The Galichnik Wedding & Kriva River Valley

It being a summer of weddings, my own and others, in a travel-blog style I want to elaborate on some of the more interesting things I’ve seen this past week. Trying to avoid sitting around Skopje these hot summer days, particularly given that the city’s relatively dead with high travel season in effect, I’m making sure to skip town come Fridays and even during the week some. Today we’re off for a long weekend with family and friends on the Tikvesh Lake and in the Baba Mountains at Pelister National Park.

Last weekend though we went to a traditional event that I’ve long heard about but always missed. It’s the re-creation of a traditional Macedonian wedding, specifically from the Western Macedonian “Mijachki” region. As each region has its own traditions regarding clothing styles, food and dance, in tribal fashion the “Mijachki” people, known as Mijaks, attempt to maintain their identity through preserving and presenting their customs and culture. Thus in the high altitude village of Galichnik up in the Bistra Mountains, the people there have preserved their wedding tradition in a celebration performed every year on St. Peter’s day.

A growing but still relatively small and undeveloped tourist event, the Galichnik Wedding (“Galichka Svadba”) is a legitimate orchestration of how a traditional wedding might have been up to the mid-20th century. It is legitimate because the bride and groom are real, having been selected via lottery for the honor (though the process of selection, requires that one of the wedding party have Galichnik ancestry), and they wear traditional costumes and partake in some ceremonial traditions long gone.

Beginning on Saturday evening, there are a series of events done at the bride’s and groom’s homes, as well as in the center of the village. They include decorating a flag, firing a rifle, welcoming the musicians, a variety of dances, and the taking of the bride from her house by the groomsmen. Of particular note, the wedding tradition includes:

Riding horses, a practice otherwise quite rare in Macedonia due to, as I understand, Ottoman restrictions on Christians riding any dromedaries (horses, donkeys, etc) for several centuries;



The very traditional and complex “bride’s” (‘nevestinskoto’) and “difficult” (‘teshkoto’) dances, done by female and male groups, respectively. They are a combination of balance, synchronization, and very slow and fast footwork.



The groomsmen and his party then go marching with torches to the bride’s house to take her to the village center for a ceremonial cleansing at the fountain and a dance.



The evening then ends with dancing by all participants in the wedding (several dozen at this event), as they prepare for the last night before the official ceremony.

Sunday’s events began early (9:30am) and lasted several hours. The events, much less visible than Saturday’s events (which were mostly in the village center), included going to the cemetery in order to invite dead relatives to the wedding; inviting the godfather by the groom and his party; shaving the groom in the center; going after the bride by marriage brokers—groomsmen and family; welcoming the bride by the groom’s mother and family; the ceremony in the church; and more dancing in the center by the male and female groups first, then the entire wedding party.
I want elaborate fully as I don’t completely understand, but of particular note, the shaving of the groom is done to separate the groom from his boyhood, and thus from his mother and father.



When the marriage brokers go for the bride, one has run ahead of the others to prepare the family for their arrival, while the others walk behind the groomsmen upon horses.

When the bride is welcomed in the center, she is helped off the horse she was escorted on, but then briefly placed in a horse’s bridle, a symbol that she’s been taken and will be obedient to her husband. She then receives a sieve, cake and goblet of wine from the groom’s mother and is turned around three times.

The church ceremony is not visible to the audience, but the young couple is reportedly splashed with basil water for cleansing. Upon returning to the center, the bride then fills her water jugs and leads a dance.

Altogether, the ceremony lasts several hours and, while changed by the nature of it being a planned tourist event, is a remarkable look at old Macedonian traditions.


Another fantastic experience from this past week was venturing out with a friend and archaeology Fulbright scholar for a little wandering through the Kriva River valley. Within a 20 mile radius there are several spectacular sites that date back millennia. Only one has become a popular tourist site, whereas the others are still under excavation and/or isolated enough that they have not gotten the attention they deserve.

The first place we visited was the more well know ancient observatory and settlement known as Kokino (for the village nearby). Up at over a thousand meters (3,000+ feet) it is a natural rock formation that was used for centuries by Neolithic peoples. They lived near it and used it ceremonially, carving niches in the rock that made it a very accurate observatory.






Another site we went to was the continuously excavated 4-5th century defense settlement near the village of Konjuh. Dating from the reign of Justinian (co-incidentally born not far away near Skopje), it has been under excavation by local and US archaeologists since the late 1990s. Like many of the rock formations in the area (more to come), the fortress atop the hill was carved by human hands and labor into the rock, though no doubt structures were built on top of the rock rooms still visible. Ironically, it was likely built to thwart off the invading tribes, mostly Slavs.





The next site we wandered off to is the less known Neolithic site called Cacev Kamen, or “Cacev’s Stone.” It is obscure because of its being coveted by one archaeologist who has rather wild theories about it. But when we went there it was certainly the most fascinating place we had seen.



My friend Seth was able to give me some idea of how it *might* have been used (according to said archaeologist), but it’s rock rooms—with flat floors and walls, basins, steps and ladders carved out of the stone make one truly wonder what these early people were doing on this rocky outcrop. Surrounded by fertile fields and valley, why would they have taken such time to mould this giant stone? There are far more questions than answers, but the valley has an eerie feel to it. (Adding to this are the natural rock “Kuklica,” or ‘dolls’ nearby. Although we didn’t make it to them on Tuesday, they are a sandy stone worn down into human and animal shapes.)



Our last stop for the day was one of the more unusual towns in Macedonia. Where a Peace Corps friend of mine was stationed many years ago, the medieval feeling town of Kratovo was named as such because it is in fact built into a volcanic rock crater. It is surrounded by mines and under Ottoman and Yugoslav reign relatively prospered from these. It also hosts several interesting Ottoman bridges and towers. We dined there in a restaurant built below one of these towers and atop one of the medieval tunnels in town. It’s now a wine cellar, but testament to the town’s besieged past.