by Luca Bassoletti (I)

Maramures is a sweet land. Enclosed and protected by the Carpathian Mountains, it has tops never over 2,500 metres above the sea level. Three broad valleys - Mara, Isa and Cosau - form a highland rich in pastures and cultivated lands. It's a world where time seems to have stopped many and many decades ago.

That's the region where, in 1897, Bram Stoker set the environment for Dracula's death: a place behind Ukraine, over a 1,200 metres high pass through the Eastern Carpathians, the Tintha Pass.
Nowadays, for those who wander about those places, it won't be easy to discover Dracula's traces, but they would surely find an absolutely magic world, still looking - from the naturistic point of view - as Stoker must have seen it. In the woods a visitor can find age-old oaks and fir-trees and thousands of different kinds of flowers and mushrooms. In the forests bears, wolves, dears, swans, chamoises, storks and pheasants live undisturbed, while rivers, torrents and lakes abound in shining trouts.
A car is often the only means of transport to reach this heavenly land, this corner of Transylvania where no barriers exist and the mass tourism is still unknown. What is found there must still look like Austria, Switzerland or Northern Italy more than a century ago.

People there are stockbreeders, farmers who almost didn't get in touch with the Ceaus escu's regime and their hospitality is something amazing. Houses are rigorously built in wood, as well as churches, cemeteries and fences: every building is a craftsman's masterpiece.

Water-courses pass through almost each and every town or village (Sapinta, Sighetu Marmat iei, Baia Mare, Visus de Sus), and they frequently form many small lakes among which the most famous is the Firizia lake.

Maramures is a district of the former region of Baia Mare (which also included the district of Satu Mare, and partly those of Salaj and Somes ). It's a mountainous area with fertile highlands. It is also the most rainy region of Romania, and it's rather rare that a day passes without a thunder or the sky covering with clouds. Winters are long and hard and last until May. During the year there is an average of 140 rainy days and 30 days of snowfalls.

The most beautiful part of the region is the area called Maramures , which has an important role in the history of the country. According to the tradition, in fact, Moldova was founded by the prince Dragos , who originally came from Maramures . Following the Moldovan historian Miron Costin, Dragos departed from a town called Cuhea, name which it still carries nowadays, after many centuries.

1. The people of Maramures

Most of the inhabitants of Maramures are stockbreeders, shepherds and wood-cutters. Their costumes are simple and picturesque at the same time. They wear the "opintchi", a sort of leather-made sandals; loose trousers; shirts tied at the waist with a wide belt. Men always wear a small bag made of wool or leather, containing a box of tobacco, a pipe and a knife. In winter they wear an ample mantle made of thick-wool and an enormous hat made of mutton leather.

Women use to wear linen-made shirts with no embroideries, contrary to the habits of the people of other regions of Romania. They're skilful carpet weavers, whose patterns and colours are remarkable, as those peasants do really know the art of preparing vegetal colours which are incredibly resistant to the weather and to the sun rays. From a plant called "drobsor" they obtain the yellow colour, from the bark of the "aulne" they prepare the black, and from another plant called "sovirv" they get the red.
The hunt is an activity that the inhabitants have been practising for ages and it's very unlikely to find someone who wouldn't be a master in it. In each family a hunter and a woodsman can be found and every village has its own head-hunter, an institution among the communities of Maramures .

In Maramures every man is a carpenter too, who works with so much fantasy that the houses are real art masterpieces. House-caring is almost maniacal: they're built within an oak beams framework; roofs are covered with fir-tree shingles, hand-shaped one by one. Fences are made out of crossed reeds and willows. Flowers are the leading decoration patterns for fences, doors and gutters.

Houses are a sort of ethnographic museums. The walls of the "big room" are adorned with embroidered woolen cushions, blankets, carpets, bowls, small pans and earthenware adorned with flower patterns, brackets and shelves upon which they lean many different objects. The doors of the houses, made of carved oak, are real works of folk craftsmanship.

