Lundi 26 janvier 2010, présentation et séance de dédicace à la Maison de l’Alsace, "Le gardien des âmes" par l’auteur Pierre KRETZ

  

Un Alsacien se terre dans sa cave parmi les fantômes du passé…

 

Un grand roman sur le poids de la guerre et le difficile travail de mémoire en Alsace

 

- Par l’auteur du best-seller Quand j’étais petit, j’étais catholique.

- Des soldats de 14-18 à la fin de la guerre d’Algérie en passant par les Malgré Nous, l’histoire de plusieurs générations d’Alsaciens.

 

Grave, sans tabou et pourtant plein d’humour, un texte sensible et poignant sur tout ce qui contribue à l’identité alsacienne : la langue, les changements successifs de nationalité, la dérision…

  

L’OUVRAGE

 

Voici le roman qui manquait à l’Alsace ! Voici une œuvre littéraire qui en dit bien plus sur une histoire malmenée et sur une mémoire meurtrie que tant de livres de souvenirs ou d’érudition. Dans un long monologue sans complaisance, non dénué de tendresse et d’humour, un homme raconte pourquoi il s’est retiré du monde. Volontairement reclus dans la cave de sa maison familiale, au cœur d’un petit village alsacien semblable à tous les autres, entouré de photos et de documents, il s’est transformé en « gardien des âmes », celles des soldats disparus en Russlànd, des femmes restées seules, des anciens de la guerre d’Algérie. En cherchant à renouer, dans une impossible psychanalyse, les fils d’une histoire familiale déchirée par les violences de l’histoire, il fait revivre les figures de ses proches, parents et amis d’enfance. Sa confession, belle et envoûtante, ouvre les portes d’un apaisement, d’une sérénité lucide. D’une réconciliation.

Avec ce roman tendu comme un arc et émouvant comme un coucher de soleil, Pierre Kretz exprime la forte humanité qui avait séduit les nombreux lecteurs de Quand j’étais petit, j’étais catholique.

 

Aux Éditions La Nuée Bleue : www.nueebleue.com

  

L’AUTEUR

 

Né en 1950 à Sélestat, Pierre Kretz a exercé pendant 25 ans la profession d’avocat à Strasbourg. Parallèlement, il a initié de nombreuses aventures théâtrales, principalement en dialecte alsacien, en tant que comédien, auteur et metteur en scène.

  

Maison de l’Alsace (Maison régionale pour promouvoir l’Alsace à Paris)

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Parking : rue Pierre Charron

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www.maison-alsace.com

Rise the rock 2011

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Sperlinga castle is a strange mix to prehistorically excavations on the rock and medieval architectonic buildings. It is excavated in an impressive sandstone rock and it was utilized by Sicilian prehistorical population like a sacred area or necropolis, it was modified during byzantine domination and Sarasin domination in a military point of observation, finally during Normand domination it was changed in a castle. The building zone is very important because you can observe the drawbridge, the moat, the chapel, the tower with Ghibelline battlements. Sperlinga come from the ancient Greek that means grotto. The inhabitants speak a strange dialect called Galloitalico gave in this part of Sicily by immigrants came from North Italy and South of France during Normand domination from 1061 to 1137.Sperlinga castle is very important to History of Sicily because during Sicilian Vespers the inhabitants protect French soldiers, they offered food during the long siege. The Sicilian Vespers is the name given to a rebellion in Sicily in 1282 against the rule of the French/Angevin king Charles I, who in 1266 and with Papal complicity, had taken control of the entire Kingdom of Sicily.The castle, now is the destination of thousands of Italians and foreign tourists, a trip on the village and a guided visit afford to discover a Sicily rich in amazements, testimony of a past grow up to different dominations.

  

Il Castello di Sperlinga rappresenta un meraviglioso contrasto tra escavazioni rupestri preistoriche e strutture architettoniche medievali.Costituito da un imponente costone di roccia arenaria, sicuramente utilizzato dalle popolazioni indigene sicane come luogo di culto ( area sacra o necropoli rupestre), subisce delle modificazioni durante il periodo bizantino e saraceno per essere trasformato in presidio militare; infine nel periodo normanno viene dotato delle strutture murarie e dei ritrovati difensivi militari. La particolarità della parte muraria si evince nella zona del ponte levatoio, le grandi sale di rappresentanza, la chiesetta, la zona residenziale ed in cima i resti della torre di difesa.Già famoso ed importante nel periodo normanno e svevo, il Castello di Sperlinga è entrato a pieno titolo nella storia della Sicilia per non aver aderito al Vespro Siciliano nel 1282 tanto che i soldati angioini hanno trovato riparo al suo interno per quasi un anno e mezzo sicuramente, aiutati dai popolani. Nel primo ambiente o vestibolo del castello, si nota sull’arco a sesto acuto la famosa frase latina “Quod Siculis Placuit Sola Sperlinga Negavit”. (Tutto Ciò che piacque ai Siciliani solo Sperlinga lo negò)

 

Quod Siculis placuit, sola Sperlinga negavit (in lingua italiana quello che fu stabilito dai siciliani, fu disatteso solo da Sperlinga) è una espressione latina che si legge su un portale del castello di Sperlinga ed usata spesso, anche al di fuori del suo contesto originario, per indicare un comportamento isolato che si discosta da quello condiviso da tutti gli altri. Trae la sua origine da un episodio della guerra del Vespro quando i siciliani si ribellarono alla dominazione angioina e decisero l'uccisione di tutti i francesi. Solamente a Sperlinga un gruppo di soldati riuscì a resistere per lungo tempo, aiutata dai soccorsi della popolazione che era di etnia franco-normanna.

 

Dal 1266 al 1282, la Sicilia è sotto la dominazione degli Angioini, originari della Provenza, i quali si comportano con estrema crudeltà. La capitale viene spostata a Napoli facendo della Sicilia una provincia. I Siciliani, non potevano portare armi addosso questo autorizzava gli angioini a perquisire anche le donne. Il 31 marzo 1282 a Palermo, davanti la Chiesa di Santo Spirito, si riunirono i Siciliani per la festa; l’ordine venne garantito dalla presenza di duecento soldati angioini i quali però si abbandonarono a perquisizioni poco licenziose sulle donne; offesa una donna lo sposo ingelosito uccise uno dei soldati, i siciliani inferociti si scagliarono contro gli altri. Alla notizia della rivolta una guarnigione angioina trovò riparo nella fortezza del Castello di Sperlinga.

Indian Medicine Company, Promotional Trade CardTremont, Indiana

 

Date: Circa 1945

Source Type: Promotional trade card

Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Indian Medicine Company

Postmark: Not applicable

Collection: Steven R. Shook

 

"SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND"

The Old Original Medicine Man

Open 9 a. m. to 6 p. m.

Closed Wednesday and Thursday.

WITH HIS WONDERFUL REMEDIES

 

He knows your troubles without you telling him. Don't fail to see him and be convinced.

 

He speaks French, Spanish, Italian, German, understands Polish and all the Indian dialects.

 

His remedies are barks, herbs, berries and seeds.

 

Don't be without your medicine, send back the label or the correct name of medicine needed, and we will ship it to you at once. If I help you tell your friends; if not, tell me. During my absence tell his assistant your ailment and knowing his remedies, can help you.

 

Take Rt. 12 (old 49) 45 miles from Chicago, 17 miles from Gary, going east. Coming west 9 miles from Michigan City on North West corner, at Tremont, Ind. For your convenience this winter take the South Shore, get off at Tremont going east. Coming West, take the South Shore from South Bend to Tremont.

 

PLEASE RETURN OUR BOTTLES.

 

For All Correspondings Call or Write

R. A. BERCIER

Secretary-Treasurer

R. R. No. 2, Box 60

Telephone Chesterton 4455

 

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The following newspaper item was published December 6, 1923, in The Chesterton Tribune:

 

MEDICINE COMPANY TO HOLD FORTH ONH DUNES HIWAY

The Indiana Medicine company, of which County Commissioner H. A. Polentzke is one of the incorporators, has opened up for business on the Polentzke farm on the Dunes Hiway one-half miles east of Tremont. Dr. O. L. Stephenson, of Gary, and an Indian doctor will be in charge of the place, and all kinds of diseases will be treated. The company expects to maintain six rooms for patients and later on will erect additions to the building."

 

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The following newspaper item was published December 13, 1923, in The Chesterton Tribune:

 

NEW SANITARIUM ON DUNES ROAD

One of the new improvements along the Dunes highway west is to be seen a short distance east of Tremont. It is located just off the main highway a few hundred feet, on a new stone road that is being built to the south. It is a story-and-a-half structure, at present of 30x80 feet dimensions, with basement, and will be known as the office headquarters and sanitarium of the Indiana Medicine Company, Inc., of Indiana.

 

The new company is composed of Mr. A. H. Pollentske, of Furnessville, and owner of the large farm on part of which the new sanitarium is located. Mr. Pollentzke is also one of the county commissioners of Porter county, which office he has held for eight or ten years. Associated with Mr. Pollentske, in the company, are Doctor Chas. Clayton, familiarly known here and at Gary as the "Indian Doctor," of Gary; B. McKensie, of St. Louis, Mo., India Medicine Company, of that city; and Dr. o. L. Stephenson, practicing physician at Gary and formerly practicing at Indianapolis.

 

The new institution has been well equipped for office and consultation as well as for treatments and sanitarium service; although the capacity for the latter service at present limited it is intended that this will be greatly increased by additional and larger buildings and the institution grows, as it no doubt will. The company is intending the undertaking to be the nucleus of a large and growing institution, which shall take its place among the prominent and serviceable sanitariums of this party of the country.

 

The "Indian Doctor," as he is called, has been in Gary and has been coming to Michigan City for a long time, and is well known. The new institution was opened for business Sunday [December 9, 1923], and those from Michigan City, Gary, and other nearby places will find the new Indiana Medicine Company headquarters open for inspection.

 

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The following newspaper item was published March 26, 1925, in The Chesterton Tribune:

 

SOCIAL AND PERSONAL

Charles Clayton, president of the Indian Medicine company, of Tremont, is the proud owner of a dog that is attracting considerable attention hereabout. It is a German police black wolf, just past four months old. Its mother is international champion and the sire is a national champion. The markings of this dog are really unusual, the boat being coal black, without a single discolored hair. Both sire and dam are priceless, the owners refusing to sell at any price. Mr. Clayton is very proud of his pet, and has good reason to be. His partner, Herman Pollentske also owns a silver grey wolf dog that is now in training under the instruction of a professional Germain trainer of Chicago. The dog is being trained for police work, and will graduate in three months more. The animal is unusually intelligent naturally, and with the expert training it is receiving, will be unusually valuable.

 

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The following newspaper item was published April 9, 1925, in The Chesterton Tribune:

 

LOCAL-PERSONAL-SOCIAL

The Indian Medicine company, of which Charles Clayton is president and Herman Pollentzke is treasurer, with headquarters at Tremont on the Dunes highway has recently opened branch offices in Walkerton and Chicago. The new branches are doing a splendid business right from the start in both places. The Chicago branch is located on the north side.

 

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The following newspaper item was published May 13, 1926, in The Chesterton Tribune:

 

SOCIAL AND PERSONAL

Herman Pollentzke, of the Indian Medicine Co., with headquarters at Tremont, and branches in Chicago, tells us that his company has perfected a treatment for asthma and hay fever sufferers that is standing severe tests and giving great relief to many victims of these dread afflictions. Many Porter county people are compelled to spend July, august and September in northern climates to live at all during these periods. The Indian Medicine company's treatment will make these annual pilgrimages unnecessary, Mr. Pollentske believes. He invites his Porter county friends to try the treatment.

 

Sources:

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; December 6, 1923; Volume 40, Number 39, Page 1, Column 6. Column titled "Medicine Company to Hold Forth on Dunes Hiway."

 

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; December 13, 1923; Volume 40, Number 40, Page 8, Columns 5-6. Column titled "New Sanitarium on Dunes Road."

 

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; March 26, 1925; Volume 42, Number 3, Page 8, Column 2. Column titled "Social and Personal."

 

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; April 9, 1925; Volume 42, Number 5, Page 5, Column 3. Column titled "Local-Social-Personal."

 

The Chesterton Tribune, Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana; May 13, 1926; Volume 43, Number 10, Page 8, Column 5. Column titled "Social and Personal."

 

Copyright 2012. Some rights reserved. The associated text may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Steven R. Shook.

A two-page list of common English words with translations into 11 Aboriginal languages of south-eastern Australia (including some from the Port Phillip District). The document was received by George Augustus Robinson, who was at the time the Chief Protector of Aborigines.

 

Chief Protector of Aborigines, VPRS VPRS 4399/P0, unit 1, folder 2 – Report for 1849, Appendix to Report 2.

Salento (Salentu in local dialect) is the south-eastern extremity of the Apulia region of Italy. It is a sub-peninsula of the main Italian peninsula, sometimes described as the "heel" of the Italian "boot". It encompasses the entire administrative area of the province of Lecce, a large part of the administrative area of Brindisi and part of that of Taranto. The peninsula is also known as Terra d'Otranto, and in ancient times was called variously Messapia, Calabria, and Salentina.

 

source: Wikipedia

Aboriginal History of Wilcannia:

 

Wilcannia is located on the Darling River, about halfway between Bourke and Wentworth. The river is known as Barka by the local Aboriginal people or Barkandji, literally people belonging to the Barka, and it is surrounded on all sides by Barkandji speaking people. The people from along the Barka and varying distances either side from near Bourke down to Wentworth all recognised the Barkandji language as their primary language, but they were divided into subgroups with different dialects of this one language. The Barkandji language is very different from all the neighbouring languages including the adjoining Ngiyampaa/Ngemba to the east, the Kulin, and Murray River languages to the south, and the Yardli and Thura-Yura language groups to the west and north.

 

Barkandji have a unique culture and depended heavily on the grinding or pounding of seeds on large grinding dishes or mortars and pestles, such as grass, portulaca, and acacia seeds. In the riverine areas, there is a strong emphasis on aquatic plant food tubers and corms, and fish, yabbies, turtles, mussels, and shrimps as well as water birds and their eggs. Insect foods were also important, such as parti or witchetty grubs along the rivers and creeks, and termite larvae in the Mallee country. Large and small canoes were cut out, necessitating ground edge axes, and string manufacture for fish nets, hunting nets, bags, and belts was an important part of the culture. The Wilcannia area still shows tangible evidence of traditional life in the form of canoe trees, coolamon trees, middens, heat retainer ovens, ashy deposits, stone tool quarries and artefacts.

 

Thomas Mitchell led the first exploring party to reach Wilcannia and gave the Barkandji their first unpleasant taste of what was to come. Mitchell travelled via the Bogan to the Darling River near Bourke and then down the river to Wilcannia then Menindee, reaching it in July 1835. Mitchell was harassed by Barkandji as he did not understand that he had to properly negotiate permission for use of water, grass, land to camp on etc., and in addition his men were abusing women behind his back and breaking all the rules. He gave them names such as the Fire Eaters and the Spitting Tribe as they tried to warn him off. His comments show that the Barkandji groups he met occupied "different portions of the river", and that they owned the resources in their territories including the water in the river. The exclusive possession enjoyed by the Barkandji and the need to obtain permission before using any of their resources is demonstrated by the following comment about the "Spitting Tribe" from the river near Wilcannia:

 

"The Spitting Tribe desired our men to pour out the water from their buckets, as if it had belonged to them; digging, at the same time a hole in the ground to receive it when poured out; and I have more than once seen a river chief, on receiving a tomahawk, point to the stream and signify that we were then at liberty to take water from it, so strongly were they possessed with the notion that the water was their own"

 

A hill 15 kilometres north of Wilcannia was named Mount Murchison by Mitchell and this became the name of the very large original station that included the location that was to become Wilcannia township.

 

In 1862 the area northwest of Mount Murchison Station was still frontier country with continual conflict. Frederic Bonney was based at Mount Murchison homestead and then nearby Momba homestead from 1865 to 1881 and he bluntly states in his notebooks that in this period "natives killed by settlers - shot like dogs"

 

Bonney recorded extensive detail about the lives, language, culture, and personalities of the Aboriginal people at Mount Murchison/Momba and left us with extremely significant series of photos of Aboriginal people taken in this period. He does not elaborate about the way the station was set up except for his comment above. Frederic Bonney not only respected and looked after the local people but he sympathised with them, worked with them, and respected them. The Bonney papers and photographs are a treasure of information about the Aboriginal people living there between 1865 and 1881. Bonney published a paper in 1884 but long after he had returned to England to live he campaigned for the better treatment of the Aboriginal people, and he tried to educate the public about the complexity of Aboriginal culture.

 

Bonney names about 44 individual Aboriginal people living at Momba in this period, and one group photo from the same period shows a total of 38 people. Descendants of some of the people Bonney describes still live in Wilcannia and surrounding areas today.

 

Aboriginal people worked on Moomba and Mount Murchison Station, and from very early times fringe camps grew up around Wilcannia. The land straight across the River from the Wilcannia post office was gazetted as an Aboriginal Reserve, and this became the nucleus of a very large fringe camp that grew into a substantial settlement spaced out along the river bank in the 1930s to the 1970s. By 1953 the Aboriginal Welfare Board had built a series of 14 barrack-like and inappropriately designed houses in an enlarged reserve, now an attractive tree lined settlement known as the Mission (although never a mission it was beside a Catholic School and clinic, thus the name). Today Aboriginal people are the majority of the population of the vibrant, creative, and culturally active town of Wilcannia, and the main users of the post office facilities.

 

Wilcannia History:

 

The first secure pastoralists at Mount Murchison were the brothers Hugh and Bushby Jamieson of Mildura Station on the Murray, who in 1856 took up Tallandra and Moorabin blocks, later extended with other blocks and named Mount Murchison Station. Captain Cadell's paddlesteamer Albury was the first to travel up the Darling, landing flour and other stores for the Jamiesons at Mount Murchison in February 1859. The Albury then loaded 100 bales of wool from their woolshed and brought it down to Adelaide. At this time there were no other stations on the Darling between Mt Murchison and Fort Bourke. A little later:

 

"An enterprising attempt has just been made by Mr. Hugh Jamieson, of Mount Murchison, to bring fat sheep speedily to Adelaide. Mr. Jamieson having chartered Captain Cadell's steamer, Albury, that vessel was prepared, and received on board at Mildura 550 fine fat sheep. These were landed at Moorundee last Tuesday, after a rapid passage of two days, all the sheep being in splendid condition when put ashore"

 

Jamiesons sold in 1864 to Robert Barr Smith and Ross Reid from Adelaide. The brothers Edward and Frederic Bonney were leasing some adjacent blocks and possibly worked at Mount Murchison for these owners. In 1875 they bought the Mount Murchison/Momba complex, one of the largest stations in New South Wale. In 1865 it was known as Mount Murchison, in 1881 it was all known as Momba, later splitting into smaller stations. The original Mount Murchison Station homestead block was also known as Head Station or Karannia, the Barkandji name for the area just north of the town near where the Paroo River comes into the Barka. The original Mount Murchison woolshed was located on what is now Baker Park, Wilcannia, which is adjacent to the current Post Office.

