope that we will be able to develop certain topics right in the pages of the journal Ethnographica et Folkloristica Carpathica. The quick development of museums has generated a veritable Romanian school of museography, recognized both nationally and internationally. The source of this development is represented by the speech of museum; that is how the museum manages to revaluate its available potential and to get imposed in areas of interest from most various: scientific, educational, cultural, touristic, ensuring the representation of as many ethnographical areas as possible. Although the concept of ethnographical museum allows multiple approaches and definitions, this essay highlights the role of the identity of museums and their way of representing the traditional village, given the dynamics and the abandonment of traditions.
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Posthumous Culture of Montenegrins on a Timeline between Past and Present : The Pattern of Behavior
33-53Views:240Montenegro is a country with a valuable and long tradition of everything related to life, especially death. Posthumous culture is remarkably detailed and significant for the people, most importantly in the earlier period when it represented the only foundation that held society together in difficult historical moments. This type of partially morbid way of self-expression of people has its roots in the deep and troubled past, often difficult and cruel to the inhabitants of Montenegro. The attention was pointed at the many traditional aspects, unwritten rules, and customs different from place to place, but in general, preserving the same function. From the type of clothes for the deceased, the eulogies uttered at the gravesite, to the male and female roles at the commemorations – the article handles the typical funeral processes. The aim of this paper is to acquaint the reader with the manner of behaviour of the Montenegrins towards the phenomenon that occurs when a person in the community dies and how a typical family handles the situation. For the sake of the research, interviews with two subjects providing their own perspectives were conducted. The significance of the study is personified by the sometimes contradictory stances of the people on death and the inevitable merging of secular and religious life.