The "prispa" runs around the buildings. It is a porch whose columns have been carved and decorated. Great part of the day is spent under the porch: the crockery are hanged there, cobs are shelled, people work on the hand-looms, dye the wools and so on.

As well as carpenters, the people of the villages are also a bit architects and excellent craftsmen, to the point that nails are never used and everything is built as a perfect joint.

2. Customs and traditions of Maramures

Maramures is only a small corner of Romania, nonetheless it is considered to be the cradle of Romanian culture and civilisation. Nowhere, like in this district, customs and uses have kept unchanged through the centuries. There are so many and beautiful folkloristic events, that help explaining why the Romanian folklore is considered by many the richest and the most interesting all over Europe.

The district of Maramures witnesses an invaluable treasury of folk art, traditions, customs with as deep human and mystic roots as cannot be found in the other districts of the country. Time has passed, but local cultures and traditions have been left untouched. So, in the valleys of Izei, Marei, Cosaului, Viseului, Copusului, the Romanian folklore maintained a remarkable communicative powerness, full with originality and greatness.

Most known, as already mentioned, is the art of carving wood. Wooden doors and churches are well known examples of popular architecture, which exceed every limit to fantasy, originality and creativity.
Each farm produces its own textiles and, in general, everything needed by the family: from clothes to table-clothes and carpets, all are objects of craftsmanship. Women have an inborn skill, a peculiar artistic gift in matching colours and treating the textiles. Those objects do often have a high artistic value (it has to be mentioned that every Romanian district has its own models, its own decorative patterns, so that to a peculiar scheme corresponds a definite district of origin).

Customs and traditions are passed from generation to generation. Some events are connected to the seasons, in which a strong spiritual element is evident.

One of the most beautiful events is the "Tînjaua", which takes place in a few towns of the Marei valley during the first decade of May. It has links to men's spiritual and material life, a symbol that evaluates men's diligence and states the ancient work of the earth in those towns.

A farmer is chosen by the old men of the village among those who had the best crop the previous year. He's the one who'll have to plough the first furrow in the earth. For the occasion all the doors of the houses are adorned with tree branches, greens, traditional coloured carpets.

In the house of the guest of honour, preparations are made and on the plough is set a pole embellished with coloured strips. Together with this, twelve more farms in the village embellish their houses and ploughs, which will be dragged by young oxen. Those twelve ploughs are connected together. In front of them stays the plough of the chosen one who, before leaving, sends greetings to the townspeople wishing them an abundant crop for the year.

During the path from his house to the field to be ploughed, the chosen is accompanied by a sort of guards called "strajeri". If the guest of honour succeeds, along that path, in escaping from his guards and in throwing himself into the river, the "strajeri", who couldn't stop him will have to pay for the food and beverage for the feast; otherwise it will be the chosen the one who'll have pay for it.
On the way to the river, the walk is accompanied by songs, imitations, dances, fights and other kinds of entertainment. Once the piece of land to be ploughed is reached there is a new wishing well for the future crop.

At the river the guest of honour is washed into the waters. The "strajeri" are washed by the parents and wife of the chosen. They also reciprocally wash their faces with their girlfriends as a sign of pureness.

All the year long the guest of honour has respect and prestige in the town, but if the crop won't be good, he's considered responsible.

In the valleys of Viseului, Izei and Marei, another use takes place, called "Faclii si sînziene" (the flame and the witch), on 24th June.

At the eve of that feast, the girls collect flowers for the witch, and they place them around doors and windows. A few twigs are twined to prepare small crowns to wear on the feast-day. In the meantime the boys go through valleys and hill shouting their joy for the event.

A torch is prepared on the feast-day with a club on top of which fragments of fir-tree and pieces of cloth are fixed, so that when the fire is lit a good smell spreads around. The young stand in big circles, then light their torches, spinning them over their heads. The fire is a symbol of life and keeps away the wild beasts. In the origins fire was also used to send messages from valley to valley.