 

The site of Wilcannia was selected on Mount Murchison Station in 1864 by John Chadwick Woore, who was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands of the Albert District in 1863 and was based at Wilcannia. The town was proclaimed in 1866 and in the 1870s it became a coaching centre for prospectors exploiting the region's gold, copper, silver, and opal resources, and the administrative, service, and shipping centre for the pastoral industry. Wilcannia was incorporated as a municipality in 1881, and around this time it became New South Wales biggest inland port and Australia's third largest inland port (after Echuca Victoria and Morgan South Australia). 'The Queen of the River' or 'Queen City of the West'. At the height of its prosperity around 1880, the town boasted a population of 3,000. According to the Register of the National Estate, during 1887 alone, 222 steamers took on 26,550 tonnes of wool and other goods at Wilcannia wharves. The value of goods coming down the Darling River in 1884 was 1,359,786 pounds, and included over 30,000 bales of wool. The customs house, another Wilcannia stone building now demolished, located immediately between the Post office and the river bank and wharfs, took 17,544 pounds in customs duties in 1889. Paddlesteamers gradually declined, particularly after the 1920s, although a few continued to trade up and down the river into the 1940's, still remembered by elderly Wilcannia residents.

 

Wilcannia in the 1870s and into the 1900s was the centre of the pastoral and mining boom of the far west of New South Wales, and it was the centre of the paddlesteamer river trade from the Upper Darling to the Murray River and outlets such as Adelaide and Melbourne. The frequent dry seasons and lack of water in the river led to other methods of transporting goods being used, such as camel trains, but when the water came down the river trade always returned. The river trade built Wilcannia's fine buildings, but it was also its undoing, as the New South Wales government intervened to reduce the river trade because goods were moving to and from Adelaide and Melbourne, not Sydney.

 

Plans to improve navigation on the river were suggested in 1859 after Captain Cadell's first successful voyage up the Darling that was followed by other paddlesteamers. Cadell gave evidence at a New South Wales Select Committee that the Darling would be become reliable for boats if a system of locks were built at very reasonable cost that would hold back water during the drier seasons. The plans to build locks along the Darling River to make navigation more consistent were investigated again and again, but were not realised because the New South Wales government believed trade would benefit Victoria and South Australia.

 

After the opening of the Sydney to Bourke railway line in 1885, Wilcannia lost its status as the major commercial centre of the Darling River. The trade from the far North West New South Wales then tended to go to the railhead at Bourke and straight to Sydney. There were plans in the 1880s for the railway to be run from Cobar to Wilcannia, however this plan was continuously put off. Plans for a railway to Wilcannia continued to be made throughout the 1890's and early 1900's, and including a proposal from Cobar to Broken Hill then linking to South Australia as the Great Western Railway. In 1907 "a large petition was forwarded to Sydney from Wilcannia for presentation to the Premier urging immediate construction of the Cobar-Wilcannia Railway, and subsequent extension to Broken Hill".

 

The New South Wales government attempt to stop trade leaking out of the state resulted in their refusal to build a railway to Wilcannia (as goods tended to go to Wilcannia and down the river), or to extend the railway to South Australia for the same reasons. The bend in the river on the north side of town celebrates this government intransigence by its name "Iron Pole Bend", the iron pole said to have been placed at the surveyed location of the proposed railway bridge. New South Wales eventually built a railway through the low population Ivanhoe route to the south of Wilcannia reaching Broken Hill in 1927, and even then it stopped at Broken Hill and did not join the South Australian line until 1970. The link between Broken Hill and the South Australian railway was provided from 1884 to 1970 by the narrow gauge private railway 'the Silverton Tramway', which also took trade from Wilcannia.

 

The combination of missing out on the railway and locking of the river, the severe drought on 1900 - 1901, and the damage to the pastoral economy by drought, rabbits, and over grazing, led to a down turn in Wilcannia's prospects, leaving the fine stone buildings such as the post office languishing as tangible reminders of a time when Wilcannia was known as the "Queen City of the West" and was the largest inland port in New South Wales and the third largest inland port in Australia.

 

Source: New South Wales Heritage Register & Central Darling Heritage Trail.

('Snap' is Yorkshire dialect for food)

Ritschi is a swiss dialect singer who became known as singer and songwriter from the group Plüsch. This year he had a gig at the RhEMA in Altstätten. RhEMA is trade fair and party at the same time, one week, every year. The whole event is held in large tents something outside of Altstätten. The music can not be recorded acceptable on such a concert, because the noise level is too high. So the video shows more the atmosphere there was on this night. Altstätten, Switzerland, Apr 28, 2010.

Castel del Monte (English: Castle of the Mount, Bari dialect: Castídde d'u Monte) is a 13th-century citadel and castle situated in Andria in the Apulia region of southeast Italy. It stands on a promontory, where it was constructed during the 1240s by the Emperor Frederick II, who had inherited the lands from his mother Constance of Sicily. In the 18th century, the castle's interior marbles and remaining furnishings were removed. It has neither a moat nor a drawbridge and some considered it never to have been intended as a defensive fortress;however, archaeological work has suggested that it originally had a curtain wall.Described by the Enciclopedia Italiana as "the most fascinating castle built by Frederick II",the site is protected as a World Heritage Site.

This poem is written by BAHINABAI CHAUDHARI, in 'Ahirani' ,a dialect of Marathi spoken in Khandesh. It is about skill of Baya weaver bird (Sugaran in Marathi ) in weaving it's nest. . Baya Weavers are best known for their elaborately woven nests. These pendulous nests are retort shaped, with a central nesting chamber and a long vertical tube that leads to a side entrance to the chamber. The nests are woven with long strips of paddy leaves, rough grasses and long strips torn from palm fronds. Each strip can be between 20-60cm in length. A male bird is known to make upto 500 trips to complete a nest. The birds use their strong beaks to strip and collect the strands, and to weave and knot them while building their nests.

Bergen, historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. As of 2022, its population was roughly 289,330. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway after national capital Oslo. The municipality covers 465 square kilometres (180 sq mi) and is located on the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen. The city centre and northern neighbourhoods are on Byfjorden, 'the city fjord'. The city is surrounded by mountains, causing Bergen to be called the "city of seven mountains". Many of the extra-municipal suburbs are on islands. Bergen is the administrative centre of Vestland county. The city consists of eight boroughs: Arna, Bergenhus, Fana, Fyllingsdalen, Laksevåg, Ytrebygda, Årstad, and Åsane.

 

Trading in Bergen may have started as early as the 1020s. According to tradition, the city was founded in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin, 'the green meadow among the mountains'. It served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, and from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League. Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad, and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by the capital, Christiania (now known as Oslo). What remains of the quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site. The city was hit by numerous fires over the years. The Bergen School of Meteorology was developed at the Geophysical Institute starting in 1917, the Norwegian School of Economics was founded in 1936, and the University of Bergen in 1946. From 1831 to 1972, Bergen was its own county. In 1972 the municipality absorbed four surrounding municipalities and became a part of Hordaland county.

 

The city is an international centre for aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and subsea technology, and a national centre for higher education, media, tourism and finance. Bergen Port is Norway's busiest in terms of both freight and passengers, with over 300 cruise ship calls a year bringing nearly a half a million passengers to Bergen, a number that has doubled in 10 years. Almost half of the passengers are German or British. The city's main football team is SK Brann and a unique tradition of the city is the buekorps, which are traditional marching neighbourhood youth organisations. Natives speak a distinct dialect, known as Bergensk. The city features Bergen Airport, Flesland and Bergen Light Rail, and is the terminus of the Bergen Line. Four large bridges connect Bergen to its suburban municipalities.

 

Bergen has a mild winter climate, though with significant precipitation. From December to March, Bergen can, in rare cases, be up to 20 °C warmer than Oslo, even though both cities are at about 60° North. In summer however, Bergen is several degrees cooler than Oslo due to the same maritime effects. The Gulf Stream keeps the sea relatively warm, considering the latitude, and the mountains protect the city from cold winds from the north, north-east and east.

 

History

Hieronymus Scholeus's impression of Bergen. The drawing was made in about 1580 and was published in an atlas with drawings of many different cities (Civitaes orbis terrarum).

The city of Bergen was traditionally thought to have been founded by king Olav Kyrre, son of Harald Hardråde in 1070 AD, four years after the Viking Age in England ended with the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Modern research has, however, discovered that a trading settlement had already been established in the 1020s or 1030s.

 

Bergen gradually assumed the function of capital of Norway in the early 13th century, as the first city where a rudimentary central administration was established. The city's cathedral was the site of the first royal coronation in Norway in the 1150s, and continued to host royal coronations throughout the 13th century. Bergenhus fortress dates from the 1240s and guards the entrance to the harbour in Bergen. The functions of the capital city were lost to Oslo during the reign of King Haakon V (1299–1319).

 

In the middle of the 14th century, North German merchants, who had already been present in substantial numbers since the 13th century, founded one of the four Kontore of the Hanseatic League at Bryggen in Bergen. The principal export traded from Bergen was dried cod from the northern Norwegian coast, which started around 1100. The city was granted a monopoly for trade from the north of Norway by King Håkon Håkonsson (1217–1263). Stockfish was the main reason that the city became one of North Europe's largest centres for trade.[11] By the late 14th century, Bergen had established itself as the centre of the trade in Norway. The Hanseatic merchants lived in their own separate quarter of the town, where Middle Low German was used, enjoying exclusive rights to trade with the northern fishermen who each summer sailed to Bergen. The Hansa community resented Scottish merchants who settled in Bergen, and on 9 November 1523 several Scottish households were targeted by German residents. Today, Bergen's old quayside, Bryggen, is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.

 

In 1349, the Black Death was brought to Norway by an English ship arriving in Bergen. Later outbreaks occurred in 1618, 1629 and 1637, on each occasion taking about 3,000 lives. In the 15th century, the city was attacked several times by the Victual Brothers, and in 1429 they succeeded in burning the royal castle and much of the city. In 1665, the city's harbour was the site of the Battle of Vågen, when an English naval flotilla attacked a Dutch merchant and treasure fleet supported by the city's garrison. Accidental fires sometimes got out of control, and one in 1702 reduced most of the town to ashes.

 

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, Bergen remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia, and it was Norway's biggest city until the 1830s, being overtaken by the capital city of Oslo. From around 1600, the Hanseatic dominance of the city's trade gradually declined in favour of Norwegian merchants (often of Hanseatic ancestry), and in the 1750s, the Kontor, or major trading post of the Hanseatic League, finally closed. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Bergen was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Bergen-based slave trader Jørgen Thormøhlen, the largest shipowner in Norway, was the main owner of the slave ship Cornelia, which made two slave-trading voyages in 1673 and 1674 respectively; he also developed the city's industrial sector, particularly in the neighbourhood of Møhlenpris, which is named after him. Bergen retained its monopoly of trade with northern Norway until 1789. The Bergen stock exchange, the Bergen børs, was established in 1813.

 

Modern history

Bergen was separated from Hordaland as a county of its own in 1831. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The rural municipality of Bergen landdistrikt was merged with Bergen on 1 January 1877. The rural municipality of Årstad was merged with Bergen on 1 July 1915.

 

During World War II, Bergen was occupied on the first day of the German invasion on 9 April 1940, after a brief fight between German ships and the Norwegian coastal artillery. The Norwegian resistance movement groups in Bergen were Saborg, Milorg, "Theta-gruppen", Sivorg, Stein-organisasjonen and the Communist Party. On 20 April 1944, during the German occupation, the Dutch cargo ship Voorbode anchored off the Bergenhus Fortress, loaded with over 120 tons of explosives, and blew up, killing at least 150 people and damaging historic buildings. The city was subject to some Allied bombing raids, aimed at German naval installations in the harbour. Some of these caused Norwegian civilian casualties numbering about 100.

 

Bergen is also well known in Norway for the Isdal Woman (Norwegian: Isdalskvinnen), an unidentified person who was found dead at Isdalen ("Ice Valley") on 29 November 1970. The unsolved case encouraged international speculation over the years and it remains one of the most profound mysteries in recent Norwegian history.

 

The rural municipalities of Arna, Fana, Laksevåg, and Åsane were merged with Bergen on 1 January 1972. The city lost its status as a separate county on the same date, and Bergen is now a municipality, in the county of Vestland.

 

Fires

The city's history is marked by numerous great fires. In 1198, the Bagler faction set fire to the city in connection with a battle against the Birkebeiner faction during the civil war. In 1248, Holmen and Sverresborg burned, and 11 churches were destroyed. In 1413 another fire struck the city, and 14 churches were destroyed. In 1428 the city was plundered by the Victual Brothers, and in 1455, Hanseatic merchants were responsible for burning down Munkeliv Abbey. In 1476, Bryggen burned down in a fire started by a drunk trader. In 1582, another fire hit the city centre and Strandsiden. In 1675, 105 buildings burned down in Øvregaten. In 1686 another great fire hit Strandsiden, destroying 231 city blocks and 218 boathouses. The greatest fire in history was in 1702, when 90% of the city was burned to ashes. In 1751, there was a great fire at Vågsbunnen. In 1756, yet another fire at Strandsiden burned down 1,500 buildings, and further great fires hit Strandsiden in 1771 and 1901. In 1916, 300 buildings burned down in the city centre including the Swan pharmacy, the oldest pharmacy in Norway, and in 1955 parts of Bryggen burned down.

 

Toponymy

Bergen is pronounced in English /ˈbɜːrɡən/ or /ˈbɛərɡən/ and in Norwegian [ˈbæ̀rɡn̩] (in the local dialect [ˈbæ̂ʁɡɛn]). The Old Norse forms of the name were Bergvin [ˈberɡˌwin] and Bjǫrgvin [ˈbjɔrɡˌwin] (and in Icelandic and Faroese the city is still called Björgvin). The first element is berg (n.) or bjǫrg (n.), which translates as 'mountain(s)'. The last element is vin (f.), which means a new settlement where there used to be a pasture or meadow. The full meaning is then "the meadow among the mountains". This is a suitable name: Bergen is often called "the city among the seven mountains". It was the playwright Ludvig Holberg who felt so inspired by the seven hills of Rome, that he decided that his home town must be blessed with a corresponding seven mountains – and locals still argue which seven they are.

 

In 1918, there was a campaign to reintroduce the Norse form Bjørgvin as the name of the city. This was turned down – but as a compromise, the name of the diocese was changed to Bjørgvin bispedømme.

 

Bergen occupies most of the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen in the district of Midthordland in mid-western Hordaland. The municipality covers an area of 465 square kilometres (180 square miles). Most of the urban area is on or close to a fjord or bay, although the urban area has several mountains. The city centre is surrounded by the Seven Mountains, although there is disagreement as to which of the nine mountains constitute these. Ulriken, Fløyen, Løvstakken and Damsgårdsfjellet are always included as well as three of Lyderhorn, Sandviksfjellet, Blåmanen, Rundemanen and Kolbeinsvarden. Gullfjellet is Bergen's highest mountain, at 987 metres (3,238 ft) above mean sea level. Bergen is far enough north that during clear nights at the solstice, there is borderline civil daylight in spite of the sun having set.

 

Bergen is sheltered from the North Sea by the islands Askøy, Holsnøy (the municipality of Meland) and Sotra (the municipalities of Fjell and Sund). Bergen borders the municipalities Alver and Osterøy to the north, Vaksdal and Samnanger to the east, Os (Bjørnafjorden) and Austevoll to the south, and Øygarden and Askøy to the west.

 

The city centre of Bergen lies in the west of the municipality, facing the fjord of Byfjorden. It is among a group of mountains known as the Seven Mountains, although the number is a matter of definition. From here, the urban area of Bergen extends to the north, west and south, and to its east is a large mountain massif. Outside the city centre and the surrounding neighbourhoods (i.e. Årstad, inner Laksevåg and Sandviken), the majority of the population lives in relatively sparsely populated residential areas built after 1950. While some are dominated by apartment buildings and modern terraced houses (e.g. Fyllingsdalen), others are dominated by single-family homes.

 

The oldest part of Bergen is the area around the bay of Vågen in the city centre. Originally centred on the bay's eastern side, Bergen eventually expanded west and southwards. Few buildings from the oldest period remain, the most significant being St Mary's Church from the 12th century. For several hundred years, the extent of the city remained almost constant. The population was stagnant, and the city limits were narrow. In 1702, seven-eighths of the city burned. Most of the old buildings of Bergen, including Bryggen (which was rebuilt in a mediaeval style), were built after the fire. The fire marked a transition from tar covered houses, as well as the remaining log houses, to painted and some brick-covered wooden buildings.

 

The last half of the 19th century saw a period of rapid expansion and modernisation. The fire of 1855 west of Torgallmenningen led to the development of regularly sized city blocks in this area of the city centre. The city limits were expanded in 1876, and Nygård, Møhlenpris and Sandviken were urbanized with large-scale construction of city blocks housing both the poor and the wealthy. Their architecture is influenced by a variety of styles; historicism, classicism and Art Nouveau. The wealthy built villas between Møhlenpris and Nygård, and on the side of Mount Fløyen; these areas were also added to Bergen in 1876. Simultaneously, an urbanization process was taking place in Solheimsviken in Årstad, at that time outside the Bergen municipality, centred on the large industrial activity in the area. The workers' homes in this area were poorly built, and little remains after large-scale redevelopment in the 1960s–1980s.

 

After Årstad became a part of Bergen in 1916, a development plan was applied to the new area. Few city blocks akin to those in Nygård and Møhlenpris were planned. Many of the worker class built their own homes, and many small, detached apartment buildings were built. After World War II, Bergen had again run short of land to build on, and, contrary to the original plans, many large apartment buildings were built in Landås in the 1950s and 1960s. Bergen acquired Fyllingsdalen from Fana municipality in 1955. Like similar areas in Oslo (e.g. Lambertseter), Fyllingsdalen was developed into a modern suburb with large apartment buildings, mid-rises, and some single-family homes, in the 1960s and 1970s. Similar developments took place beyond Bergen's city limits, for example in Loddefjord.

 

At the same time as planned city expansion took place inside Bergen, its extra-municipal suburbs also grew rapidly. Wealthy citizens of Bergen had been living in Fana since the 19th century, but as the city expanded it became more convenient to settle in the municipality. Similar processes took place in Åsane and Laksevåg. Most of the homes in these areas are detached row houses,[clarification needed] single family homes or small apartment buildings. After the surrounding municipalities were merged with Bergen in 1972, expansion has continued in largely the same manner, although the municipality encourages condensing near commercial centres, future Bergen Light Rail stations, and elsewhere.

 

As part of the modernisation wave of the 1950s and 1960s, and due to damage caused by World War II, the city government ambitiously planned redevelopment of many areas in central Bergen. The plans involved demolition of several neighbourhoods of wooden houses, namely Nordnes, Marken, and Stølen. None of the plans was carried out in its original form; the Marken and Stølen redevelopment plans were discarded and that of Nordnes only carried out in the area that had been most damaged by war. The city council of Bergen had in 1964 voted to demolish the entirety of Marken, however, the decision proved to be highly controversial and the decision was reversed in 1974. Bryggen was under threat of being wholly or partly demolished after the fire of 1955, when a large number of the buildings burned to the ground. Instead of being demolished, the remaining buildings were restored and accompanied by reconstructions of some of the burned buildings.

 

Demolition of old buildings and occasionally whole city blocks is still taking place, the most recent major example being the 2007 razing of Jonsvollskvartalet at Nøstet.

 

Billboards are banned in the city.

 

Culture and sports

Bergens Tidende (BT) and Bergensavisen (BA) are the largest newspapers, with circulations of 87,076 and 30,719 in 2006, BT is a regional newspaper covering all of Vestland, while BA focuses on metropolitan Bergen. Other newspapers published in Bergen include the Christian national Dagen, with a circulation of 8.936, and TradeWinds, an international shipping newspaper. Local newspapers are Fanaposten for Fana, Sydvesten for Laksevåg and Fyllingsdalen and Bygdanytt for Arna and the neighbouring municipality Osterøy. TV 2, Norway's largest private television company, is based in Bergen.

