The Valachian way of life in stories about domestic origins in the Hungarian medieval chronicles

Abstract

In the paper I analyze the description of the way of life of the Hungarians and the local inhabitants of the Carpathian Basin during the Hungarian Conquest in the Hungarian chronicles: Gesta Hungarorum of the Anonymous Notary of King Bela (III) and Gesta Hungarorum of Master Simon of Keza . The originally homeland of the Hungarians, called Scythia, was described as a rich land full of pastures and rivers inhabited by happy nomadic people. They left their land because of a fame and found on Tisza and Danube a similar country. According to the chroniclers they met between others the Vlachs who were characterised in a pastoral context by them. They lived in the same semi-nomadic way of life, as the former Hungarians, however, they occurred in Transylvania only in the 12th century, when the Hungarians changed their semi-nomadism to sedentarism. Therefore the semi-nomadic way of the Valachian life was noted as their identification factor by the high-medieval chroniclers .