Once the torches are burnt, they're taken home and the landlord places it in the garden, among the plants, as a good wish for the following crop.

Another custom is that of lighting fires at the cross-roads of the towns. The young, to purify themselves and to demonstrate that they're in the age of maturity, have to jump over those fires. This tradition is carried out in Viseului.

In the area of lower Maramures , a custom by the name of "cununa grîului" (corn garland) is still alive and it's carried out at the end of the reaping. The girls, who have finished the work in the fields, twine a corn garland, that has to be worn by the most beautiful of them. The group then moves to the houses, accompanying their walk with songs. Then they're received by the other women of the village, who wait for them bearing vases and pots filled with water - which they pour on the girls - as a sign of abundance.

The girls then go to the house of the one who first ended the reaping of the corn and in the yard of the house a party is started. The garland is kept until the beginning of the following autumn, when it's time for a new seeding. Then it is buried underneath the last furrow which has been ploughed.

"Colinda" is the name of a usage carried out in winter. It's a sort of a ballad, expressing gaiety, joy and courage. Those ballads are about men's lives in the mountains. One of the most famous of them is called "Mioritiei" and is about hunting.

An ancient show is the "jocul mastilor" (the game of the masks), which is performed in the valleys of Iza, Mara, Cosau, Visen. The mask is a pastoral, mythological element. A man wears this mask and together with him are the "devils", so called because they have furry hoods covering their heads. Their task is the order maintenance during the game.

The hoods are quite big and long, covering the shoulders, and have holes at the height of the eyes and mouth; they have sheep ears and mutton horns. Each of the elements of the hoods has a particular meaning (the horns mean demonic powerness, a tongue stands for indecency, and so on).
The devils have a fur turned inside out or they're dressed in black, but always with a burlesque tone.
Again, another tradition is the "buchai" or small plough. The word stands also for wild ox.

To end this session, two more events will be considered. The first one is the "shouting from above the town" (strigarea peste sat) and it is done during the New Year's eve. From the towns on top of hills facing each other, groups gathered for the occasion shout questions to each other and answer those questions. This special "chat" is about good and bad events happened to the people of the villages. In order to realize this performance a diary is kept on which all the main events of the peasants' life are recorded.

Second and last custom is the "vergelul" which also is held in occasion of the coming of the New Year. In one of the houses of the village, boys and girls meet for a party. In this case the entertainment consists of improvised songs, games and dances.

3. Churches and monasteries

Maramures main street crosses the region from the west to the east: 300 kilometres of asphalt that, from Oradea - by the Hungarian border - take to Iacobeni, a city near the border with Bukovina, the other Romania's Northern region, also known as "the land of monasteries", because of its churches and fortresses full of frescoes and beautiful paintings (the monasteries of Voronet , Arbore, Humor, Moldovit a and Sucevit a have been declared "heritage of universal art" by Unesco). The sharp ends of the ancient churches peep out the horizon line. Their stile is a gothic-like re-elaboration in a personal way which is really typical of this area. Some say they recall the style of the Norwegian ancient wooden made churches ("stavekirke").

The oldest one can be found near the village of Bogda Voda, on the top of the Ieud hill. It dates back to 1364 and the internal staircase has been made from a single huge oak.

Everything's strictly wooden-made. Stone's banned, and the only other material to be tolerated is tin which, skilfully cut and folded, is used to make gutters or to decorate roofs. The holy buildings have been externally adorned with episodes from the Bible, that aimed at illustrating to the peasant and illiterate people the main events of the christian-judaic epopee: a bible made of images in a sequence of pictures.

Today, in the region, the ancient wooden made churches can still be seen and admired. They are monuments of a perfect and appealing architecture, that enchants the look and amazes the heart. This primitive art, still intact, is of a very peculiar interest from a technical point of view. It can be seen - as we already noticed - that, for the building of the wooden churches, iron nails and metal screws were not required: the shingles are fixed in a joint or with wooden nails.