 

The 1,500-seat Grieg Hall is the city's main cultural venue, and home of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1765, and the Bergen Woodwind Quintet. The city also features Carte Blanche, the Norwegian national company of contemporary dance. The annual Bergen International Festival is the main cultural festival, which is supplemented by the Bergen International Film Festival. Two internationally renowned composers from Bergen are Edvard Grieg and Ole Bull. Grieg's home, Troldhaugen, has been converted to a museum. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Bergen produced a series of successful pop, rock and black metal artists, collectively known as the Bergen Wave.

 

Den Nationale Scene is Bergen's main theatre. Founded in 1850, it had Henrik Ibsen as one of its first in-house playwrights and art directors. Bergen's contemporary art scene is centred on BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen Kunsthall, United Sardines Factory (USF) and Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK). Bergen was a European Capital of Culture in 2000. Buekorps is a unique feature of Bergen culture, consisting of boys aged from 7 to 21 parading with imitation weapons and snare drums. The city's Hanseatic heritage is documented in the Hanseatic Museum located at Bryggen.

 

SK Brann is Bergen's premier football team; founded in 1908, they have played in the (men's) Norwegian Premier League for all but seven years since 1963 and consecutively, except one season after relegation in 2014, since 1987. The team were the football champions in 1961–1962, 1963, and 2007,[155] and reached the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup in 1996–1997. Brann play their home games at the 17,824-seat Brann Stadion. FK Fyllingsdalen is the city's second-best team, playing in the Second Division at Varden Amfi. Its predecessor, Fyllingen, played in the Norwegian Premier League in 1990, 1991 and 1993. Arna-Bjørnar and Sandviken play in the Women's Premier League.

 

Bergen IK is the premier men's ice hockey team, playing at Bergenshallen in the First Division. Tertnes play in the Women's Premier Handball League, and Fyllingen in the Men's Premier Handball League. In athletics, the city is dominated by IL Norna-Salhus, IL Gular and FIK BFG Fana, formerly also Norrøna IL and TIF Viking. The Bergen Storm are an American football team that plays matches at Varden Kunstgress and plays in the second division of the Norwegian league.

 

Bergensk is the native dialect of Bergen. It was strongly influenced by Low German-speaking merchants from the mid-14th to mid-18th centuries. During the Dano-Norwegian period from 1536 to 1814, Bergen was more influenced by Danish than other areas of Norway. The Danish influence removed the female grammatical gender in the 16th century, making Bergensk one of very few Norwegian dialects with only two instead of three grammatical genders. The Rs are uvular trills, as in French, which probably spread to Bergen some time in the 18th century, overtaking the alveolar trill in the time span of two to three generations. Owing to an improved literacy rate, Bergensk was influenced by riksmål and bokmål in the 19th and 20th centuries. This led to large parts of the German-inspired vocabulary disappearing and pronunciations shifting slightly towards East Norwegian.

 

The 1986 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest took place in Bergen. Bergen was the host city for the 2017 UCI Road World Championships. The city is also a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the category of gastronomy since 2015.

 

Street art

Bergen is considered to be the street art capital of Norway. Famed artist Banksy visited the city in 2000 and inspired many to start creating street art. Soon after, the city brought up the most famous street artist in Norway: Dolk. His art can still be seen in several places in the city, and in 2009 the city council choose to preserve Dolk's work "Spray" with protective glass. In 2011, Bergen council launched a plan of action for street art in Bergen from 2011 to 2015 to ensure that "Bergen will lead the fashion for street art as an expression both in Norway and Scandinavia".

 

The Madam Felle (1831–1908) monument in Sandviken, is in honour of a Norwegian woman of German origin, who in the mid-19th century managed, against the will of the council, to maintain a counter of beer. A well-known restaurant of the same name is now situated at another location in Bergen. The monument was erected in 1990 by sculptor Kari Rolfsen, supported by an anonymous donor. Madam Felle, civil name Oline Fell, was remembered after her death in a popular song, possibly originally a folksong, "Kjenner Dokker Madam Felle?" by Lothar Lindtner and Rolf Berntzen on an album in 1977.

 

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway , is a Nordic , European country and an independent state in the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula . Geographically speaking, the country is long and narrow, and on the elongated coast towards the North Atlantic are Norway's well-known fjords . The Kingdom of Norway includes the main country (the mainland with adjacent islands within the baseline ), Jan Mayen and Svalbard . With these two Arctic areas, Norway covers a land area of ​​385,000 km² and has a population of approximately 5.5 million (2023). Mainland Norway borders Sweden in the east , Finland and Russia in the northeast .

 

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy , where Harald V has been king and head of state since 1991 , and Jonas Gahr Støre ( Ap ) has been prime minister since 2021 . Norway is a unitary state , with two administrative levels below the state: counties and municipalities . The Sami part of the population has, through the Sami Parliament and the Finnmark Act , to a certain extent self-government and influence over traditionally Sami areas. Although Norway has rejected membership of the European Union through two referendums , through the EEA Agreement Norway has close ties with the Union, and through NATO with the United States . Norway is a significant contributor to the United Nations (UN), and has participated with soldiers in several foreign operations mandated by the UN. Norway is among the states that have participated from the founding of the UN , NATO , the Council of Europe , the OSCE and the Nordic Council , and in addition to these is a member of the EEA , the World Trade Organization , the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and is part of the Schengen area .

 

Norway is rich in many natural resources such as oil , gas , minerals , timber , seafood , fresh water and hydropower . Since the beginning of the 20th century, these natural conditions have given the country the opportunity for an increase in wealth that few other countries can now enjoy, and Norwegians have the second highest average income in the world, measured in GDP per capita, as of 2022. The petroleum industry accounts for around 14% of Norway's gross domestic product as of 2018. Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and gas per capita outside the Middle East. However, the number of employees linked to this industry fell from approx. 232,000 in 2013 to 207,000 in 2015.

 

In Norway, these natural resources have been managed for socially beneficial purposes. The country maintains a welfare model in line with the other Nordic countries. Important service areas such as health and higher education are state-funded, and the country has an extensive welfare system for its citizens. Public expenditure in 2018 is approx. 50% of GDP, and the majority of these expenses are related to education, healthcare, social security and welfare. Since 2001 and until 2021, when the country took second place, the UN has ranked Norway as the world's best country to live in . From 2010, Norway is also ranked at the top of the EIU's democracy index . Norway ranks third on the UN's World Happiness Report for the years 2016–2018, behind Finland and Denmark , a report published in March 2019.

 

The majority of the population is Nordic. In the last couple of years, immigration has accounted for more than half of population growth. The five largest minority groups are Norwegian-Poles , Lithuanians , Norwegian-Swedes , Norwegian-Syrians including Syrian Kurds and Norwegian-Pakistani .

 

Norway's national day is 17 May, on this day in 1814 the Norwegian Constitution was dated and signed by the presidency of the National Assembly at Eidsvoll . It is stipulated in the law of 26 April 1947 that 17 May are national public holidays. The Sami national day is 6 February. "Yes, we love this country" is Norway's national anthem, the song was written in 1859 by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910).

 

Norway's history of human settlement goes back at least 10,000 years, to the Late Paleolithic , the first period of the Stone Age . Archaeological finds of settlements along the entire Norwegian coast have so far been dated back to 10,400 before present (BP), the oldest find is today considered to be a settlement at Pauler in Brunlanes , Vestfold .

For a period these settlements were considered to be the remains of settlers from Doggerland , an area which today lies beneath the North Sea , but which was once a land bridge connecting today's British Isles with Danish Jutland . But the archaeologists who study the initial phase of the settlement in what is today Norway reckon that the first people who came here followed the coast along what is today Bohuslân. That they arrived in some form of boat is absolutely certain, and there is much evidence that they could easily move over large distances.

 

Since the last Ice Age, there has been continuous settlement in Norway. It cannot be ruled out that people lived in Norway during the interglacial period , but no trace of such a population or settlement has been found.

 

The Stone Age lasted a long time; half of the time that our country has been populated. There are no written accounts of what life was like back then. The knowledge we have has been painstakingly collected through investigations of places where people have stayed and left behind objects that we can understand have been processed by human hands. This field of knowledge is called archaeology . The archaeologists interpret their findings and the history of the surrounding landscape. In our country, the uplift after the Ice Age is fundamental. The history of the settlements at Pauler is no more than fifteen years old.

 

The Fosna culture settled parts of Norway sometime between 10,000–8,000 BC. (see Stone Age in Norway ). The dating of rock carvings is set to Neolithic times (in Norway between 4000 BC to 1700 BC) and show activities typical of hunters and gatherers .

 

Agriculture with livestock and arable farming was introduced in the Neolithic. Swad farming where the farmers move when the field does not produce the expected yield.

 

More permanent and persistent farm settlements developed in the Bronze Age (1700 BC to 500 BC) and the Iron Age . The earliest runes have been found on an arrowhead dated to around 200 BC. Many more inscriptions are dated to around 800, and a number of petty kingdoms developed during these centuries. In prehistoric times, there were no fixed national borders in the Nordic countries and Norway did not exist as a state. The population in Norway probably fell to year 0.

 

Events in this time period, the centuries before the year 1000, are glimpsed in written sources. Although the sagas were written down in the 13th century, many hundreds of years later, they provide a glimpse into what was already a distant past. The story of the fimbul winter gives us a historical picture of something that happened and which in our time, with the help of dendrochronology , can be interpreted as a natural disaster in the year 536, created by a volcanic eruption in El Salvador .

 

In the period between 800 and 1066 there was a significant expansion and it is referred to as the Viking Age . During this period, Norwegians, as Swedes and Danes also did, traveled abroad in longships with sails as explorers, traders, settlers and as Vikings (raiders and pirates ). By the middle of the 11th century, the Norwegian kingship had been firmly established, building its right as descendants of Harald Hårfagre and then as heirs of Olav the Holy . The Norwegian kings, and their subjects, now professed Christianity . In the time around Håkon Håkonsson , in the time after the civil war , there was a small renaissance in Norway with extensive literary activity and diplomatic activity with Europe. The black dew came to Norway in 1349 and killed around half of the population. The entire state apparatus and Norway then entered a period of decline.

 

Between 1396 and 1536, Norway was part of the Kalmar Union , and from 1536 until 1814 Norway had been reduced to a tributary part of Denmark , named as the Personal Union of Denmark-Norway . This staff union entered into an alliance with Napoléon Bonaparte with a war that brought bad times and famine in 1812 . In 1814, Denmark-Norway lost the Anglophone Wars , part of the Napoleonic Wars , and the Danish king was forced to cede Norway to the king of Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel on 14 January of that year. After a Norwegian attempt at independence, Norway was forced into a loose union with Sweden, but where Norway was allowed to create its own constitution, the Constitution of 1814 . In this period, Norwegian, romantic national feeling flourished, and the Norwegians tried to develop and establish their own national self-worth. The union with Sweden was broken in 1905 after it had been threatened with war, and Norway became an independent kingdom with its own monarch, Haakon VII .

 

Norway remained neutral during the First World War , and at the outbreak of the Second World War, Norway again declared itself neutral, but was invaded by National Socialist Germany on 9 April 1940 .

 

Norway became a member of the Western defense alliance NATO in 1949 . Two attempts to join the EU were voted down in referendums by small margins in 1972 and 1994 . Norway has been a close ally of the United States in the post-war period. Large discoveries of oil and natural gas in the North Sea at the end of the 1960s led to tremendous economic growth in the country, which is still ongoing. Traditional industries such as fishing are also part of Norway's economy.

 

Stone Age (before 1700 BC)

When most of the ice disappeared, vegetation spread over the landscape and due to a warm climate around 2000-3000 BC. the forest grew much taller than in modern times. Land uplift after the ice age led to a number of fjords becoming lakes and dry land. The first people probably came from the south along the coast of the Kattegat and overland into Finnmark from the east. The first people probably lived by gathering, hunting and trapping. A good number of Stone Age settlements have been found which show that such hunting and trapping people stayed for a long time in the same place or returned to the same place regularly. Large amounts of gnawed bones show that they lived on, among other things, reindeer, elk, small game and fish.

 

Flintstone was imported from Denmark and apart from small natural deposits along the southern coast, all flintstone in Norway is transported by people. At Espevær, greenstone was quarried for tools in the Stone Age, and greenstone tools from Espevær have been found over large parts of Western Norway. Around 2000-3000 BC the usual farm animals such as cows and sheep were introduced to Norway. Livestock probably meant a fundamental change in society in that part of the people had to be permanent residents or live a semi-nomadic life. Livestock farming may also have led to conflict with hunters.

 

The oldest traces of people in what is today Norway have been found at Pauler , a farm in Brunlanes in Larvik municipality in Vestfold . In 2007 and 2008, the farm has given its name to a number of Stone Age settlements that have been excavated and examined by archaeologists from the Cultural History Museum at UiO. The investigations have been carried out in connection with the new route for the E18 motorway west of Farris. The oldest settlement, located more than 127 m above sea level, is dated to be about 10,400 years old (uncalibrated, more than 11,000 years in real calendar years). From here, the ice sheet was perhaps visible when people settled here. This locality has been named Pauler I, and is today considered to be the oldest confirmed human traces in Norway to date. The place is in the mountains above the Pauler tunnel on the E18 between Larvik and Porsgrunn . The pioneer settlement is a term archaeologists have adopted for the oldest settlement. The archaeologists have speculated about where they came from, the first people in what is today Norway. It has been suggested that they could come by boat or perhaps across the ice from Doggerland or the North Sea, but there is now a large consensus that they came north along what is today the Bohuslän coast. The Fosna culture , the Komsa culture and the Nøstvet culture are the traditional terms for hunting cultures from the Stone Age. One thing is certain - getting to the water was something they mastered, the first people in our country. Therefore, within a short time they were able to use our entire long coast.

 

In the New Stone Age (4000 BC–1700 BC) there is a theory that a new people immigrated to the country, the so-called Stone Ax People . Rock carvings from this period show motifs from hunting and fishing , which were still important industries. From this period, a megalithic tomb has been found in Østfold .

It is uncertain whether there were organized societies or state-like associations in the Stone Age in Norway. Findings from settlements indicate that many lived together and that this was probably more than one family so that it was a slightly larger, organized herd.

 

Finnmark

In prehistoric times, animal husbandry and agriculture were of little economic importance in Finnmark. Livelihoods in Finnmark were mainly based on fish, gathering, hunting and trapping, and eventually domestic reindeer herding became widespread in the Middle Ages. Archaeological finds from the Stone Age have been referred to as the Komsa culture and comprise around 5,000 years of settlement. Finnmark probably got its first settlement around 8000 BC. It is believed that the coastal areas became ice-free 11,000 years BC and the fjord areas around 9,000 years BC. after which willows, grass, heather, birch and pine came into being. Finnmarksvidda was covered by pine forest around 6000 BC. After the Ice Age, the land rose around 80 meters in the inner fjord areas (Alta, Tana, Varanger). Due to ice melting in the polar region, the sea rose in the period 6400–3800 BC. and in areas with little land elevation, some settlements from the first part of the Stone Age were flooded. On Sørøya, the net sea level rise was 12 to 14 meters and many residential areas were flooded.

 

According to Bjørnar Olsen , there are many indications of a connection between the oldest settlement in Western Norway (the " Fosnakulturen ") and that in Finnmark, but it is uncertain in which direction the settlement took place. In the earliest part of the Stone Age, settlement in Finnmark was probably concentrated in the coastal areas, and these only reflected a lifestyle with great mobility and no permanent dwellings. The inner regions, such as Pasvik, were probably used seasonally. The archaeologically proven settlements from the Stone Age in inner Finnmark and Troms are linked to lakes and large watercourses. The oldest petroglyphs in Alta are usually dated to 4200 BC, that is, the Neolithic . Bjørnar Olsen believes that the oldest can be up to 2,000 years older than this.

 

From around 4000 BC a slow deforestation of Finnmark began and around 1800 BC the vegetation distribution was roughly the same as in modern times. The change in vegetation may have increased the distance between the reindeer's summer and winter grazing. The uplift continued slowly from around 4000 BC. at the same time as sea level rise stopped.

 

According to Gutorm Gjessing, the settlement in Finnmark and large parts of northern Norway in the Neolithic was semi-nomadic with movement between four seasonal settlements (following the pattern of life in Sami siida in historical times): On the outer coast in summer (fishing and seal catching) and inland in winter (hunting for reindeer, elk and bear). Povl Simonsen believed instead that the winter residence was in the inner fjord area in a village-like sod house settlement. Bjørnar Olsen believes that at the end of the Stone Age there was a relatively settled population along the coast, while inland there was less settlement and a more mobile lifestyle.

 

Bronze Age (1700 BC–500 BC)

Bronze was used for tools in Norway from around 1500 BC. Bronze is a mixture of tin and copper , and these metals were introduced because they were not mined in the country at the time. Bronze is believed to have been a relatively expensive material. The Bronze Age in Norway can be divided into two phases:

 

Early Bronze Age (1700–1100 BC)

Younger Bronze Age (1100–500 BC)

For the prehistoric (unwritten) era, there is limited knowledge about social conditions and possible state formations. From the Bronze Age, there are large burial mounds of stone piles along the coast of Vestfold and Agder, among others. It is likely that only chieftains or other great men could erect such grave monuments and there was probably some form of organized society linked to these. In the Bronze Age, society was more organized and stratified than in the Stone Age. Then a rich class of chieftains emerged who had close connections with southern Scandinavia. The settlements became more permanent and people adopted horses and ard . They acquired bronze status symbols, lived in longhouses and people were buried in large burial mounds . Petroglyphs from the Bronze Age indicate that humans practiced solar cultivation.

 

Finnmark

In the last millennium BC the climate became cooler and the pine forest disappears from the coast; pine forests, for example, were only found in the innermost part of the Altafjord, while the outer coast was almost treeless. Around the year 0, the limit for birch forest was south of Kirkenes. Animals with forest habitats (elk, bear and beaver) disappeared and the reindeer probably established their annual migration routes sometime at that time. In the period 1800–900 BC there were significantly more settlements in and utilization of the hinterland was particularly noticeable on Finnmarksvidda. From around 1800 BC until year 0 there was a significant increase in contact between Finnmark and areas in the east including Karelia (where metals were produced including copper) and central and eastern Russia. The youngest petroglyphs in Alta show far more boats than the earlier phases and the boats are reminiscent of types depicted in petroglyphs in southern Scandinavia. It is unclear what influence southern Scandinavian societies had as far north as Alta before the year 0. Many of the cultural features that are considered typical Sami in modern times were created or consolidated in the last millennium BC, this applies, among other things, to the custom of burying in brick chambers in stone urns. The Mortensnes burial ground may have been used for 2000 years until around 1600 AD.

 

Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 1050 AD)

 

The Einangsteinen is one of the oldest Norwegian runestones; it is from the 4th century

 

Simultaneous production of Vikings

Around 500 years BC the researchers reckon that the Bronze Age will be replaced by the Iron Age as iron takes over as the most important material for weapons and tools. Bronze, wood and stone were still used. Iron was cheaper than bronze, easier to work than flint , and could be used for many purposes; iron probably became common property. Iron could, among other things, be used to make solid and sharp axes which made it much easier to fell trees. In the Iron Age, gold and silver were also used partly for decoration and partly as means of payment. It is unknown which language was used in Norway before our era. From around the year 0 until around the year 800, everyone in Scandinavia (except the Sami) spoke Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Subsequently, several different languages ​​developed in this area that were only partially mutually intelligible. The Iron Age is divided into several periods:

 

Early Iron Age

Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 0)

Roman Iron Age (c. 0–c. AD 400)

Migration period (approx. 400–600). In the migration period (approx. 400–600), new peoples came to Norway, and ruins of fortress buildings etc. are interpreted as signs that there has been talk of a violent invasion.

