Introducing Romania

I was born in a land called Romania, in the East of Europe, next to the Black Sea.

It’s a country shaped like a fat fish, its tail being the delta of the Danube river where it flows into the Black Sea.

It used to be a bit fatter in size before the 2^nd world war but it lost chunks of land multiple times in history, the latest in the post-war redistribution negotiated at Yalta between the victors – Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin.

Those territories became subsequently parts of the Republic of Moldova, TransNistria and Ukraine when the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 90’s. These are now the neighbours, in the East, as is Hungary in the West and Serbia & Bulgaria in the South, with the Danube as the natural border.

There were times in recent history when Romania lost almost half of its territory to the Hungarian, then Austro-Hungarian empire – being the land past the arch of the Carpathian mountains called Transylvania – the Land beyond the forest.

To this very day, there is still great rivalry between Romanians and Hungarians in that land, the latter still having a significant ethnic minority in Transylvania.

At any rate, Romania appeared as a unified state only in the late 1850’s following the great European nationalistic or independence revolts of 1848 forcing the great European powers to accept national states. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Moldavia_and_Wallachia )

Previously it was separated into 3 separate provinces or principalities, each governed by their own rules or “princeps” – these were known as Moldova and Valachia or “Romanian Country” and Transylvania (although the latter was only joined in 1918 after the First War).

All were inhabited by the same ethnic group speaking the same language, albeit with slight regional variations which persist even today.

So what sort of language do Romanians speak? It is officially designated as a “Romance” (or Latin) language same as Italian, French or Spanish. The officially accepted science says that the Roman Empire extended itself in the first century AD to occupy and colonise the Southern part of Dacia, as the former territory was called in antiquity. During the 170 years of Roman occupation, it is believed the population adopted Latin (vulgar Latin) as well as the culture and customs prevailing with the colonising population.

This theory has been challenged in the past 2 decades as the Roman occupation only lasted for 150 years to 270 AD and did not extend North and West of the Carpathians to the 2 provinces of Moldova and Transylvania, making it hard to accept that native populations would adopt the language of colonists they never met, at a time when there was no Internet and no centralised Government school network.

The Romans also occupied Greece for 450 years yet the Greeks preserved both their language and alphabet. The Celts, Angles and Saxons in Brittania also did not adopt the language of the Roman occupiers, so how could it be that it became prevalent in the Dacian provinces?

Dacians were the most recent ancestors of the Romanians and lived all over the territory known in antiquity as Dacia. https://www.transylvaniaworld.com/concepts/ancient-dacians.html

A recent theory argues that, in fact, the Dacians already spoke Latin or at least a proto-Latin language and that it is possible a branch of these Thracian/Getae people were in fact the ancestors of Romans as well as modern day Romanians and not the other way round.

The legend of the beginning of Rome said it was founded by abandoned twins Remus and Romulus (forbidden children of a priestess and the war god Mars) who were saved and suckled by a great she-wolf on the banks of the river Tiber. See the Roman statue of the Capitol “Lupa Capitolina”.

Their Latin ancestors in the South of Europe appear to have had settlements as far back as the 10^th century BC with Alba Longa dating from 1150 BC.

It is also known the Dacians had a rich mythology involving a great white wolf deity and their war banners had a wolf-head with a dragon’s body, so the wolf totem does appear to be an important part of their ethos.

They were the original inhabitants of the territory of Romania and Bulgaria as their lands extended North and South of the Danube and included Transylvania and lands up to modern day Austria and Ukraine to the East. The Thracian people was a break-away of the broader migration of the Indo-European people to Europe during the last millenium BC. By 500 BC, the Dacian people had generated their own distinct culture and society in this area. They were broadly culturally connected to the Thracian people to the south but were said to be their Getae sub-branch, as the great Greek historian Herodotus called them explaining they were ”the most daring and courageous of the Thracians”.

But the Getae-Dacians themselves were a mixture of the Indo-European peoples with the original inhabitants of the region, themselves documented to have settled down as early as the 5^th millenium BC. The recent archeological discoveries in Transylvania push back the origin of civilisation to about 5500 BC, a culture called “Cucuteni” that left vestiges of civilisation, agriculture and organised society that may precede the accepted oldest civilisation site in ancient Sumer – as the prevailing theory is that Sumer and the Fertile Crescent in the north of the Arabian Peninsula were the site of the earliest settlements and the earliest form of writing.

This Cucuteni culture left vestiges of pottery but also what may well be the oldest form of writing, as shown in the Tartaria tablets.

Some of the attempted dating of this amulet places it around the year 5400 BC, whereas the similar oldest ceramic artifact in Sumer is dated to 3500 BC – officially considered the oldest form of writing.

The emergent theory about the origins of civilisation may well reverse the flow of migratory populations from the North (the Danube region) to the South (the Fertile Crescent). It is now a much disputed subject, as nationalism and nations all vie to be credited with this most important event of humanity.

