The area of the Skoplje upper Vardar valley (Skopska Kotlina) entails several microregions: the hilly Black Mountain (Karadagh, Skopska Crna Gora), Torbešija, Karšijak, Derven and Blatija. The last two are defined by the Vardar river valley and its tributaries, Treska and Markova Reka.
I often think of the town of Svrljig as Serbia’s middle child. Overshadowed by noble and ancient Niš, as well as by younger sibling Knjaževac, there’s Svrljig, just kind of looking for attention. And Svrljig, the middle child, is also kind of hard to pinpoint… and not just on a map, as it is a pretty small town. I mean in an ethnocultural sense. It is considered to be part of, or at least transitional to, the Šopluk, Serbia’s rugged eastern frontier which includes Timok region and the Stara Planina, but it’s also very close to Ponišavlje, the Nišava river valley. This is reflected in its costumes, where the men wear garments very much influenced by Timok region, and the women wear clothing that would look at home in the surroundings of Niš. Continue reading
I’m often asked why I do the things I do. Why I teach, why I collect, why I’m doing this blog. I can only think of my late kum Rastko Aleksandrov, who was an excellent cardiac surgeon but an even more passionate birdwatcher. He travelled the world photographing bird species, and published a book on the migratory birds of Serbia. Kum Rastko told me once that people devote a different kind of energy to their hobby than to their job, no matter how much they love what they do for a living. This has stuck with me, and it rang true when I began learning more about Nikola Arsenović, one of the most prolific ethnographers to document South Slavic costume, and one of the most obsessed people in his field during his time. Continue reading
Bosanska Krajina is a term referring to the northern portion of Bosnia, bounded by the rivers Vrbas and Sava, and the Dinaric alps in the west. It was a region that for centuries represented the frontier of the Ottoman Empire, abutting directly against the Austro-Hungarian Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina). The word kraj means the end of something, or a region, and “Krajina” is used to designate a number of districts and micro-regions historically inhabited by Serbs (Timočka Krajina, Bela Krajina, Kninska Krajina etc). It is found in other Slavic languages as well; for example, Ukraine is a toponym derived from the Russian v’krajina, “in the outskirts”. Krajina, when applied to any area, has that connotation of being the outskirts, an outlying or remote area. The mountainous terrain of Bosanska Krajina certainly made it difficult to traverse and settle, and in that sense remained remote for a very long time. Continue reading
The Požarevac Morava district (Požarevačka Morava, Požarevačko Pomoravlje) gets its name from the city of Požarevac, found at the lower end of the Morava river valley, near the Danube. The city arose on the ruins of the Roman city of Margus, best known as the site of a treaty between the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius and the Huns, led by the brotherly duo of Attila and Bleda. It was part of the medieval Serbian kingdom of King Dragutin Nemanjić, until its Ottoman conquest in 1459. Apparently destined to be a place of peacemaking, it was also the site of the signing of the Treaty of Passarowitz (because, Austrians mangle every single Serbian town name they attempt to pronounce) which led to a short-lived peace between the Ottomans and their two western adversaries, the Austrian Empire and Venetian republic. Continue reading
Like most Slavic groups, the Serbs have a tradition of patrilineal descent reckoning, and this is reflected in many aspects of the culture, for example, inheritance of the slava or family patron saint. The kindred of a Serb can include individuals spanning ten generations; the Ѕerbian language has carefully defined these people with respect to their various roles and relationships in a rich vocabulary of kinship terminology.
Leskovac and its surroundings have been part of the Serbian state since its emergence in the early middle ages. From the rule of an unnamed Serbian Prince, whom Constantine Porphyrogenitos describes as being a vassal of “Emperor Heraclitus, when Bulgaria was under the Romaion” (i.e. before the establishment of a Bulgarian state). The Leskovac district, then known as Dubočica, was under the rule of the Vlastimirović princes through the 8th to 10h centuries, and under Stefan Nemanja, it became part of the state of Raška in the 12th century.
My mother, who was born and raised in Knin, but went to university in Split, sang the melodic songs of the Adriatic to me. A favourite that she sang with great sentiment began with:
Daleko mi je biser Jadrana, Daleko mi je moj rodni kraj…
Far from me is the pearl of the Adriatic, Far from me is the land of my birth… Continue reading
My interest in costume comes from a variety of angles. One of those is the physical origin of the threads, yarns and fabrics from which they’re made. There are historic, cultural and even biogeographical reasons for the various raw materials any culture uses, and the Serbs have their own story, too.
Свилен конац Silken Thread 