Younger Iron Age

Merovingian period (500–800)

 

The Viking Age (793–1066)

Norwegian Vikings go on plundering expeditions and trade voyages around the coastal countries of Western Europe . Large groups of Norwegians emigrate to the British Isles , Iceland and Greenland . Harald Hårfagre starts a unification process of Norway late in the 8th century , which was completed by Harald Hardråde in the 1060s . The country was Christianized under the kings Olav Tryggvason , fell in the battle of Svolder ( 1000 ) and Olav Haraldsson (the saint), fell in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 .

 

Sources of prehistoric times

Shrinking glaciers in the high mountains, including in Jotunheimen and Breheimen , have from around the year 2000 uncovered objects from the Viking Age and earlier. These are objects of organic material that have been preserved by the ice and that elsewhere in nature are broken down in a few months. The finds are getting older as the melting makes the archaeologists go deeper into the ice. About half of all archaeological discoveries on glaciers in the world are made in Oppland . In 2013, a 3,400-year-old shoe and a robe from the year 300 were found. Finds at Lomseggen in Lom published in 2020 revealed, among other things, well-preserved horseshoes used on a mountain pass. Many hundreds of items include preserved clothing, knives, whisks, mittens, leather shoes, wooden chests and horse equipment. A piece of cloth dated to the year 1000 has preserved its original colour. In 2014, a wooden ski from around the year 700 was found in Reinheimen . The ski is 172 cm long and 14 cm wide, with preserved binding of leather and wicker.

 

Pytheas from Massalia is the oldest known account of what was probably the coast of Norway, perhaps somewhere on the coast of Møre. Pytheas visited Britannia around 325 BC. and traveled further north to a country by the "Ice Sea". Pytheas described the short summer night and the midnight sun farther north. He wrote, among other things, that people there made a drink from grain and honey. Caesar wrote in his work about the Gallic campaign about the Germanic tribe Haruders. Other Roman sources around the year 0 mention the land of the Cimbri (Jutland) and the Cimbri headlands ( Skagen ) and that the sources stated that Cimbri and Charyds lived in this area. Some of these peoples may have immigrated to Norway and there become known as hordes (as in Hordaland). Sources from the Mediterranean area referred to the islands of Scandia, Scandinavia and Thule ("the outermost of all islands"). The Roman historian Tacitus wrote around the year 100 a work about Germania and mentioned the people of Scandia, the Sviones. Ptolemy wrote around the year 150 that the Kharudes (Hordes) lived further north than all the Cimbri, in the north lived the Finnoi (Finns or Sami) and in the south the Gutai (Goths). The Nordic countries and Norway were outside the Roman Empire , which dominated Europe at the time. The Gothic-born historian Jordanes wrote in the 5th century about 13 tribes or people groups in Norway, including raumaricii (probably Romerike ), ragnaricii ( Ranrike ) and finni or skretefinni (skrid finner or ski finner, i.e. Sami) as well as a number of unclear groups. Prokopios wrote at the same time about Thule north of the land of the Danes and Slavs, Thule was ten times as big as Britannia and the largest of all the islands. In Thule, the sun was up 40 days straight in the summer. After the migration period , southern Europeans' accounts of northern Europe became fuller and more reliable.

 

Settlement in prehistoric times

Norway has around 50,000 farms with their own names. Farm names have persisted for a long time, over 1000 years, perhaps as much as 2000 years. The name researchers have arranged different types of farm names chronologically, which provides a basis for determining when the place was used by people or received a permanent settlement. Uncompounded landscape names such as Haug, Eid, Vik and Berg are believed to be the oldest. Archaeological traces indicate that some areas have been inhabited earlier than assumed from the farm name. Burial mounds also indicate permanent settlement. For example, the burial ground at Svartelva in Løten was used from around the year 0 to the year 1000 when Christianity took over. The first farmers probably used large areas for inland and outland, and new farms were probably established based on some "mother farms". Names such as By (or Bø) show that it is an old place of residence. From the older Iron Age, names with -heim (a common Germanic word meaning place of residence) and -stad tell of settlement, while -vin and -land tell of the use of the place. Farm names in -heim are often found as -um , -eim or -em as in Lerum and Seim, there are often large farms in the center of the village. New farm names with -city and -country were also established in the Viking Age . The first farmers probably used the best areas. The largest burial grounds, the oldest archaeological finds and the oldest farm names are found where the arable land is richest and most spacious.

 

It is unclear whether the settlement expansion in Roman times, migrations and the Iron Age is due to immigration or internal development and population growth. Among other things, it is difficult to demonstrate where in Europe the immigrants have come from. The permanent residents had both fields (where grain was grown) and livestock that grazed in the open fields, but it is uncertain which of these was more important. Population growth from around the year 200 led to more utilization of open land, for example in the form of settlements in the mountains. During the migration period, it also seems that in parts of the country it became common to have cluster gardens or a form of village settlement.

 

Norwegian expansion northwards

From around the year 200, there was a certain migration by sea from Rogaland and Hordaland to Nordland and Sør-Troms. Those who moved settled down as a settled Iron Age population and became dominant over the original population which may have been Sami . The immigrant Norwegians, Bumen , farmed with livestock that were fed inside in the winter as well as some grain cultivation and fishing. The northern border of the Norwegians' settlement was originally at the Toppsundet near Harstad and around the year 500 there was a Norwegian settlement to Malangsgapet. That was as far north as it was possible to grow grain at the time. Malangen was considered the border between Hålogaland and Finnmork until around 1400 . Further into the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, there was immigration and settlement of Norwegian speakers along the coast north of Malangen. Around the year 800, Norwegians lived along the entire outer coast to Vannøy . The Norwegians partly copied Sami livelihoods such as whaling, fur hunting and reindeer husbandry. It was probably this area between Malangen and Vannøy that was Ottar from the Hålogaland area. In the Viking Age, there were also some Norwegian settlements further north and east. East of the North Cape are the scattered archaeological finds of Norwegian settlement in the Viking Age. There are Norwegian names for fjords and islands from the Viking Age, including fjord names with "-anger". Around the year 1050, there were Norwegian settlements on the outer coast of Western Finnmark. Traders and tax collectors traveled even further.

 

North of Malangen there were Norse farming settlements in the Iron Age. Malangen was considered Finnmark's western border until 1300. There are some archaeological traces of Norse activity around the coast from Tromsø to Kirkenes in the Viking Age. Around Tromsø, the research indicates a Norse/Sami mixed culture on the coast.

 

From the year 1100 and the next 200–300 years, there are no traces of Norwegian settlement north and east of Tromsø. It is uncertain whether this is due to depopulation, whether it is because the Norwegians further north were not Christianized or because there were no churches north of Lenvik or Tromsø . Norwegian settlement in the far north appears from sources from the 14th century. In the Hanseatic period , the settlement was developed into large areas specialized in commercial fishing, while earlier (in the Viking Age) there had been farms with a combination of fishing and agriculture. In 1307 , a fortress and the first church east of Tromsø were built in Vardø . Vardø became a small Norwegian town, while Vadsø remained Sami. Norwegian settlements and churches appeared along the outermost coast in the Middle Ages. After the Reformation, perhaps as a result of a decline in fish stocks or fish prices, there were Norwegian settlements in the inner fjord areas such as Lebesby in Laksefjord. Some fishing villages at the far end of the coast were abandoned for good. In the interior of Finnmark, there was no national border for a long time and Kautokeino and Karasjok were joint Norwegian-Swedish areas with strong Swedish influence. The border with Finland was established in 1751 and with Russia in 1826.

 

On a Swedish map from 1626, Norway's border is indicated at Malangen, while Sweden with this map showed a desire to control the Sami area which had been a common area.

 

The term Northern Norway only came into use at the end of the 19th century and administratively the area was referred to as Tromsø Diocese when Tromsø became a bishopric in 1840. There had been different designations previously: Hålogaland originally included only Helgeland and when Norse settlement spread north in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, Hålogaland was used for the area north approximately to Malangen , while Finnmark or "Finnmarken", "the land of the Sami", lay outside. The term Northern Norway was coined at a cafe table in Kristiania in 1884 by members of the Nordlændingernes Forening and was first commonly used in the interwar period as it eventually supplanted "Hålogaland".

 

State formation

The battle in Hafrsfjord in the year 872 has long been regarded as the day when Norway became a kingdom. The year of the battle is uncertain (may have been 10-20 years later). The whole of Norway was not united in that battle: the process had begun earlier and continued a couple of hundred years later. This means that the geographical area became subject to a political authority and became a political unit. The geographical area was perceived as an area as it is known, among other things, from Ottar from Hålogaland's account for King Alfred of Wessex around the year 880. Ottar described "the land of the Norwegians" as very long and narrow, and it was narrowest in the far north. East of the wasteland in the south lay Sveoland and in the north lay Kvenaland in the east. When Ottar sailed south along the land from his home ( Malangen ) to Skiringssal, he always had Norway ("Nordveg") on his port side and the British Isles on his starboard side. The journey took a good month. Ottar perceived "Nordveg" as a geographical unit, but did not imply that it was a political unit. Ottar separated Norwegians from Swedes and Danes. It is unclear why Ottar perceived the population spread over such a large area as a whole. It is unclear whether Norway as a geographical term or Norwegians as the name of a ethnic group is the oldest. The Norwegians had a common language which in the centuries before Ottar did not differ much from the language of Denmark and Sweden.

 

According to Sverre Steen, it is unlikely that Harald Hårfagre was able to control this entire area as one kingdom. The saga of Harald was written 300 years later and at his death Norway was several smaller kingdoms. Harald probably controlled a larger area than anyone before him and at most Harald's kingdom probably included the coast from Trøndelag to Agder and Vestfold as well as parts of Viken . There were probably several smaller kingdoms of varying extent before Harald and some of these are reflected in traditional landscape names such as Ranrike and Ringerike . Landscape names of "-land" (Rogaland) and "-mark" (Hedmark) as well as names such as Agder and Sogn may have been political units before Harald.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the national assembly was completed at the earliest at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and the introduction of Christianity was probably a significant factor in the establishment of Norway as a state. Håkon I the good Adalsteinsfostre introduced the leasehold system where the "coastal land" (as far as the salmon went up the rivers) was divided into ship raiders who were to provide a longship with soldiers and supplies. The leidange was probably introduced as a defense against the Danes. The border with the Danes was traditionally at the Göta älv and several times before and after Harald Hårfagre the Danes had control over central parts of Norway.

 

Christianity was known and existed in Norway before Olav Haraldson's time. The spread occurred both from the south (today's Denmark and northern Germany) and from the west (England and Ireland). Ansgar of Bremen , called the "Apostle of the North", worked in Sweden, but he was never in Norway and probably had little influence in the country. Viking expeditions brought the Norwegians of that time into contact with Christian countries and some were baptized in England, Ireland and northern France. Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldson were Vikings who returned home. The first Christians in Norway were also linked to pre-Christian local religion, among other things, by mixing Christian symbols with symbols of Odin and other figures from Norse religion.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the introduction of Christianity in Norway should not be perceived as a nationwide revival. At Mostratinget, Christian law was introduced as law in the country and later incorporated into the laws of the individual jurisdictions. Christianity primarily involved new forms in social life, among other things exposure and images of gods were prohibited, it was forbidden to "put out" unwanted infants (to let them die), and it was forbidden to have multiple wives. The church became a nationwide institution with a special group of officials tasked with protecting the church and consolidating the new religion. According to Sverre Steen, Christianity and the church in the Middle Ages should therefore be considered together, and these became a new unifying factor in the country. The church and Christianity linked Norway to Roman Catholic Europe with Church Latin as the common language, the same time reckoning as the rest of Europe and the church in Norway was arranged much like the churches in Denmark, Sweden and England. Norway received papal approval in 1070 and became its own church province in 1152 with Archbishop Nidaros .

 

With Christianity, the country got three social powers: the peasants (organized through the things), the king with his officials and the church with the clergy. The things are the oldest institution: At allthings all armed men had the right to attend (in part an obligation to attend) and at lagthings met emissaries from an area (that is, the lagthings were representative assemblies). The Thing both ruled in conflicts and established laws. The laws were memorized by the participants and written down around the year 1000 or later in the Gulationsloven , Frostatingsloven , Eidsivatingsloven and Borgartingsloven . The person who had been successful at the hearing had to see to the implementation of the judgment themselves.

 

Early Middle Ages (1050s–1184)

The early Middle Ages is considered in Norwegian history to be the period between the end of the Viking Age around 1050 and the coronation of King Sverre in 1184 . The beginning of the period can be dated differently, from around the year 1000 when the Christianization of the country took place and up to 1100 when the Viking Age was over from an archaeological point of view. From 1035 to 1130 it was a time of (relative) internal peace in Norway, even several of the kings attempted campaigns abroad, including in 1066 and 1103 .

 

During this period, the church's organization was built up. This led to a gradual change in religious customs. Religion went from being a domestic matter to being regulated by common European Christian law and the royal power gained increased power and influence. Slavery (" servitude ") was gradually abolished. The population grew rapidly during this period, as the thousands of farm names ending in -rud show.

 

The urbanization of Norway is a historical process that has slowly but surely changed Norway from the early Viking Age to today, from a country based on agriculture and sea salvage, to increasingly trade and industry. As early as the ninth century, the country got its first urban community, and in the eleventh century we got the first permanent cities.

 

In the 1130s, civil war broke out . This was due to a power struggle and that anyone who claimed to be the king's son could claim the right to the throne. The disputes escalated into extensive year-round warfare when Sverre Sigurdsson started a rebellion against the church's and the landmen's candidate for the throne , Magnus Erlingsson .

 

Emergence of cities

The oldest Norwegian cities probably emerged from the end of the 9th century. Oslo, Bergen and Nidaros became episcopal seats, which stimulated urban development there, and the king built churches in Borg , Konghelle and Tønsberg. Hamar and Stavanger became new episcopal seats and are referred to in the late 12th century as towns together with the trading places Veøy in Romsdal and Kaupanger in Sogn. In the late Middle Ages, Borgund (on Sunnmøre), Veøy (in Romsdalsfjorden) and Vågan (in Lofoten) were referred to as small trading places. Urbanization in Norway occurred in few places compared to the neighboring countries, only 14 places appear as cities before 1350. Stavanger became a bishopric around 1120–1130, but it is unclear whether the place was already a city then. The fertile Jæren and outer Ryfylke were probably relatively densely populated at that time. A particularly large concentration of Irish artefacts from the Viking Age has been found in Stavanger and Nord-Jæren.

 

It has been difficult to estimate the population in the Norwegian medieval cities, but it is considered certain that the cities grew rapidly in the Middle Ages. Oscar Albert Johnsen estimated the city's population before the Black Death at 20,000, of which 7,000 in Bergen, 3,000 in Nidaros, 2,000 in Oslo and 1,500 in Tunsberg. Based on archaeological research, Lunden estimates that Oslo had around 1,500 inhabitants in 250 households in the year 1300. Bergen was built up more densely and, with the concentration of exports there, became Norway's largest city in a special position for several hundred years. Knut Helle suggests a city population of 20,000 at most in the High Middle Ages, of which almost half in Bergen.

 

The Bjarkøyretten regulated the conditions in cities (especially Bergen and Nidaros) and in trading places, and for Nidaros had many of the same provisions as the Frostating Act . Magnus Lagabøte's city law replaced the bjarkøretten and from 1276 regulated the settlement in Bergen and with corresponding laws also drawn up for Oslo, Nidaros and Tunsberg. The city law applied within the city's roof area . The City Act determined that the city's public streets consisted of wide commons (perpendicular to the shoreline) and ran parallel to the shoreline, similarly in Nidaros and Oslo. The roads were small streets of up to 3 cubits (1.4 metres) and linked to the individual property. From the Middle Ages, the Norwegian cities were usually surrounded by wooden fences. The urban development largely consisted of low wooden houses which stood in contrast to the relatively numerous and dominant churches and monasteries built in stone.

 

The City Act and supplementary provisions often determined where in the city different goods could be traded, in Bergen, for example, cattle and sheep could only be traded on the Square, and fish only on the Square or directly from the boats at the quayside. In Nidaros, the blacksmiths were required to stay away from the densely populated areas due to the risk of fire, while the tanners had to stay away from the settlements due to the strong smell. The City Act also attempted to regulate the influx of people into the city (among other things to prevent begging in the streets) and had provisions on fire protection. In Oslo, from the 13th century or earlier, it was common to have apartment buildings consisting of single buildings on a couple of floors around a courtyard with access from the street through a gate room. Oslo's medieval apartment buildings were home to one to four households. In the urban farms, livestock could be kept, including pigs and cows, while pastures and fields were found in the city's rooftops . In the apartment buildings there could be several outbuildings such as warehouses, barns and stables. Archaeological excavations show that much of the buildings in medieval Oslo, Trondheim and Tønsberg resembled the oblong farms that have been preserved at Bryggen in Bergen . The land boundaries in Oslo appear to have persisted for many hundreds of years, in Bergen right from the Middle Ages to modern times.

 

High Middle Ages (1184–1319)

After civil wars in the 12th century, the country had a relative heyday in the 13th century. Iceland and Greenland came under the royal authority in 1262 , and the Norwegian Empire reached its greatest extent under Håkon IV Håkonsson . The last king of Haraldsätten, Håkon V Magnusson , died sonless in 1319 . Until the 17th century, Norway stretched all the way down to the mouth of Göta älv , which was then Norway's border with Sweden and Denmark.

 

Just before the Black Death around 1350, there were between 65,000 and 85,000 farms in the country, and there had been a strong growth in the number of farms from 1050, especially in Eastern Norway. In the High Middle Ages, the church or ecclesiastical institutions controlled 40% of the land in Norway, while the aristocracy owned around 20% and the king owned 7%. The church and monasteries received land through gifts from the king and nobles, or through inheritance and gifts from ordinary farmers.

 

Settlement and demography in the Middle Ages

Before the Black Death, there were more and more farms in Norway due to farm division and clearing. The settlement spread to more marginal agricultural areas higher inland and further north. Eastern Norway had the largest areas to take off and had the most population growth towards the High Middle Ages. Along the coast north of Stad, settlement probably increased in line with the extent of fishing. The Icelandic Rimbegla tells around the year 1200 that the border between Finnmark (the land of the Sami) and resident Norwegians in the interior was at Malangen , while the border all the way out on the

Muggia (Venetian, Triestine dialect: Muja; German: Mulgs; Friulian: Mugle; Slovene: Milje) is an Italian town and comune in the south-west of the Province of Trieste, in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia on the border with Slovenia. Lying on the eastern flank of the Gulf of Trieste in the northern Adriatic Sea, Muggia is the only Italian port town in Istria. The town's architecture is marked by its Venetian and Austrian history, and its harbour hosts a modern 500-berth marina for yachts (Porto San Rocco).

 

Muggia lies in northern Istria. Its territory, limited on the sea-side by a shoreline of more than 7 kilometres (4 mi) featuring a coastal road and on the border side by a hill system, Monti di Muggia, including Mt. Castellier, Mt. S. Michele, Mt. Zuc and Monte d'Oro, that dominate over a vast landscape of Triestinian and Istrian coast, is characterized by a rich sub-continental vegetation of both Karstic and Istrian type.

 

It has a border crossing, known as San Bartolomeo, with Slovenia and the extreme east of the comune at Lazaretto. The Slovenian border crossing is called Lazaret in the Municipality of Koper.