In any case, it is also clear from fragments of pottery at Cucuteni in Transylvania that they considered the wolf as their totemic animal as well, reinforcing the belief in a certain continuity of a resolutely resilient nucleus of ancient people who absorbed and assimilated wave after wave of migration and conquest. These findings all converge to mount an interesting version of history making the original inhabitants of Dacia – Romania the ancestors of civilised societies and arguably the Romans.

Dacia was conquered by emperor Trajan in 105 AD – he commissioned a sculptor and architect to commemorate the victory in stone. This became the famous Trajan Column, a monument having a spiral of baso-reliefs depicting the crossing of the Danube, the fights and the submission.

The column is modelled after the Egyptian obelisks, pillars erected from a single stone, decorated with hieroglyphics.

What stands out from those contemporary depictions of the Dacians is how similar they are to today’s inhabitants, especially in the way they dressed.

They wear the long tunic still worn by Romanian (and other Balkan) males, over trousers that are mostly tight.

The costume is similar to all the folk dress artefacts in the Balkans – from Greece up to Ukraine. The same geographical space that the earliest settled civilisation must have occupied.

The distinguishing factors are the hand-woven patterns sewn into the garments – usually geometric or floral embroidery, the more complex, the more valuable. These garments were worn by Romanian peasants up to the World Wars and started to be abandoned following the forced industrialisation post-war. The important thing about these embroideries is that they are unique to the geographical location of their makers – in a way, an expression of identity in the colours and patterns of embroidery that can identify the wearer down to the village in the area they represent.

Quick History

Following the retreat of the Romans in 275 AD, Dacia was surrendered to the invading Goths. Wave after wave of migrations swept over this land for 1000 years. They are abbreviated in a mnemonic

GoHuGeA-SlaBulUng !

All left vestiges of their languages and people but scattered all over Europe; Hungarians, for instance, settled in the Panonic Steppes West of Transylvania where they created their nation-state. Bulgarians settled mostly South of the Danube and other Slavs funded nation states all around the continent. But I contend that all were actually assimilated even while being the dominant powers in each of these land, hence the uncanny similarity of traditional garments.

Eventually, the Turks arrived, with the Ottoman Empire trying repeatedly to penetrate into “civilised” Europe and every time being stopped at the Danube until even on their round-about way to attack Vienna, they were routed by European forces with significant contributions from Polish and Romanian armies. Eventually, 2 of the 3 Romanian provinces were subdued and became provinces of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years – just a bit less than Greece was under Turkish occupation.

Romania gained its independence from the Turks only in 1877 following the Russo-Turkish wars in which it assisted Russia by granting passage and 120,000 troops to fight the Turks South of the Danube. The newly unified Romania consisting of Moldavia and Valahia had only just been constituted in 1859. That process had been a “sleight of hand” unification as the elected ruler of Moldavia was also elected by Valahia 2 weeks later being a “principe” in both. Transylvania was still a part of the Austrian Empire and was not going to be ceded until after the First War, in 1918, as Romania fought with the French against Germany.

The newly unified country had became a monarchy in 1866 when Parliament dismissed the previously elected ruler and invited a German prince to become the ruler, then being “promoted” to the title of King in 1978 following the official recognition of the independence from the Ottoman Sultan. The Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen royal family ruled Romania until the last king was forced to abdicate by the Communists with Soviet backing in 1947.

The following 50 years under Socialist/Communist rule were not much better than the feudal era but ended with a violent revolution in December 1989 when the last dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed by shooting following a secret trial.

Since the fall of Communism and the tearing apart of the Soviet Union, Romania survived a savage, dog-eat-dog transition to capitalism and some sort of democracy, but it has been plagued by corrupt or inept ruling parties that are unbelievably even worse than what we have experienced in Victoria for the past 14 years.

Customs and traditions

Colinde – Christmas Carols

This ritual is clearly one of the most recent involving groups of people, usually children, bearing a manufactured star on a stick and singing carols with the Nativity story. They combine Halloween rituals as the people where the carols are sung consider it an honour and a good omen so they reward the group with food items and (recently) money. Traditionally, they were collecting pretzels, buns, sweets or dried fruit preserved from autumn.

Plugusorul – The Little Plough:

A sort of archaic carol performed around the New Year, i t is a ritual recitation of a text describing spring agricultural work and refers back to the Roman times. It is performed by a group of children, more usually young unmarried boys, using a “buhai” – a drum with a string usually made of horse tail hairs that makes a noise similar to the bull’s roar – and whips that they crack while others ring the bells – an eerie performance meant to ensure a fertile new year.

Sorcova:

A similar fertility tradition, it is a tradition for the day after the New Year, usually done by children using a bunch of flowers or dry twigs with which they pat the host family, subject of their tour. They too tour villages from door to door to wish good health and prosperity for the coming year.

Capra – Goat Dance

Capra is the name of a traditional Romanian dance, performed around New Year. It's executed by a young man with a goat mask and a sheep skin on his back. The 'goat' and his companions go from house to house, dancing at each door on New Year's Eve.

Mascatii – The Masked Ones

Another New Year ritual, a group of men wearing scary masks made of fur, horns, textiles, mirror pieces and animal skins, go from house to house making wishes for the new year – a pre-Christian ritual actually representing the battle between good and evil.

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