There are quite many of those churches, and in them are kept many religious books as well as many ancient and valuable manuscripts dating back ages.

In the church over the Ieud hill, the paintings on the wood, which cover the internal walls are extremely interesting. Those pictures do have a lay character too; they've been inspired by the surrounding world, by that age's real life.

The wooden churches have such slender bell towers, that give them an exceptional sliminess. Most churches have narrow windows, but in spite of that feature, the great number of them gives a comfortable and resting light. The windows are surmounted by arches and ogives, which show an indisputable gothic influence.

The churches are usually double-roofed, with the wide cornice of the inferior roof made mainly to protect the wooden wall from the bad weather.

4. The cemetery of the smiling faces

Towards the Ukrainian border the street, through an oak forest, reaches the town of Sapint a. Here Jon Stan Patras, a local artist died in 1977, dedicated his life to the creation of the "Cimitirul vezel", that is the happy cemetery.

That's nothing gruesome or vampirish, but an unusual and bizarre exhibition: a few hundred tombstones are adorned by wooden stelae almost two-metre high, upon which the poet-sculptor carved and painted life scenes of the dead with brilliant colours, together with humorous verses that deal with the flaws and weaknesses of his disappeared fellow townsmen. It's a quite simple type of irony, which almost reaches the indifference for the death; a characteristic inherited by the Dacian ancestors. The old Dacian people believed in the fact that life was nothing but a temporary evil. They were strong people who valiantly defended their own lands, and in so doing created a world apart, as we can see it -almost unchanged- nowadays.

Because of the mighty body structure of its inhabitants, the Romans called Maramures "the giants' land".

5. Dracula's myth

Stoker launched his famous character at the end of the past century, but since then the popularity of the terrifying vampire hasn't declined at all; on the contrary the character has always stimulated the fantasy of readers and writers, whom even felt the need of finding a historical origin for him.
Being Transylvania (on of the three Romania's regions. The other two are Moldavia and Vallachia) the environment for Stoker's novel, researchers began to search through its history, finding out that just there, in Hunedoara's castle, in the 16th century, the prince of Vallachia, Vlad Tepes Dracul (Vlad the Impaler, so called after his use of impaling the Turks imprisoned during the frequent battles fought in defense of his country), had been jailed and had died.

The comparison between the Count Dracula and Vlad Tepes Dracul was of a certain suggestion, also because the latter's cruel ferocity made him a sinister and bloody character. Most accepted that hypothesis and the nineteenth-century vampire was identified in the fifteenth-century prince. But Vlad Tepes was just one of the many more or less fierce commanders of an age in which cruelty was a daily matter. Besides the prince lacks those elements who made Dracula charming and mysterious: sadism, eroticism, macabre and supernatural.

The forcing is even clearer when one finds out that Dracula's name (after the word "Drac", devil) wasn't Vlad's, but his father's, upon which history has nothing to say.

We can then state that Stoker didn't refer to any particular character of the history of Transylvania. Dracula would then only be the result of the many suggestions that can be found in the history of Transylvania. It was the result of the blending of different elements that brought to the creation of what would be the star of many horror movies.

But Transylvania is not only a land of vampires and garlic, other than keeping those creatures apart, is used to prepare lots of tasty meals.
 

References

• Touring Club Italiano: Bulgaria e Romania-guida d'Europa, Milano, 1978
• Dragan G. C.: Dal Paese di Dracula, Paris-Roma-Montreal-Pelham N.Y., 1982
• Editura Sport-Turism: Maramures-ghid turistic al judetului, Bucuresti, 1980
• Romanie, Editions en langues etrangers, Bucarest, 1958
• Stoppato M. C.: "Il richiamo della foresta", Gulliver, De Agostini-Rizzoli Periodici, Apr 1993, n.1

last update: 11 JUL 2002 by Ralph