Muggia was attested in historical sources as Mugla in AD 933. The origin of the name Muggia is uncertain; it may have arisen from Latin mūtila 'cut short, mutilated', in reference to a short projection from the land or a cape (cf. the cape north of Zadar, attested in Latin as Muchla bona in AD 1250, now Croatian Oštri rat). Another possibility is derivation from Latin *mūcla 'milestone', and another hypothesis is that it comes from Vulgar Latin *Lamūc(l)a 'small swamp'. The Slovene name Milje was borrowed from Proto-Romance Mugla (developing via *Mygla > *Migla > Milje).

 

Muggia originated as a prehistoric fortified village (castelliere), around 8th-7th century BC. The territory was conquered in 178–177 BC by the Romans, who created here a settlement (Castrum Muglae). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Muggia was under Ostrogoth, Lombard, Byzantine, Avar and Frank dominations, until, in 931, king Hugh of Italy donated it to the Patriarch of Aquileia.

 

Before the year 1000 a new settlement was built on the seashore. After the 13th century the new village, now grown to the status of city, pronounced itself a municipality and defined its territory as bordering with those of Trieste and Koper, but stayed still politically bound to the Patriarchy of Aquileia. From this period are the cathedral and the city hall, the latter having been rebuilt in the last century.[clarification needed] In 1420 it became part of the Republic of Venice.

 

After Venice's fall in 1797, Muggia became part of the Austrian Empire, under which it developed an important naval shipbuilding industry which flourished until after World War II. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian period it remained part of the Margravate of Istria, first within the Kingdom of Illyria and then, after 1861, within the Austrian Littoral. The municipality of Muggia historically extended further south than today, including several settlements that are now part of Slovenia: Ankaran, Hrvatini, Elerji, Škofije, and Plavje.

 

After World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the town was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and incorporated into the Province of Trieste. In the 1930s, the area developed a strong Communist underground activity against Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. In 1945, it was occupied by the Yugoslav People's Army and from 1947 to 1954 it was part of the Free Territory of Trieste, a formally independent territory directly administered by the United Nations. The territory was internally divided into two zones ruled by military governors - Muggia ended up in the northern Zone A ruled by Anglo-Americans, while the southern Zone B was ruled by the Yugoslav army. In 1954 the two zones were handed over to Italian and Yugoslav civilian governments and de facto annexed by the two countries in an arrangement finally formalized in the 1975 Treaty of Osimo, which established the former borders between Zones as the new Italy-Yugoslavia international border. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s it formed the border between Italy and the newly independent Slovenia. Following Slovenia's accession to the European Union in May 2004 and the passport-free Schengen Area in January 2008, all border controls have been removed, making the Italian-Slovenian border which runs just south and east of Muggia, practically invisible to travellers.

Muggia provides many evident traces of its Venetian traditions and origin, as showed by the dialect, the gastronomic traditions, the gothic-venetian style of some houses, the devious "calli", the loggias, the ogive arches, the ancient coats of arms on the façades but mostly the main square, a true Venetian "campiello".

 

Memories of its early ages include an important pre-historic "castelliere" on Mt. Castellier (S. Barbara) and Roman (Archaeological Park of Castrum Muglae) and medieval remains in Muggia Vecchia (Old Muggia), once one of the guarding castles that in the 10th century were built to defend the Istrian border against the invasion of the Hungars.

 

The Castle of Muggia, destroyed in 1353 by the Triestines, retains several remains of the previous period such as the ruins of the walls. A tower dating back to 1374 was due to the Patriarch of Aquileia Marquard of Muggia. Later in 1735, under the government of the Republic of Venice, it was restored, but it was totally abandoned during the following century. The Castle was restored by its current owners, the sculptor Villi Bossi and his wife Gabriella, and may be visited upon request.

 

The most important art attraction is the little basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (10th-13th century), housing frescoes from the 14th-15th centuries.

   

The Blood Compact or Sandugo occurred on March 16, 1565 when Legaspi and Sikatuna entered into a native ritual of both shedding blood (“dugo” in the Visayan dialect) into a cup and then drinking the contents thereof. Henceforth the Boholanos celebrated this special event although not as consistently as being done now. Before, there were celebrations but they were not that big and did not catch the fancy of foreign guests. There were times when the event was clearly forgotten.

    

During the incumbency of Mr. Constancio Chatto Torralba as Provincial Governor of Bohol, from April 1975 to June 1992, the festival was given much attention and ever since gained impetus. Convinced of the importance of this historical event, Governor Torralba anointed the Sandugo Project and appointed Mr. Loy M. Palapos as Chairman.

   

The first Sandugo celebration was a success given limited time of preparation and the succeeding years witnessed its growth. Succeeding government officials promoted the project and supported its implementation. Eventually, it gained recognition not only in the province but nationwide and even abroad.

   

Now, this month-long celebration includes Trade-Agri Food Fair, nightly entertainment, and search for Miss Bohol Sandugo, Sandugo Punchfest, and the street parade with a street dancing competition and the re-enactment of the Blood Compact. Aside from that, church services are held, grand fireworks are displayed for all to see, and the parade involves colourful costumes and loud drum beats, cockfighting and sports tournaments.

   

The main highlights of the Sandugo Festival are the street parade followed by a street dancing competition and then the re-enactment of the Blood Compact. The street parade and subsequent competition is participated in by different high schools in Tagbilaran, including entries from Local Government Units (LGUs) or municipalities as well as guests from other cities and provinces.

   

Well decorated floats grace the parade and one of them usually carries the winners of the Miss Bohol Sandugo Pageant. Other floats are from the business sector and associations. On foot are the local officials and the police force. Each of the street dancing participants has choreographed dance patterns executed with the accompaniment of xylophones, drums, and trumpets. Costumes are bright and colourful including gadgets and paraphernalia such as banners and flags.

   

At first, this annual celebration was held in the month of March but has been moved to July to coincide with the celebration of the Tagbilaran Charter Day on July 1 and the Bohol Day that falls on July 22. It was also deemed proper to be celebrated in the month of July to coincide with the TBTK (Tigum Bol-anon Tibuok Kalibutan). The TBTK is a gathering of Boholanos from all over the world in Tagbilaran City which was earlier agreed upon to fall on this month. The concept is to hit three birds with one stone in one big month-long celebration.

 

The gathering of these big events under the month of July assures the province of hordes of visitors since hundreds and thousands of Boholanos, and now non-Boholanos as well, gather to witness the celebrations. Also many take part in the various competitions, search, parades and tournaments.

   

During this month and even up to August, Tagbilaran City is a hive of activity. Businesses prosper and the tourism industry reaches its highest peak with the influx of local and foreign visitors. The business sector, such as malls and department stores, adds to the festive spirit by lively decors and music in their establishments while competing in giving out the best sales pitch to the consuming public.

   

Local inventions and products find an outlet in the Trade-Agri Food Fair, showcasing the innovativeness and exceptional handiwork of Boholanos. Likewise, the fair gives the poor local folks the opportunity to establish a business of their own when demand for these products slowly gain momentum.

   

With the whole province participating in, this festival is now not only for historical purposes but for the enhancement of the living standards of each and every Boholano. Preparations may be excessive and very expensive yet the whole affair brings in the bucks, so to speak. Many foreign guests are lured to witness the festival and even to participate in some events. Reunions, which usually involve fund raising activities, bring in investments and much improvement of the Bohol skyline. From a sleepy sand unobtrusive province, Bohol has now become one of the top destinations of the country.

 

Modena ; Mòdna in Modenese dialect) is a city and comune (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. An ancient town, it is the seat of an archbishop, but is now best known as "the capital of engines", since the factories of the famous Italian sports car makers Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati are, or were, located here and all, except Lamborghini, have headquarters in the city or nearby. Lamborghini is headquartered not far away in Sant'Agata Bolognese, in the adjacent Province of Bologna. One of Ferrari's cars, the 360 Modena, was named after the town itself. Also, one of the colors for Ferraris is Modena yellow. The University of Modena, founded in 1175 and expanded by Francesco II d'Este in 1686, has traditional strengths in economics, medicine and law and is the second oldest Atheneum in Italy, sixth in the whole world[citation needed]. Italian officers are trained at the Italian Military Academy, located in Modena, and partly housed in the Baroque Ducal Palace. The Biblioteca Estense houses historical volumes and 3,000 manuscripts. Modena is well known in culinary circles for its production of balsamic vinegar. Famous Modenesi include Mary of Modena, the Queen consort of England and Scotland; operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) and soprano Mirella Freni, born in Modena itself; Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988) eponymous founder of the Ferrari motor company; the Catholic Priest and Senior Exorcist of Vatican Gabriele Amorth; and the rock singer Vasco Rossi who was born in Zocca, one of the 47 comuni in the Province of Modena

Def Jam / Columbia (1991)

 

Every Wednesday, in honor of Ed Lover Dance Day from Yo! MTV Raps, I take a break from rock and roll to write a little bit about hip hop. In the late 80s and early 90s hip hop ruled my musical life. During this often called 'Golden Era' I discovered so much incredible music. As I am slowly replacing the CDs I've had for twenty-five plus years with vinyl copies, I'm going to talk about some albums that had a really important impact on me during some very formative years.

 

Derelicts of Dialect came out during the summer of 1991, the summer between 8th grade and my freshman year of high school. I first became really and truly interest in hip hop when I was in 7th grade and Mama Said Knock You Out came out. I loved that song and credit it immensely with pushing me towards finding more hip hop that I liked. Even though I never ended up being that big of an LL Cool J fan, that one song is responsible for shifting the way I looked at music immeasurably.

 

Back to the summer of 1991. I was aware of 3rd Bass from "Gas Face" being played on Yo! MTV Raps, though I didn't pick up The Cactus Al/Bum until after I had gotten Derelicts. "Pop Goes The Weasel" was the first single from this new album and it got a lot of play on Yo! and eventually was in regular rotation on MTV. This was a long time ago and I may have the timing wrong, but I'm pretty sure that summer was when MTV was playing blocks of videos all the same genre. I remember sitting through trash waiting for more rap videos and 3rd Bass being a frequent part of them. That prompted me to buy the CD.

 

I don't know why, but I have an unusually clear memory of buying this CD when I was a kid. We went to this record store that was in a strip mall up where I grew up in Sussex County, NJ. It wasn't a cool or hip shop, it was just an independently owned record store that pretty much sold the same stuff you'd get at Sam Goody. It wasn't there long and I think this was the only thing I ever bought there. Anyway, I remember picking up the long box CD from a rack and being excited they were actually carrying it. Why is that memory so vivid? No clue. Nothing interesting happened, but that's when I bought this as a kid.

 

On to the vinyl. Derelicts of Dialect hasn't been reissued on LP since 1991, so I had to hunt down an older copy. I picked this one up on Discogs at a reasonable price and am psyched to have it in my collection. I think it holds up really well, though like a lot of albums of that era, it's probably a little too long and would benefit from a shorter, tighter tracklist. That happened a ton on early 90s hip hop albums with everyone testing the capacity of CDs.

 

In particular the title track, "Pop Goes The Weasel,"No Static At All" and "Ace In The Hole" are jstill really great. Thirty years later and I'm here nodding my head along with the bass. Crazy. Also crazy is how young the 3rd Bass guys look in all of the pictures and videos. When I was in 8th grade, they seemed like grown up rappers. Seeing them now, I realize they were kids too. Wild times.

 

3rd Bass - Derelicts of Dialect:

music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nIZPSqZeRagDH2T9z...

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the slideshow

  

Qi Bo's photos on Fluidr

  

Qi Bo's photos on Flickriver

  

Qi Bo's photos on FlickeFlu

  

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From 19 to 21 August 2016 in the Sicilian town of Ali, there was the so-called "Great Feast" ("Festa Ranni" in Sicilian dialect) in honor of their patron Saint Agatha.

 

The feast, which lasts three days, it is called "Feast Ranni" (Great Feast) to emphasize the exceptional nature of the event, since it falls only once every ten years. Preparations officially begin early as a month before and are involved both the "ciliary" (ie families entrusted from time to time, which shall prepare at their own expense at the solemn celebration for Her Patron Saint), both the "Deputation of St. Agatha" collaborating with the parish priest, plays a role during the organizational phase.

 

The passage of the Holy Relics of the Martyr Agatha in the village of Ali (Messina) in their return to Catania, on the morning of August 17 of the year 1126, it was for this Sicilian center an extraordinary and grandiose event, that led to the building of the great Mother Church , which took place in the sixteenth century; then the celebration of the annual festival but especially the so-called "Great Feast", which recalls the three-day feasts taking place in the city of Catania.

  

We don't known the origins of this ancient feast, whose complex ritual was entrusted, almost to the present day only to the oral tradition; Father Seraphim of Ali (junior) speaks in 1754, in his book "Of story of Ali and his territory".

Long and laborious preparations are assigned to two groups each formed by twelve families belonging to two different districts of the country, they receive instructions to draw up each other's "Ciliium of Bread" and the other the "Cilium of Girls". These families are appointed by the Deputation of St. Agatha (Advisory body that exercises within the Church Mother, economic and organizational functions) and by the parish priest.

The names of the families of "ciliary", as they are called, are made known by the parish priest, after the morning Mass of the 5 February of the current year.

  

Traditionally the families of "Ciliium of Girls" traveling in neighboring countries (Fiumedinisi, Itala and Ali Terme) with the sound of the accordion and tambourine, to communicate the imminent date of the festivities and take offerings and gold jewelry in part borrowed, in part donated, to adorn the "Cilium of Girls".

Liturgical events are intertwined with the traditional folk feast. The Feast attracts many faithful and many emigrants who, for the occasion, return to their native village of Ali. The last day of celebration the two Ciliums and the float of St. Agatha are carried in procession through the city.

 

Postscript: This report is dedicated to the German family of Jewish origin, consisting of father, mother and two children, on a boat they decided to take his own life to escape their Nazi persecutors, by binding them all together, and weighted with stones, they threw themselves off the waters of Mazzaro (Taormina); they were later fished out by now without life, by local fishermen: in the "graveyard of foreigners" of Taormina, now for ever and ever close together, they rest in peace.

  

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Dal 19 al 21 Agosto 2016 nel paese Siciliano di Alì (Messina) si è svolta una caratteristica festa, della quale propongo un report fotografico.

 

La Festa , durata infatti tre giorni, è denominata "Festa Ranni" (Festa Grande) per porre in risalto l'eccezionalità del fenomeno e la grandiosità dell’evento, poiché essa ricade una sola volta ogni dieci anni. I preparativi iniziano ufficialmente già un mese prima e vedono coinvolti sia i “ciliari” (cioè le famiglie incaricate di volta in volta e scelte a rotazione, che provvedono a preparare a proprie spese la festa solenne per la Santa Patrona, con l’allestimento dei due “cilii” ovvero le due “vare” anche intese come “cerei”), sia la “Deputazione di S. Agata” che collaborando con il Parroco, svolge un ruolo durante la fase organizzativa.

 

Il passaggio delle Sacre Reliquie della Martire catanese dal paese di Ali (Messina) nel rientro loro verso Catania, la mattina del 17 agosto dell’anno 1126 , fu per questo centro Siciliano un evento straordinario e grandioso, che portarono alla edificazione della grande Chiesa Madre, avvenuta nel XVI secolo, quindi alla celebrazione della festa annuale ma soprattutto della così detta “Festa Ranni”, che ricorda i tre giorni di festa che avvengono nella città di Catania.

  

Oscure sono le origini e le antiche modalità di svolgimento di questa festa, il cui complesso rituale è stato affidato, fin quasi ai nostri giorni esclusivamente alla tradizione orale, Padre Serafino d’Alì (junior) ne parla nel 1754, nel suo libro “Della storia di Alì e suo territoro”.

Lunghi e laboriosi sono i preparativi affidati a due gruppi formati ciascuno da dodici famiglie appartenenti a due diversi quartieri del paese, che ricevono l’incarico di allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" e l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze". Queste famiglie vengono nominate dalla Deputazione di S. Agata (Organo consultivo che esercita all’interno della Chiesa Madre, funzioni economico-organizzative) e dal Parroco, e la loro scelta segue una rotazione tale che nel corso degli anni nessun nucleo familiare, e di conseguenza nessun quartiere, ne rimane escluso.

 

I nomi dei "Ciliari", così vengono denominati, vengono resi noti dal Parroco, al termine della messa mattutina del 5 Febbraio dell’anno prestabilito per la Festa.

 

Come già detto sopra, ogni gruppo provvede autonomamente ad allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze".

  

Per tradizione le 12 famiglie di “ciliari delle ragazze”, anche loro sempre accompagnate da un nutrito gruppo (soprattutto giovani), si recano nei paesi vicini (Fiumedinisi, Itala e Alì Terme) a suon di fisarmonica e tamburello, per comunicare l’imminente data dei festeggiamenti e per raccogliere offerte e monili d’oro in parte in prestito, in parte ceduti, per adornare il “cilio delle ragazze”.

Le manifestazioni liturgiche si intrecciano con quelle folkloristiche; la festa richiama numerosi fedeli e parecchi emigrati che, per l’occasione, fanno ritorno al paese natio di Alì. L’ultimo giorno di festa i due cilii ed il fercolo di S. Agata vengono portati in processione lungo le vie cittadine.

Post scriptum: questo report lo dedico alla famiglia tedesca di origine ebrea, composta da padre, madre e da due bambini, che su di una barca decise di togliersi la vita per sfuggire ai loro persecutori nazisti, essi legandosi tutti tra di loro, ed appesantiti con pietre, si gettarono al largo delle acque di Mazzarò (Taormina); essi vennero poi ripescati, oramai senza vita, dai pescatori locali: nel “cimitero degli stranieri” di Taormina riposano le loro spoglie mortali.

  

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Aken (Duits: Aachen, officieel: Bad Aachen, Akens dialect: Oche, Frans: Aix-la-Chapelle) is een stad in het Regierungsbezirk Keulen in de Duitse deelstaat Noordrijn-Westfalen. Aangezien Karel de Grote zijn palts stichtte op de resten van Romeinse baden, is de stadsnaam waarschijnlijk afkomstig van het Latijn "aqua" (water).

 

De Dom van Aken is het meest monumentale gebouw van de stad en maakt deel uit van de palts van Karel de Grote. De Aula Regia in de palts werd vele malen verbouwd en vormt nu het stadhuis van Aken met de Granusturm.

 

Van de buitenste stadsmuur, die bestond uit elf stadspoorten, drieëntwintig weertorens, tussenliggende muren, weererkers en wachthuizen, zijn twee stadspoorten en vijf waltorens bewaard gebleven.

Muggia (Venetian, Triestine dialect: Muja; German: Mulgs; Friulian: Mugle; Slovene: Milje) is an Italian town and comune in the south-west of the Province of Trieste, in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia on the border with Slovenia. Lying on the eastern flank of the Gulf of Trieste in the northern Adriatic Sea, Muggia is the only Italian port town in Istria. The town's architecture is marked by its Venetian and Austrian history, and its harbour hosts a modern 500-berth marina for yachts (Porto San Rocco).

 

Muggia lies in northern Istria. Its territory, limited on the sea-side by a shoreline of more than 7 kilometres (4 mi) featuring a coastal road and on the border side by a hill system, Monti di Muggia, including Mt. Castellier, Mt. S. Michele, Mt. Zuc and Monte d'Oro, that dominate over a vast landscape of Triestinian and Istrian coast, is characterized by a rich sub-continental vegetation of both Karstic and Istrian type.

 

It has a border crossing, known as San Bartolomeo, with Slovenia and the extreme east of the comune at Lazaretto. The Slovenian border crossing is called Lazaret in the Municipality of Koper.

