The Nomadic Peoples of Northern Greece: Ethnic Puzzle and Cultural Survival

Abstract

T HIS paper sketches some of the stark realities of social change facing the nomadic shepherd groups of northern Greece. My interest became focused upon them during a recent sabbatic year in that country when I was trying to understand the social effects of some of the technological changes which our American Mission was ushering in. Our agricultural specialists were emphasizing productivity-the raising of more food so that people would not go hungry and so that Greece would not have to pay for imported food stocks from her inadequate supply of foreign exchange. What were some of the repercussions of this and related policies? For centuries pastoralism has been the type of adjustment that many of the Greek mountain villagers as well as the non-Greek nomads have made to their habitat conditions. For half the year they kept their herds down on the plains to graze on unoccupied land or upon cropland lying fallow; the other six months they drove their flocks and took their families to the upland pastures in the mountains where there was lush grass through much of the summer. As population pressure mounted, more of the unoccupied land was taken over by the agriculturally-minded peasants. As scientific farming increased, there was less fallow land; and shepherds, even though willing to pay rent for grazing rights, were no longer welcome in the plain. Our American program with its accent on productivity was hastening the demise of these transhumant shepherd groups. This was more than mere occupational displacement; it also involved the cultural assimilation into a settled economy of some distinct ethnic groups who heretofore had resisted such tendencies though with diminishing success. These nomads have from time immemorial made their circuits through Albania, what is now Yugoslavia, southern Bulgaria, and northern Greece.' They dress differently from the Greeks; their dwellings are very different, and some of them differ linguistically. Throughout much of Greece one can see their rounded branch and reed huts, surrounded by wattled sheepfolds, put up either in some isolated, sheltered spot or at the edge of some village. Although in Greece they do not number more than 10,000-12,000 families, they stand out picturesquely wherever they are.2 The men are dressed in tight-fitting black felt trousers and a black waistcoat and usually carry a black hiplength cape slung over their shoulder. They wear a round brimless lambskin cap (Kalpaki). Many of the nomad women, in contrast to most of the Greek peasant women who now wear variations of western dress, still keep to their heavy pleated homespun skirts, thick wool stockings, and usually a wide leather belt.3