Mountains as “lieux de mémoire”

Abstract

National identities contain a spatial dimension not only in respect to presumed titles to specific territories, but also in the sense of ascribing important national values upon specific places. The collective memory of the nation, which is a central feature of its identity, is pinned onto spaces, as Pierre Nora has shown in his seminal work on the “lieux de mémoire” in France. In the case of the Balkans, mountains are a particular important carrier of national myths and imagination. A strong current in Balkan national ideologies ascribes to mountains a special role for the assertion and preservation of national identity. Mountains are said to have served as shelters for national culture and ethnic purity, especially during Ottoman rule. There, in isolated communities, the people presumably could preserve their traditions and pass ethnic identity down to the generations which eventually won independence. A discursive link was established between the social consequences of the ecological features of mountains and national values. Mountaineers were said to have learnt endurance from the difficult environment they lived in. As roaming shepherds and traders they allegedly developed a staunch freedom-loving spirit which made them the champions of national liberation. A case in point is Jovan Cvijićs admiration of the “Dinaric people” whom he described as the bearers of the genuine Serbian spirit. The eminent Inter-war Bulgarian historian Petăr Mutafčiev devoted a chapter of his Book for the Bulgarians to the role of the Balkan mountains (Stara planina) for Bulgarian national history. In Albania, the notion of ethnic purity and genuinely Albanian social institutions is associated with mountain communities. In Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria, folk mythology is full with stories of rebel-mountaineers who allegedly fought the Ottomans and gave to the poor (hajduci, klephtes, hajduti). Mountaineers are contrasted with people from the lowlands who are said to have submitted to the alien occupiers and their corrupting ways of life. The paper analyses the role of mountains for national myths in the Balkans from a comparative perspective. Its examples come mainly from the Bulgarian and Albanian national imagination. In its final conclusion the paper highlights the tension that exists between discourses of self-Balkanisation in the region and of Western imaginations of the Balkans. Also in the Western discourse the connection between mountains and the allegedly typical Balkan identity is made. In the Romantic vision this was embodied in the notion of the “noble savage” who incessantly fought the Ottoman occupiers. In more recent times, however, a semantic shift took place and the same connection is now charged with negative associations. Mountains, war-like spirit and cruelty form a discursive chain in the Western imagination of the Balkans, such as shown during the Bosnian War.