Muggia was attested in historical sources as Mugla in AD 933. The origin of the name Muggia is uncertain; it may have arisen from Latin mūtila 'cut short, mutilated', in reference to a short projection from the land or a cape (cf. the cape north of Zadar, attested in Latin as Muchla bona in AD 1250, now Croatian Oštri rat). Another possibility is derivation from Latin *mūcla 'milestone', and another hypothesis is that it comes from Vulgar Latin *Lamūc(l)a 'small swamp'. The Slovene name Milje was borrowed from Proto-Romance Mugla (developing via *Mygla > *Migla > Milje).

 

Muggia originated as a prehistoric fortified village (castelliere), around 8th-7th century BC. The territory was conquered in 178–177 BC by the Romans, who created here a settlement (Castrum Muglae). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Muggia was under Ostrogoth, Lombard, Byzantine, Avar and Frank dominations, until, in 931, king Hugh of Italy donated it to the Patriarch of Aquileia.

 

Before the year 1000 a new settlement was built on the seashore. After the 13th century the new village, now grown to the status of city, pronounced itself a municipality and defined its territory as bordering with those of Trieste and Koper, but stayed still politically bound to the Patriarchy of Aquileia. From this period are the cathedral and the city hall, the latter having been rebuilt in the last century.[clarification needed] In 1420 it became part of the Republic of Venice.

 

After Venice's fall in 1797, Muggia became part of the Austrian Empire, under which it developed an important naval shipbuilding industry which flourished until after World War II. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian period it remained part of the Margravate of Istria, first within the Kingdom of Illyria and then, after 1861, within the Austrian Littoral. The municipality of Muggia historically extended further south than today, including several settlements that are now part of Slovenia: Ankaran, Hrvatini, Elerji, Škofije, and Plavje.

 

After World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the town was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and incorporated into the Province of Trieste. In the 1930s, the area developed a strong Communist underground activity against Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. In 1945, it was occupied by the Yugoslav People's Army and from 1947 to 1954 it was part of the Free Territory of Trieste, a formally independent territory directly administered by the United Nations. The territory was internally divided into two zones ruled by military governors - Muggia ended up in the northern Zone A ruled by Anglo-Americans, while the southern Zone B was ruled by the Yugoslav army. In 1954 the two zones were handed over to Italian and Yugoslav civilian governments and de facto annexed by the two countries in an arrangement finally formalized in the 1975 Treaty of Osimo, which established the former borders between Zones as the new Italy-Yugoslavia international border. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s it formed the border between Italy and the newly independent Slovenia. Following Slovenia's accession to the European Union in May 2004 and the passport-free Schengen Area in January 2008, all border controls have been removed, making the Italian-Slovenian border which runs just south and east of Muggia, practically invisible to travellers.

Muggia provides many evident traces of its Venetian traditions and origin, as showed by the dialect, the gastronomic traditions, the gothic-venetian style of some houses, the devious "calli", the loggias, the ogive arches, the ancient coats of arms on the façades but mostly the main square, a true Venetian "campiello".

 

Memories of its early ages include an important pre-historic "castelliere" on Mt. Castellier (S. Barbara) and Roman (Archaeological Park of Castrum Muglae) and medieval remains in Muggia Vecchia (Old Muggia), once one of the guarding castles that in the 10th century were built to defend the Istrian border against the invasion of the Hungars.

 

The Castle of Muggia, destroyed in 1353 by the Triestines, retains several remains of the previous period such as the ruins of the walls. A tower dating back to 1374 was due to the Patriarch of Aquileia Marquard of Muggia. Later in 1735, under the government of the Republic of Venice, it was restored, but it was totally abandoned during the following century. The Castle was restored by its current owners, the sculptor Villi Bossi and his wife Gabriella, and may be visited upon request.

 

The most important art attraction is the little basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (10th-13th century), housing frescoes from the 14th-15th centuries.

   

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Qi Bo's photos on Fluidr

  

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From 19 to 21 August 2016 in the Sicilian town of Ali, there was the so-called "Great Feast" ("Festa Ranni" in Sicilian dialect) in honor of their patron Saint Agatha.

 

The feast, which lasts three days, it is called "Feast Ranni" (Great Feast) to emphasize the exceptional nature of the event, since it falls only once every ten years. Preparations officially begin early as a month before and are involved both the "ciliary" (ie families entrusted from time to time, which shall prepare at their own expense at the solemn celebration for Her Patron Saint), both the "Deputation of St. Agatha" collaborating with the parish priest, plays a role during the organizational phase.

 

The passage of the Holy Relics of the Martyr Agatha in the village of Ali (Messina) in their return to Catania, on the morning of August 17 of the year 1126, it was for this Sicilian center an extraordinary and grandiose event, that led to the building of the great Mother Church , which took place in the sixteenth century; then the celebration of the annual festival but especially the so-called "Great Feast", which recalls the three-day feasts taking place in the city of Catania.

  

We don't known the origins of this ancient feast, whose complex ritual was entrusted, almost to the present day only to the oral tradition; Father Seraphim of Ali (junior) speaks in 1754, in his book "Of story of Ali and his territory".

Long and laborious preparations are assigned to two groups each formed by twelve families belonging to two different districts of the country, they receive instructions to draw up each other's "Ciliium of Bread" and the other the "Cilium of Girls". These families are appointed by the Deputation of St. Agatha (Advisory body that exercises within the Church Mother, economic and organizational functions) and by the parish priest.

The names of the families of "ciliary", as they are called, are made known by the parish priest, after the morning Mass of the 5 February of the current year.

  

Traditionally the families of "Ciliium of Girls" traveling in neighboring countries (Fiumedinisi, Itala and Ali Terme) with the sound of the accordion and tambourine, to communicate the imminent date of the festivities and take offerings and gold jewelry in part borrowed, in part donated, to adorn the "Cilium of Girls".

Liturgical events are intertwined with the traditional folk feast. The Feast attracts many faithful and many emigrants who, for the occasion, return to their native village of Ali. The last day of celebration the two Ciliums and the float of St. Agatha are carried in procession through the city.

 

Postscript: This report is dedicated to the German family of Jewish origin, consisting of father, mother and two children, on a boat they decided to take his own life to escape their Nazi persecutors, by binding them all together, and weighted with stones, they threw themselves off the waters of Mazzaro (Taormina); they were later fished out by now without life, by local fishermen: in the "graveyard of foreigners" of Taormina, now for ever and ever close together, they rest in peace.

  

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Dal 19 al 21 Agosto 2016 nel paese Siciliano di Alì (Messina) si è svolta una caratteristica festa, della quale propongo un report fotografico.

 

La Festa , durata infatti tre giorni, è denominata "Festa Ranni" (Festa Grande) per porre in risalto l'eccezionalità del fenomeno e la grandiosità dell’evento, poiché essa ricade una sola volta ogni dieci anni. I preparativi iniziano ufficialmente già un mese prima e vedono coinvolti sia i “ciliari” (cioè le famiglie incaricate di volta in volta e scelte a rotazione, che provvedono a preparare a proprie spese la festa solenne per la Santa Patrona, con l’allestimento dei due “cilii” ovvero le due “vare” anche intese come “cerei”), sia la “Deputazione di S. Agata” che collaborando con il Parroco, svolge un ruolo durante la fase organizzativa.

 

Il passaggio delle Sacre Reliquie della Martire catanese dal paese di Ali (Messina) nel rientro loro verso Catania, la mattina del 17 agosto dell’anno 1126 , fu per questo centro Siciliano un evento straordinario e grandioso, che portarono alla edificazione della grande Chiesa Madre, avvenuta nel XVI secolo, quindi alla celebrazione della festa annuale ma soprattutto della così detta “Festa Ranni”, che ricorda i tre giorni di festa che avvengono nella città di Catania.

  

Oscure sono le origini e le antiche modalità di svolgimento di questa festa, il cui complesso rituale è stato affidato, fin quasi ai nostri giorni esclusivamente alla tradizione orale, Padre Serafino d’Alì (junior) ne parla nel 1754, nel suo libro “Della storia di Alì e suo territoro”.

Lunghi e laboriosi sono i preparativi affidati a due gruppi formati ciascuno da dodici famiglie appartenenti a due diversi quartieri del paese, che ricevono l’incarico di allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" e l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze". Queste famiglie vengono nominate dalla Deputazione di S. Agata (Organo consultivo che esercita all’interno della Chiesa Madre, funzioni economico-organizzative) e dal Parroco, e la loro scelta segue una rotazione tale che nel corso degli anni nessun nucleo familiare, e di conseguenza nessun quartiere, ne rimane escluso.

 

I nomi dei "Ciliari", così vengono denominati, vengono resi noti dal Parroco, al termine della messa mattutina del 5 Febbraio dell’anno prestabilito per la Festa.

 

Come già detto sopra, ogni gruppo provvede autonomamente ad allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze".

  

Per tradizione le 12 famiglie di “ciliari delle ragazze”, anche loro sempre accompagnate da un nutrito gruppo (soprattutto giovani), si recano nei paesi vicini (Fiumedinisi, Itala e Alì Terme) a suon di fisarmonica e tamburello, per comunicare l’imminente data dei festeggiamenti e per raccogliere offerte e monili d’oro in parte in prestito, in parte ceduti, per adornare il “cilio delle ragazze”.

Le manifestazioni liturgiche si intrecciano con quelle folkloristiche; la festa richiama numerosi fedeli e parecchi emigrati che, per l’occasione, fanno ritorno al paese natio di Alì. L’ultimo giorno di festa i due cilii ed il fercolo di S. Agata vengono portati in processione lungo le vie cittadine.

Post scriptum: questo report lo dedico alla famiglia tedesca di origine ebrea, composta da padre, madre e da due bambini, che su di una barca decise di togliersi la vita per sfuggire ai loro persecutori nazisti, essi legandosi tutti tra di loro, ed appesantiti con pietre, si gettarono al largo delle acque di Mazzarò (Taormina); essi vennero poi ripescati, oramai senza vita, dai pescatori locali: nel “cimitero degli stranieri” di Taormina riposano le loro spoglie mortali.

  

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Cannero Riviera ([càn-ne-ro]; Càner in the local Western Lombard dialect ) is an Italian municipality of 917 inhabitants in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in Piedmont . It extends on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore . The nearby islands called " Castelli di Cannero " actually belong to the city of Cannobio , and are the northernmost Italian islands of the lake. The municipality is part of the union of municipalities of Lake Maggiore .

 

History

Cannero appears for the first time in a property transfer document in 985 . But municipal independence came in the 14th century . In 1524 the Sforzas destroyed the town as it was a territory loyal to the Viscontis . The castles located on the small islands have a separate story.

 

The castle called Malpaga was a refuge for the Mazzarditi brothers and conquered by Filippo Maria Visconti . The other fortress called Vitaliana dates back to the 16th century and belongs to the Borromeo family. They were both then abandoned and given their inviting position they were used as a refuge for bandits and counterfeiters, and subsequently used again by the Borromeo family as a citrus grove and rabbit warren.

 

They chose Massimo d'Azeglio and Laura Solera Mantegazza as their residence in Cannero , whose homes can still be admired today. Present in the territory there are some sections of the defensive system on the northern border towards Switzerland , improperly known as the Cadorna Line .

 

Symbols

The coat of arms was granted by decree of the President of the Republic of 3 October 1949. The coat of arms is silver, the castle is red, equipped with three Guelph-style crenellated towers, the left tower surmounted by the star of five blue rays; it castle founded on the countryside of azure, storm of silver.

 

The banner is a blue and white banner.

 

Monuments and places of interest

Parish Church of San Giorgio

the current parish church of Cannero is dedicated to S. Giorgio and was built in 1836 on the site of the old church destroyed by a flood on 14 September 1829. The building, with a circular plan with dome, has elegant shapes and a very collected and finely decorated. The relics of the martyr Saint Faustus are preserved, transferred from the catacombs of San Callisto in Rome. The organ on the counter-façade, the work of Felice Bossi of Turin , is a wonderful example of nineteenth-century Italian organ building. The Bossi organ, built around 1850, originally had only one manual; in fact the echo organ was added only in 1897, by the Scolari organ builders of Bolzano Novarese . The conservative restoration intervention was expertly carried out by the Fratelli Marzi company of Pogno, which brought the valuable organ back to its ancient splendor.

 

Church of San Rocco

It dates back to between 1400 and 1500 and is dedicated to the French saint Rocco . The plan has a single rectangular nave, the interior was enriched during the 1600s with the construction of a choir and the creation of a barrel vault with plumes . The most valuable work is the balustrade that serves as an altar enclosure created by Viggiù 's workshop in 1786.

Módena (Mòdna en dialecto modenés; Modena en italiano) es una ciudad italiana, capital de la provincia de Módena, en la región Emilia-Romaña. Cuenta con una población de 184 973 habitantes. La catedral, la Torre Cívica («Ghirlandina») y la Piazza Grande de la ciudad están declaradas Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco.

Módena queda en la llanura padana, y está rodeada por dos ríos, el Secchia y el Panaro, ambos afluentes del Po. Su presencia está simbolizada por la fuente de los dos ríos, en el centro de la ciudad, obra de Giuseppe Graziosi. La ciudad está conectada con el Panaro a través del canal Naviglio.

La cordillera de los Apeninos comienzan a unos 10 kilómetros al sur de la ciudad.

 

Módena es un importante centro industrial. La ciudad se ubica en el corazón de la «Motor Valley» que forma un conjunto de grupos industriales prestigios así como numerosos circuitos y museos. Las empresas Lamborghini, Pagani, Ferrari y Maserati tienen su sede dentro de un radio de 20 km alrededor de Módena.

 

Ubicado en la llanura Padana, el territorio modenés dispone de importantes riquezas gustativas. Su producto líder es el vinagre balsámico producido en los dominios agrícolas en el entorno de Módena. La base de su elaboración son las uvas cosechadas en los viñedos de la provincia. El lambrusco, vino rosado burbujeante, tiene como origen las viñas cercanas de Módena y Reggio Emilia. Además, Módena es la tierra del queso parmigiano reggiano y del jamón de Módena. Junto con Bolonia, Módena comparte el lugar de origen de la pasta tortellini.

 

El Duomo de Módena, la Torre Ghirlandina y la Piazza Grande están incluidos desde 1997 dentro del Patrimonio mundial de la UNESCO. El arquitecto Lanfranco y el escultor Wiligelmo erigieron el Duomo en el siglo XII por San Geminiano, obispo de Módena y Santo Patrón de la ciudad. Entre 1179 y 1319 se construyó la torre Ghirlandina asociada con el Duomo. Su nombre de Ghirlandina -guirnalda- resulta de su forma y recuerda la torre Giralda de Sevilla.

Durante más de dos siglos, la familia Este tenía como sede el Palazzo Ducale (palacio ducal). Hoy en día, este palacio recibe la Academia militar.

El Palazzo Comunale –ayuntamiento– cuya la fachada está en la Piazza Grande abarca un conjunto de edificios más antiguos. Dentro del edificio se encuentra la Secchia rapita –el cubo raptado- uno de los símbolos de la ciudad. La estatua de la Bonissima, símbolo de bondad, está posada en la esquina exterior del Palazzo Comunale.

Iglesias. Módena es una ciudad rica en iglesias, se cuentan más de quince en el casco histórico. También es importante nombrar a la iglesia de Santa María Pomposa, la iglesia del Voto o la iglesia de San Vicenzo. Existe también una sinagoga ubicada cerca del Palazzo Comunale.

En el mercado Albinelli se reúnen cada día productores locales de vinagre balsámico, jamón curdo o queso, entre otros.

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B3dena

 

Modena is a city and comune (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy.

A town, and seat of an archbishop, it is known for its car industry since the factories of the famous Italian upper-class sports car makers Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati are, or were, located there and all, except Lamborghini, have headquarters in the city or nearby. One of Ferrari's cars, the 360 Modena, was named after the town itself. Ferrari's production plant and Formula One team Scuderia Ferrari are based in Maranello south of the city.

The University of Modena, founded in 1175 and expanded by Francesco II d'Este in 1686, focuses on economics, medicine and law, and is the second oldest athenaeum in Italy. Italian military officers are trained at the Military Academy of Modena, and partly housed in the Baroque Ducal Palace. The Biblioteca Estense houses historical volumes and 3,000 manuscripts. The Cathedral of Modena, the Torre della Ghirlandina and Piazza Grande are a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.

Modena is also known in culinary circles for its production of balsamic vinegar.

Famous Modenesi include Mary of Modena, the Queen consort of England and Scotland; operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti and soprano Mirella Freni, born in Modena itself; Enzo Ferrari, eponymous founder of the Ferrari motor company; Catholic priest Gabriele Amorth; chef Massimo Bottura; comics artist Franco Bonvicini; the band Modena City Ramblers and singer-songwriter Francesco Guccini, who lived here for several decades.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modena

 

"No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain't got no cigarettes..." The Lyrics to King of the Road come to mind when thinking of Tangier. On an island with a year-round population of about 500, it's a laid back and tranquil pace of life with a unique dialect.

 

Tangier Rappahannock Cruises whisked us from Buzzard Point Marina to Tangier Island late in the morning of May 14, 2016. We rented a golf cart to get around the island since there are no vehicles. I used a Canon GPS Receiver GP-E2 to track points along the route as best I could.

 

tangiercruise.com/tangier-cruises/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangier,_Virginia

Talkin Tarn Country Park Brampton Cumbria

 

Talkin Tarn is a glacial lake and country park near Brampton, Cumbria, England. The lake is a kettle hole lake, formed 10,000 years ago by mass glacial action.

 

The name is of Brittonic origin. The Brittonic dialect known as Cumbric was formerly spoken in the area. The first element, tal, means "brow" or "end" in Brittonic and modern Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. The second element is unclear. It may come from the Brittonic word which appears in Welsh and Old Cornish as can ("white") and Breton as kann ("bland, brilliant"). Talkin may be a hill-name meaning "white brow".

 

'Tarn' is derived from Old Norse 'tjǫrn' and then Middle English 'terne' meaning 'small mountain pool' or 'small lake'.

 

Talkin Tarn Country Park is owned and maintained by Carlisle City Council. It is home to the Boat House Tea Rooms, Brampton Sailing Club, and Talkin Tarn Amateur Rowing Club. The profits from the Tea Rooms and the pay and display car parking are reinvested in the up keep and improvement of the site.

 

Rowing is an activity at Talkin Tarn. The rowing club, Talkin Tarn Amateur Rowing Club, celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2009. Rowing races were first held on Talkin Tarn in the 1850s, and the Rowing Club was formed in 1859 by local townsfolk, several descendants of whom still live in the area. It is the oldest rowing club in the North of England, with the exception of Tyne Rowing Club, and is the 14th oldest non-university club in the country. Talkin Tarn Annual Regatta has grown considerably in recent years from a total entry of 20 in 1946 and 97 in 1988 to what it is today – very successful and one of the largest one-day regattas outside of London with total entries now in excess of 400.

 

On 9th November 1983 an Aerospatiale Gazelle Helicopter (reg G-SFTB) crashed into the tarn during a low level training flight from Carlisle Airport. The single occupant escaped the crash but the helicopter, once raised from the bottom, was damaged beyond repair.

 

Research on climate change carried out at Talkin Tarn was published in 2004.

 

Old buckles, stone axes, and urns have been found in the area.

 

More photos of Talkin Tarn here: www.flickr.com/photos/davidambridge/albums/72157633050144969

Name

In the twelfth century, Olomuc and Olmuc were the first handed down name forms. In the fifteenth century an alleged first form Juliomontium (Julius hill) was assumed, according to Julius Caesar as the alleged founder. The original meaning is unclear. In the Czech, Olomouc means 'bare mountain' (Old Czech holy, 'bald' and mauc 'mountain'). The name of the city is in the Moravian-Haná dialect, a subgroup of the Middle-Moravian dialects of the Czech, Olomóc or Holomóc, in German language Ölmütz, in Polish Ołomuniec and in Latin Eburum or Olomucium.

History

Beginnings

At the end of the second century there was a Roman army camp, the northernmost known in Central Europe. Up to the fifth century there was a Germanic settlement.

In the late 7th century a first Slavic settlement arose in today's Povel district. Around 830 this was destroyed. A new castle was built on the Peter's hill (Předhrad), which was probably one of the important castles of the Moravian empire. In the ninth century three churches were built.

Přemyslidenstaat (Přemyslid dynasty)

Olomouc was first mentioned in writing in 1017 when Moravia became part of the Bohemian state of Přemysliden. In 1055 it was the seat of a separate part of the Principality. In 1063 the bishopric of Olomouc was founded by Vratislav II. Around 1070 a new castle was built. In 1077 the monastery Hradisko was founded. In 1126 Heinrich Zdik became a bishop.

At the beginning of the 13th century, the last prince of Olomouz died, Moravia was united and placed under the jurisdiction of a Margrave of the Přemyslids. In 1248, Olomouc was first mentioned as a royal town. In 1306, King Wenceslas III resided during a campaign to Poland in Olomouc, and was murdered here, which resulted in the extinction of the Přemyslids dynasty in the male family tree. The city developed economically very quickly and became the capital of Moravia.

In the Hussite wars, Olomouc was an integral part of the Catholic side. In the succession of the Charterhouse Dolein, which had been lost in the Hussite wars, the Charterhouse Olomouc was founded in 1443, which existed until the abolition in 1782. In the 16th century numerous palaces were built in the Renaissance style. In 1566 the Jesuits came to Olomouc. They founded a school which was raised to a university in 1573. In 1588, the bishop became an imperial prince.

17th and 18th centuries

In the Thirty Years' War the town was taken by the Swedes in 1642 and occupied for eight years. After the Thirty Years' War, the largely destroyed and depopulated city lost the status of the Moravian capital and abandoned it to Brno. Since a great deal of damage had been caused by fires, a detailed "fire extinguishing order" was issued in 1711, in which a number of preventive measures were also discussed.

On 26 December 1741, the city was occupied by the Prussians during the First Silesian War. After this event the fortifications were extensively expanded. A second siege by the Prussians in 1758 withstood the new fortification. In 1777, the diocese became an archbishopric.

In 1794-1797 the prominent French-American soldier and politician Marquis Lafayette was interned in Olomouc as a political prisoner of the Donaumonarchy, after being captured in Flanders by the French coalition in 1792, and then, for the time being, imprisoned by Prussia.

19th century

In 1841, the city received a railway connection. In the middle of 1845, the railway from Olomouc to Prague ("Northern State Railway") was put into operation (Olomouc-Moravská Třebová, Moravská Třebová-Prague). In 1848, the Archbishop's Palace housed the Imperial Court, which had fled here because of the revolution in Vienna. Emperor Ferdinand I handed over the government to the eighteen-year-old Francis Joseph I on December 2, 1848. On 29 November 1850, the German Confederation under Austrian leadership was restored in Olomouc by the Agreement of Olomouc (also known as the Olomouc Treaty) between Prussia, Austria and Russia. In the years 1850 to 1866 the fortification systems were extended again. In 1886, the fortress status was abolished. 1899 drove in the city the first tram.

20th century

After the collapse of the Austrian Empire in 1918 and the founding of Czechoslovakia, the Czech citizens became majority, which included, among other things, the integration of the two towns of Hodolina and Nová ulice, as well as eleven other municipalities (Bělidla, Černovír, Hejčín, Chválkovice, Lazce, Nové Sady, Nový Svět, Neředín, Pavlovičky, Povel and Řepčín) in 1919. In 1921 lived in Olomouc 57,206 inhabitants.

On March 15, 1939, the city, as well as the other areas of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, erected on the same day by the German Reich, was occupied by the Wehrmacht. As early as 1939, the Olomouc University was closed by the German occupying forces. It was not until 1946 that it was restored under the name Palacký University of Olomouc.

The German-speaking population was expelled from Olomouc in 1945/1946. Their assets were confiscated by the Beneš decree 108, the assets of the Protestant church were liquidated by the Beneš decree 131, and the Catholic churches were expropriated.

In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of prefabricated housing estates were built in the peripheral areas.

Since 1971, the entire old town has been protected as a historic preservation reserve. Floods in 1997 made the city very vulnerable, about a third of the city area was flooded. In the year 2000, the Trinity Column was included in the UNESCO World Heritage list. According to the administrative reform of 2000 the former district town with the establishment of the Olomouc region became its administrative seat.

Jews in Olomouc

The synagogue in Olomouc

The first Jews settled in Olomouc as early as 906. From the year 1060 they had to live in a ghetto and bear a yellow identification mark. In 1454 all Jews from Olomouc were expelled. This law was valid until 1848.

The Olomouc Synagogue was built between 1895 and 1897. On the night of March 15, 1939, after the occupation by the Wehrmacht, the synagogue was lit and burnt down. At the same time about 800 Jews were arrested and later deported to the Dachau concentration camp. Some of the synagogue 's benches were removed, serving as church benches in a village church near Prostějov and were finally put up in the renovated synagogue in Krnov in 2004. Some of them are now in the Synagogue of Loštice and are reminiscent of the Jewish citizens murdered in concentration camps. The seat of honor is dedicated to Berthold Oppenheim, the Rabbi of Olomouc and Loštice.

During the period of National Socialism, 3,489 people were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto in five transports, on 26 and 30 June 1942, on July 4, 1942, and on March 7. Only 285 Jews of the city population survived. This was the end of the Jewish life in Olomouc for a long time. Since 2011, by artist Gunter Demnig Stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) have been and still are being laid to the memory of murdered Jews in Olomouc. Olomouc is one of the cities with the most stumbling blocks in the Czech Republic (as of 2016) with Prague and Brno.

Only since 1989 there has been a revival of the Jewish cultic life in the city. In 1991, an independent Jewish community was established with a field of activity for the districts of Olomouc, Šumperk, Jeseník, Bruntál and Přerov.

 

Name

Im 12. Jahrhundert waren Olomuc und Olmuc die ersten überlieferten Namensformen. Im 15. Jahrhundert wurde eine angebliche erste Form Juliomontium (Juliusberg) vermutet, nach Julius Caesar als angeblichem Gründer. Die ursprüngliche Bedeutung ist unklar. Im Tschechischen bedeutet Olomouc ‚kahler Berg‘ (alttschech. holy ‚kahl‘ und mauc ‚Berg‘). Der Name der Stadt lautet im mährisch-hannakischen Dialekt, einer Untergruppe der mittelmährischen Dialekte des Tschechischen, Olomóc oder Holomóc, auf Deutsch Olmütz, auf Polnisch Ołomuniec und auf Lateinisch Eburum oder Olomucium.

Geschichte

Anfänge

Ende des 2. Jahrhunderts befand sich hier ein römisches Heerlager, das nördlichste bekannte in Mitteleuropa. Bis ins 5. Jahrhundert gab es eine germanische Besiedelung.

Im späten 7. Jahrhundert entstand eine erste slawische Siedlung im heutigen Ortsteil Povel. Um 830 wurde diese zerstört. Es entstand eine neue Burg auf dem Petersberg (Předhrad), die nach ihrer Größe vermutlich zu den wichtigen Burgen des Mährerreiches zählte. Im 9. Jahrhundert wurden drei Kirchen gebaut.

Přemyslidenstaat

Olomouc wurde im Jahr 1017 erstmals schriftlich erwähnt, als Mähren Teil des böhmischen Staates der Přemysliden wurde. 1055 war es Sitz eines eigenen Teilfürstentums. 1063 wurde das Bistum Olmütz durch Vratislav II. gegründet. Um 1070 entstand eine neue Burg. 1077 wurde das Kloster Hradisko gegründet. 1126 wurde Heinrich Zdik zum Bischof.

Anfang des 13. Jahrhunderts starb der letzte Olmützer Fürst, Mähren wurde vereint und einem Markgrafen aus dem Geschlecht der Přemysliden unterstellt. Zum Jahr 1248 wird Olomouc erstmals als Königsstadt erwähnt. 1306 hielt sich König Wenzel III. während eines Feldzuges nach Polen in Olmütz auf und wurde hier ermordet, wodurch die Dynastie der Přemysliden im Mannesstamm erlosch. Die Stadt entwickelte sich wirtschaftlich sehr schnell und wurde zur Hauptstadt Mährens.

In den Hussitenkriegen war Olmütz fester Bestandteil der katholischen Seite. In der Nachfolge der Kartause Dolein, die in den Hussitenkriegen untergegangen war, wurde 1443 die Kartause Olmütz gegründet, die bis zur Aufhebung 1782 bestand. Im 16. Jahrhundert entstanden zahlreiche Paläste im Renaissancestil. 1566 kamen die Jesuiten nach Olmütz. Diese gründeten eine Schule, welche 1573 zur Universität erhoben wurde. 1588 wurde der Bischof zum Reichsfürsten erhoben.

17. und 18. Jahrhundert

Im Dreißigjährigen Krieg wurde die Stadt 1642 von den Schweden eingenommen und acht Jahre okkupiert. Nach dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg verlor die großteils zerstörte und entvölkerte Stadt den Status der mährischen Hauptstadt und trat diesen an Brünn ab. Da durch Brände viel Schaden entstanden war, wurde 1711 eine detaillierte „Feuerlösch-Ordnung“ erlassen, in der auch eine Reihe vorbeugender Maßnahmen zur Sprache kam.

Am 26. Dezember 1741 wurde die Stadt von den Preußen im Ersten Schlesischen Krieg eingenommen. Nach diesem Ereignis wurden die Festungsanlagen umfangreich ausgebaut. Einer zweiten Belagerung durch die Preußen im Jahre 1758 hielt die neue Festungsanlage stand. 1777 wurde das Bistum zum Erzbistum erhoben.

1794–1797 wurde der prominente französisch-amerikanische Soldat und Politiker Marquis Lafayette in Olmütz als politischer Häftling der Donaumonarchie interniert, nachdem er von der antifranzösischen Koalition 1792 in Flandern gefangengenommen und dann vorerst von Preußen eingekerkert worden war.

19. Jahrhundert

1841 erhielt die Stadt einen Eisenbahnanschluss. Mitte 1845 wurde die Eisenbahn von Olmütz nach Prag („k.k. Nördliche Staatsbahn“) in Betrieb genommen (Olmütz–Trübau, Trübau–Prag). Im Jahr 1848 beherbergte das Schloss des Erzbischofs den wegen der Revolution in Wien hierher geflohenen kaiserlichen Hof. Kaiser Ferdinand I. übertrug hier am 2. Dezember 1848 dem achtzehnjährigen Franz Joseph I. die Regierung. Am 29. November 1850 wurde in Olmütz durch die Olmützer Punktation (auch „Olmützer Vertrag“ genannt) zwischen Preußen, Österreich und Russland der Deutsche Bund unter österreichischer Führung wieder hergestellt. In den Jahren 1850 bis 1866 wurden erneut die Befestigungsanlagen erweitert. 1886 wurde dann der Festungsstatus aufgehoben. 1899 fuhr in der Stadt die erste Straßenbahn.

20. Jahrhundert

Nach dem Zerfall des Kaiserreichs Österreich 1918 und der Gründung der Tschechoslowakei kamen die tschechischen Stadtbürger in die Mehrzahl, was unter anderem auf die Eingemeindung der zwei Städte Hodolein (Hodolany) und Neugasse (Nová ulice) sowie elf weiterer Gemeinden (Bělidla, Černovír, Hejčín, Chválkovice, Lazce, Nové Sady, Nový Svět, Neředín, Pavlovičky, Povel und Řepčín) im Jahr 1919 zurückzuführen ist. Im Jahr 1921 lebten in Olomouc 57.206 Einwohner.

Am 15. März 1939 wurde die Stadt, wie auch die übrigen Gebiete des am selben Tag vom Deutschen Reich errichteten Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren, von der Wehrmacht besetzt. Noch im Jahr 1939 wurde die Olmützer Universität von der deutschen Besatzungsmacht geschlossen. Erst im Jahr 1946 konnte sie unter dem Namen Palacký-Universität Olmütz wiederhergestellt werden.

Die deutschsprachige Bevölkerung wurde 1945/1946 aus Olmütz vertrieben. Ihr Vermögen wurde durch das Beneš-Dekret 108 konfisziert, das Vermögen der evangelischen Kirche durch das Beneš-Dekret 131 liquidiert und die katholischen Kirchen enteignet.

In den 1970er und 1980er Jahren entstanden in den Randgebieten mehrere Plattenbausiedlungen.

Seit 1971 ist die ganze Altstadt als Denkmalschutzreservat geschützt. Das Hochwasser im Jahr 1997 zog die Stadt schwer in Mitleidenschaft, etwa ein Drittel des Stadtgebiets wurde überschwemmt. Im Jahr 2000 wurde die Dreifaltigkeitssäule in die Liste des UNESCO-Welterbes aufgenommen. Nach der Verwaltungsreform von 2000 wurde die bisherige Kreisstadt mit der Errichtung der Olmützer Region dessen Verwaltungssitz.

Juden in Olmütz

Die Synagoge in Olmütz

Die ersten Juden siedelten in Olmütz bereits 906. Ab dem Jahre 1060 hatten sie in einem Ghetto zu wohnen und ein gelbes Erkennungszeichen zu tragen. Im Jahr 1454 wurden sämtliche Juden aus Olmütz ausgewiesen. Dieses Gesetz war bis 1848 gültig.

Die Olmützer Synagoge wurde von 1895 bis 1897 erbaut. In der Nacht vom 15. auf den 16. März 1939, nach der Besetzung durch die Wehrmacht, wurde die Synagoge angezündet und brannte ab. Gleichzeitig wurden etwa 800 Juden festgenommen und später in das Konzentrationslager Dachau deportiert. Einige Sitzbänke der Synagoge wurden ausgebaut, dienten lange als Kirchenbänke in einer Dorfkirche bei Prostějov und wurden schließlich 2004 in der renovierten Synagoge in Krnov aufgestellt. Einige davon stehen heute in der Synagoge von Loštice und erinnern an die in den Konzentrationslagern ermordeten jüdischen Bürger. Der Ehrensitz ist Berthold Oppenheim gewidmet, dem Rabbi von Olmütz und Loštice.

Während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus wurden 3.489 Menschen in fünf Transporten, am 26. und 30. Juni 1942, am 4. Juli 1942 und am 7. März 1945 in das Ghetto Theresienstadt deportiert. Nur 285 Juden der Stadtbevölkerung überlebten. Damit erlosch das jüdische Leben in Olmütz für lange Zeit. Seit 2011 wurden und werden in Olmütz von Gunter Demnig Stolpersteine zur Erinnerung an ermordete Juden verlegt. Olmütz gehört mit Prag und Brünn zu den Städten mit den meisten Stolpersteinen in Tschechien (Stand 2016).

Erst seit 1989 gibt es eine Belebung des jüdischen Kultuslebens in der Stadt. 1991 wurde eine selbständige jüdische Gemeinde mit einem Wirkungskreis für die Bezirke Olmütz, Šumperk, Jeseník, Bruntál und Přerov wiederbegründet.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olm%C3%BCtz

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

John's Square is known as "Jánské Náměstí" in Czech.

 

"Cheb (German Eger, in the Sudeten German dialect of Cheb Egha; obsoletely also Heb) is a town in the district of the same name in the Karlovy Vary Region, 40 km southwest of Karlovy Vary and 5 km from the border with Germany on the Ohři River, from which it is derived from the German name of the city. The first historically preserved mention of Cheb, the central city of the entire former Chebsko, dates from 1061. Until the end of World War II, the majority of the population was German, and Cheb was an important part of the Sudetenland. After the end of the war, the German residents were displaced and the town became largely depopulated. Approximately 32 thousand inhabitants live here, which makes Cheb the second largest city in the region after Karlovy Vary. There are seven primary schools, two secondary schools, one practical school, two grammar schools and the Faculty of Economics of the University of West Bohemia in Cheb. The main industries here are engineering, textiles, metalworking, construction, woodworking and food. The neighboring municipalities of the seat are Okrouhlá, Třebeň, Pomezí nad Ohří, Nebanice, Tuřany, Odrava, Lipová, Libá, Františkovy Lázně, Waldsassen and Schirnding.

 

Bohemia (Latin Bohemia, German Böhmen, Polish Czechy) is a region in the west of the Czech Republic. Previously, as a kingdom, they were the center of the Czech Crown. The root of the word Czech probably corresponds to the meaning of man. The Latin equivalent of Bohemia, originally Boiohaemum (literally "land of Battles"), which over time also influenced the names in other languages, is derived from the Celtic tribe of the Boios, who lived in this area from the 4th to the 1st century BC Bohemia on it borders Germany in the west, Austria in the south, Moravia in the east and Poland in the north. Geographically, they are bounded from the north, west and south by a chain of mountains, the highest of which are the Krkonoše Mountains, in which the highest mountain of Bohemia, Sněžka, is also located. The most important rivers are the Elbe and the Vltava, with the fertile Polabean Plain extending around the Elbe. The capital and largest city of Bohemia is Prague, other important cities include, for example, Pilsen, Karlovy Vary, Kladno, Ústí nad Labem, Liberec, Hradec Králové, Pardubice and České Budějovice, Jihlava also lies partly on the historical territory of Bohemia." - info from Wikipedia.

 

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

 

Now on Instagram.

 

Become a patron to my photography on Patreon or donate.

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the slideshow

  

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From 19 to 21 August 2016 in the Sicilian town of Ali, there was the so-called "Great Feast" ("Festa Ranni" in Sicilian dialect) in honor of their patron Saint Agatha.

 

The feast, which lasts three days, it is called "Feast Ranni" (Great Feast) to emphasize the exceptional nature of the event, since it falls only once every ten years. Preparations officially begin early as a month before and are involved both the "ciliary" (ie families entrusted from time to time, which shall prepare at their own expense at the solemn celebration for Her Patron Saint), both the "Deputation of St. Agatha" collaborating with the parish priest, plays a role during the organizational phase.

 

The passage of the Holy Relics of the Martyr Agatha in the village of Ali (Messina) in their return to Catania, on the morning of August 17 of the year 1126, it was for this Sicilian center an extraordinary and grandiose event, that led to the building of the great Mother Church , which took place in the sixteenth century; then the celebration of the annual festival but especially the so-called "Great Feast", which recalls the three-day feasts taking place in the city of Catania.

  

We don't known the origins of this ancient feast, whose complex ritual was entrusted, almost to the present day only to the oral tradition; Father Seraphim of Ali (junior) speaks in 1754, in his book "Of story of Ali and his territory".

Long and laborious preparations are assigned to two groups each formed by twelve families belonging to two different districts of the country, they receive instructions to draw up each other's "Ciliium of Bread" and the other the "Cilium of Girls". These families are appointed by the Deputation of St. Agatha (Advisory body that exercises within the Church Mother, economic and organizational functions) and by the parish priest.

The names of the families of "ciliary", as they are called, are made known by the parish priest, after the morning Mass of the 5 February of the current year.

  

Traditionally the families of "Ciliium of Girls" traveling in neighboring countries (Fiumedinisi, Itala and Ali Terme) with the sound of the accordion and tambourine, to communicate the imminent date of the festivities and take offerings and gold jewelry in part borrowed, in part donated, to adorn the "Cilium of Girls".

Liturgical events are intertwined with the traditional folk feast. The Feast attracts many faithful and many emigrants who, for the occasion, return to their native village of Ali. The last day of celebration the two Ciliums and the float of St. Agatha are carried in procession through the city.

 

Postscript: This report is dedicated to the German family of Jewish origin, consisting of father, mother and two children, on a boat they decided to take his own life to escape their Nazi persecutors, by binding them all together, and weighted with stones, they threw themselves off the waters of Mazzaro (Taormina); they were later fished out by now without life, by local fishermen: in the "graveyard of foreigners" of Taormina, now for ever and ever close together, they rest in peace.

  

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Dal 19 al 21 Agosto 2016 nel paese Siciliano di Alì (Messina) si è svolta una caratteristica festa, della quale propongo un report fotografico.

 

La Festa , durata infatti tre giorni, è denominata "Festa Ranni" (Festa Grande) per porre in risalto l'eccezionalità del fenomeno e la grandiosità dell’evento, poiché essa ricade una sola volta ogni dieci anni. I preparativi iniziano ufficialmente già un mese prima e vedono coinvolti sia i “ciliari” (cioè le famiglie incaricate di volta in volta e scelte a rotazione, che provvedono a preparare a proprie spese la festa solenne per la Santa Patrona, con l’allestimento dei due “cilii” ovvero le due “vare” anche intese come “cerei”), sia la “Deputazione di S. Agata” che collaborando con il Parroco, svolge un ruolo durante la fase organizzativa.

 

Il passaggio delle Sacre Reliquie della Martire catanese dal paese di Ali (Messina) nel rientro loro verso Catania, la mattina del 17 agosto dell’anno 1126 , fu per questo centro Siciliano un evento straordinario e grandioso, che portarono alla edificazione della grande Chiesa Madre, avvenuta nel XVI secolo, quindi alla celebrazione della festa annuale ma soprattutto della così detta “Festa Ranni”, che ricorda i tre giorni di festa che avvengono nella città di Catania.

  

Oscure sono le origini e le antiche modalità di svolgimento di questa festa, il cui complesso rituale è stato affidato, fin quasi ai nostri giorni esclusivamente alla tradizione orale, Padre Serafino d’Alì (junior) ne parla nel 1754, nel suo libro “Della storia di Alì e suo territoro”.

Lunghi e laboriosi sono i preparativi affidati a due gruppi formati ciascuno da dodici famiglie appartenenti a due diversi quartieri del paese, che ricevono l’incarico di allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" e l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze". Queste famiglie vengono nominate dalla Deputazione di S. Agata (Organo consultivo che esercita all’interno della Chiesa Madre, funzioni economico-organizzative) e dal Parroco, e la loro scelta segue una rotazione tale che nel corso degli anni nessun nucleo familiare, e di conseguenza nessun quartiere, ne rimane escluso.

 

I nomi dei "Ciliari", così vengono denominati, vengono resi noti dal Parroco, al termine della messa mattutina del 5 Febbraio dell’anno prestabilito per la Festa.

 

Come già detto sopra, ogni gruppo provvede autonomamente ad allestire l'uno il "Cilio del Pane" l'altro il "Cilio delle Ragazze".

  

Per tradizione le 12 famiglie di “ciliari delle ragazze”, anche loro sempre accompagnate da un nutrito gruppo (soprattutto giovani), si recano nei paesi vicini (Fiumedinisi, Itala e Alì Terme) a suon di fisarmonica e tamburello, per comunicare l’imminente data dei festeggiamenti e per raccogliere offerte e monili d’oro in parte in prestito, in parte ceduti, per adornare il “cilio delle ragazze”.

Le manifestazioni liturgiche si intrecciano con quelle folkloristiche; la festa richiama numerosi fedeli e parecchi emigrati che, per l’occasione, fanno ritorno al paese natio di Alì. L’ultimo giorno di festa i due cilii ed il fercolo di S. Agata vengono portati in processione lungo le vie cittadine.

Post scriptum: questo report lo dedico alla famiglia tedesca di origine ebrea, composta da padre, madre e da due bambini, che su di una barca decise di togliersi la vita per sfuggire ai loro persecutori nazisti, essi legandosi tutti tra di loro, ed appesantiti con pietre, si gettarono al largo delle acque di Mazzarò (Taormina); essi vennero poi ripescati, oramai senza vita, dai pescatori locali: nel “cimitero degli stranieri” di Taormina riposano le loro spoglie mortali.

  

The Blood Compact or Sandugo occurred on March 16, 1565 when Legaspi and Sikatuna entered into a native ritual of both shedding blood (“dugo” in the Visayan dialect) into a cup and then drinking the contents thereof. Henceforth the Boholanos celebrated this special event although not as consistently as being done now. Before, there were celebrations but they were not that big and did not catch the fancy of foreign guests. There were times when the event was clearly forgotten.

    

During the incumbency of Mr. Constancio Chatto Torralba as Provincial Governor of Bohol, from April 1975 to June 1992, the festival was given much attention and ever since gained impetus. Convinced of the importance of this historical event, Governor Torralba anointed the Sandugo Project and appointed Mr. Loy M. Palapos as Chairman.

   

The first Sandugo celebration was a success given limited time of preparation and the succeeding years witnessed its growth. Succeeding government officials promoted the project and supported its implementation. Eventually, it gained recognition not only in the province but nationwide and even abroad.

   

Now, this month-long celebration includes Trade-Agri Food Fair, nightly entertainment, and search for Miss Bohol Sandugo, Sandugo Punchfest, and the street parade with a street dancing competition and the re-enactment of the Blood Compact. Aside from that, church services are held, grand fireworks are displayed for all to see, and the parade involves colourful costumes and loud drum beats, cockfighting and sports tournaments.

   

The main highlights of the Sandugo Festival are the street parade followed by a street dancing competition and then the re-enactment of the Blood Compact. The street parade and subsequent competition is participated in by different high schools in Tagbilaran, including entries from Local Government Units (LGUs) or municipalities as well as guests from other cities and provinces.

   

Well decorated floats grace the parade and one of them usually carries the winners of the Miss Bohol Sandugo Pageant. Other floats are from the business sector and associations. On foot are the local officials and the police force. Each of the street dancing participants has choreographed dance patterns executed with the accompaniment of xylophones, drums, and trumpets. Costumes are bright and colourful including gadgets and paraphernalia such as banners and flags.

   

At first, this annual celebration was held in the month of March but has been moved to July to coincide with the celebration of the Tagbilaran Charter Day on July 1 and the Bohol Day that falls on July 22. It was also deemed proper to be celebrated in the month of July to coincide with the TBTK (Tigum Bol-anon Tibuok Kalibutan). The TBTK is a gathering of Boholanos from all over the world in Tagbilaran City which was earlier agreed upon to fall on this month. The concept is to hit three birds with one stone in one big month-long celebration.

 

The gathering of these big events under the month of July assures the province of hordes of visitors since hundreds and thousands of Boholanos, and now non-Boholanos as well, gather to witness the celebrations. Also many take part in the various competitions, search, parades and tournaments.

   

During this month and even up to August, Tagbilaran City is a hive of activity. Businesses prosper and the tourism industry reaches its highest peak with the influx of local and foreign visitors. The business sector, such as malls and department stores, adds to the festive spirit by lively decors and music in their establishments while competing in giving out the best sales pitch to the consuming public.

   

Local inventions and products find an outlet in the Trade-Agri Food Fair, showcasing the innovativeness and exceptional handiwork of Boholanos. Likewise, the fair gives the poor local folks the opportunity to establish a business of their own when demand for these products slowly gain momentum.

   

With the whole province participating in, this festival is now not only for historical purposes but for the enhancement of the living standards of each and every Boholano. Preparations may be excessive and very expensive yet the whole affair brings in the bucks, so to speak. Many foreign guests are lured to witness the festival and even to participate in some events. Reunions, which usually involve fund raising activities, bring in investments and much improvement of the Bohol skyline. From a sleepy sand unobtrusive province, Bohol has now become one of the top destinations of the country.

 

Waugh’s Well is located on the Rossendale hills above Edenfield in the county of Lancashire. It was constructed in 1866 to commemorate the poet and writer Edwin Waugh (1817-1890). He was born the son of a shoe maker in Rochdale and entered employment at the age of ten working for a local bookseller. He educated himself and eventually became assistant secretary to the Lancashire Public Schools Association. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that he took up writing and lecturing for a living and he is fondly remembered for all his hard work to keep alive the old Lancashire dialect. Close to the well are the ruins of Foe Edge Farm. Edwin Waugh payed several visits to the farm and is thought to have composed some of his best works while staying there.

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Gheto in Venetian dialect means “forge”. The forge that was installed there gave its name to that secluded neighborhood where Jews were allowed to settle. The word “ghetto” comes from that.

 

The area was quite small, enclosed by canals, and the Jewish community desirous to live there must have been quite numerous, because they had to build six– and seven–story buildings, which was unheard of in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Looking upstream from a bridge crossing.

 

"Nuremberg (/ˈnjʊərəmbɜːrɡ/ NURE-əm-burg; German: Nürnberg [ˈnʏʁnbɛʁk]; in the local East Franconian dialect: Nämberch [ˈnɛmbɛrç]) is the largest city in Franconia, the second-largest city in the German state of Bavaria, and its 545,000 inhabitants make it the 14th-largest city in Germany.

 

Nuremberg sits on the Pegnitz, which carries the name Regnitz from its confluence with the Rednitz in Fürth onwards (Pegnitz→ Regnitz→ Main→ Rhine→ North Sea), and on the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, that connects the North Sea to the Black Sea. Lying in the Bavarian administrative region of Middle Franconia, it is the largest city and unofficial capital of the entire cultural region of Franconia. The city is surrounded on three sides by the Reichswald, a large forest, and in the north lies Knoblauchsland (garlic land), an extensive vegetable growing area and cultural landscape.

 

The city forms a continuous conurbation with the neighbouring cities of Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach, which is the heart of an urban area region with around 1.4 million inhabitants, while the larger Nuremberg Metropolitan Region has a population of approximately 3.6 million. It is the largest city in the East Franconian dialect area (colloquially: "Franconian"; German: Fränkisch).

 

Nuremberg and Fürth were once connected by the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, the first steam-hauled and overall second railway opened in Germany (1835). Today, the U1 of the Nuremberg Subway, which is the first German subway with driverless, automatically moving railcars, runs along this route. Nuremberg Airport (Flughafen Nürnberg "Albrecht Dürer") is the second-busiest airport in Bavaria after Munich Airport, and the tenth-busiest airport of the country.

 

Institutions of higher education in Nuremberg include the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Germany's 11th-largest university, with campuses in Erlangen and Nuremberg and a university hospital in Erlangen (Universitätsklinikum Erlangen), Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm and Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg. The Nuremberg exhibition centre (Messe Nürnberg) is one of the biggest convention center companies in Germany and operates worldwide.

 

Nuremberg Castle and the city's walls, with their many towers, are among the most impressive in Europe. Staatstheater Nürnberg is one of the five Bavarian state theatres, showing operas, operettas, musicals, and ballets (main venue: Nuremberg Opera House), plays (main venue: Schauspielhaus Nürnberg), as well as concerts (main venue: Meistersingerhalle). Its orchestra, the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, is Bavaria's second-largest opera orchestra after the Bavarian State Opera's Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich. Nuremberg is the birthplace of Albrecht Dürer and Johann Pachelbel. 1. FC Nürnberg is the most famous football club of the city and one of the most successful football clubs in Germany. Nuremberg was one of the host cities of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

 

Franconia (German: Franken, pronounced [ˈfʁaŋkŋ̍]; Franconian: Franggn [ˈfrɑŋɡŋ̍]; Bavarian: Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian dialect (German: Fränkisch).

 

Franconia is made up of the three Regierungsbezirke of Lower, Middle and Upper Franconia in Bavaria, the adjacent, Franconian-speaking, South Thuringia, south of the Thuringian Forest—which constitutes the language boundary between Franconian and Thuringian— and the eastern parts of Heilbronn-Franconia in Baden-Württemberg.

 

Those parts of the Vogtland lying in Saxony (largest city: Plauen) are sometimes regarded as Franconian as well, because the Vogtlandian dialects are mostly East Franconian. The inhabitants of Saxon Vogtland, however, mostly do not consider themselves as Franconian. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the Hessian-speaking parts of Lower Franconia west of the Spessart (largest city: Aschaffenburg) do consider themselves as Franconian, although not speaking the dialect. Heilbronn-Franconia's largest city of Heilbronn and its surrounding areas are South Franconian-speaking, and therefore only sometimes regarded as Franconian. In Hesse, the east of the Fulda District is Franconian-speaking, and parts of the Oden Forest District are sometimes regarded as Franconian for historical reasons, but a Franconian identity did not develop there.

 

Franconia's largest city and unofficial capital is Nuremberg, which is contiguous with Erlangen and Fürth, with which it forms the Franconian conurbation with around 1.3 million inhabitants. Other important Franconian cities are Würzburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth, Ansbach and Coburg in Bavaria, Suhl and Meiningen in Thuringia, and Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Württemberg.

 

The German word Franken—Franconians—also refers to the ethnic group, which is mainly to be found in this region. They are to be distinguished from the Germanic people of the Franks, and historically formed their easternmost settlement area. The origins of Franconia lie in the settlement of the Franks from the 6th century in the area probably populated until then mainly by the Elbe Germanic people in the Main river area, known from the 9th century as East Francia (Francia Orientalis). In the Middle Ages the region formed much of the eastern part of the Duchy of Franconia and, from 1500, the Franconian Circle. The restructuring of the south German states by Napoleon, after the demise of the Holy Roman Empire, saw most of Franconia awarded to Bavaria." - info from Wikipedia.

 

Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.

 

Now on Instagram.

 

Become a patron to my photography on Patreon or donate.

Modena ; Mòdna in Modenese dialect) is a city and comune (municipality) on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. An ancient town, it is the seat of an archbishop, but is now best known as "the capital of engines", since the factories of the famous Italian sports car makers Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati are, or were, located here and all, except Lamborghini, have headquarters in the city or nearby. Lamborghini is headquartered not far away in Sant'Agata Bolognese, in the adjacent Province of Bologna. One of Ferrari's cars, the 360 Modena, was named after the town itself. Also, one of the colors for Ferraris is Modena yellow. The University of Modena, founded in 1175 and expanded by Francesco II d'Este in 1686, has traditional strengths in economics, medicine and law and is the second oldest Atheneum in Italy, sixth in the whole world[citation needed]. Italian officers are trained at the Italian Military Academy, located in Modena, and partly housed in the Baroque Ducal Palace. The Biblioteca Estense houses historical volumes and 3,000 manuscripts. Modena is well known in culinary circles for its production of balsamic vinegar. Famous Modenesi include Mary of Modena, the Queen consort of England and Scotland; operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) and soprano Mirella Freni, born in Modena itself; Enzo Ferrari (1898–1988) eponymous founder of the Ferrari motor company; the Catholic Priest and Senior Exorcist of Vatican Gabriele Amorth; and the rock singer Vasco Rossi who was born in Zocca, one of the 47 comuni in the Province of Modena

The Basel Town Hall (Rathaus Basel in German and Roothus in the local Swiss German dialect) is a 500-year-old building dominating the Marktplatz in Basel. The historic central portion of the building was erected in its current form in 1504-15. Basel joined the Swiss Confederation in 1501.

 

The Town Hall houses the meetings of the Cantonal Parliament as well as the Cantonal Government of the canton of Basel-Stadt. The Great Council Chamber at one time featured a series of frescoes painted in 1522 by Hans Holbein the Younger, which have been lost. Fragments of the work as well as some of the initial drawings are kept in the Kunstmuseum.

 

The German term "Rathaus" literally means "council house" while the local Basel German dialect term "Roothus" means both "council house" but also sounds like "red house," a pun with reference to the red sandstone façade of the building.

 

Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Town_Hall

 

Basel, also known as Bâle in French and Basilea in Italian, is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich and Geneva), with roughly 178,000 inhabitants within the city municipality limits in the 2020s. The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, and the main spoken language is the local Basel German dialect.

 

Basel is commonly considered to be the cultural capital of Switzerland and the city is famous for its many museums, including the first collection of art accessible to the public in the world (1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland. The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for refugees and dissidents.

 

Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel

english

 

Tjörnin (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈtʰjœrtn̥ɪn], The Pond) is a prominent small lake in central Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. Most visitors to the city pass along its shore, as it is situated in the city centre next to the Reykjavik City Hall and several museums. Tjörnin means "the lake" or "the pond". Tarn, meaning "mountain lake", is a northern English dialect word derived from the Norse word tjörn and its genitive/plural tjarnar. Bird feeding on the lake shore, a popular pastime, has led to the lake being called "the biggest bread soup in the world" (stærsta brauðsupa í heimi). Tjörnin was the setting for scenes in the 2010 Icelandic movie Gauragangur.

 

Geography

Tjörnin is described as a lagoon next to a barrier beach. The lake's formation is attributed to the lagoon which was part of a reef that existed at the present location of Hafnarstræti (a city street, "Harbour Street").This street, which passes through the business section of the city, lies on the southern side of the lake and leads to the gardens. The Vatnsmýri marsh feeds the lake. There is a landscape park that runs from north to south, with a variety of greenery. The outflow from the lake is Lækjarin, an open water channel that flows through the city centre. During the winter, the lake usually freezes and is used for ice skating. Both banks of the lake are paved and terminate at Tjarnargarður, a new science park. The southern shoreline of the lake has well-tended parks decorated with statues. The winding paths are frequented by joggers and cyclists. Notice boards along the shore give daily reports of the numbers of birds on the lake.

 

Avifauna

 

The lake is frequented by 40-50 species of water birds, including the Arctic Tern, Eider, Gadwall, Greylag Goose and other goose species, mallard, seagulls, and scaup. Whooper Swan are viewable within close proximity. The Arctic Tern's arrival heralds the start of summer. Birders from all over the North Atlantic come to pursue their hobby in the lake area. The lake is also a favorite place to take young children to watch and feed birds. The popularity of bird feeding has led to the lake being poetically referred to as "the biggest bread soup in the world" (stærsta brauðsupa í heimi).

 

Cityscape

 

The earliest urban development of Reykjavík took place between the lake and the northern coast of the peninsula. Over the years, the lake became an integral part of the urban environment. Development of the city has centered around the lake. The postmodern City Hall, Ráðhús, stands in the northwest corner on the edge of the lake: it looks as if it is rising out of the lake. Other notable buildings in the area are the Supreme Court, Reykjavík Art Museum, National Museum, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík City Library, National Theatre, Alþingi (the Parliament of Iceland), and the Domkirkja cathedral, apart from a shopping complex and restaurants. Several buildings belonging to the University of Iceland are also close by.

 

There is a bridge over the Tjornin Lake made of wood that was originally built in 1920.

 

Conservation

 

Vatnsmýrin Reserve, the protected area around Tjörnin, has deteriorated in recent years as evidenced by a drop in the variety of reported birds. Part of the issue is attributed to the lack of appropriate nesting grounds due to invasive flora species as well as the presence of animals in the reserve. Action plans have been initiated jointly by the Nordic House, the University of Iceland, and Reykjavík City Council, to improve the reserve's condition with appropriate wetland vegetation, construction of embankments and sedimentation ponds to improve the water flow, as well as some desilting of the lake.

  

Icelandic

 

Tjörnin (eða Reykjavíkurtjörn) er grunnt stöðuvatn í miðbæ Reykjavíkur. Vatnið í Tjörnina kemur úr Vatnsmýrinni sunnan við hana og rennur úr henni um Lækinn sem rennur undir Lækjargötu til sjávar í víkinni. Við Tjörnina standa margar merkilegar byggingar, þar á meðal Ráðhús Reykjavíkur, Iðnaðarmannahúsið, Tjarnarskóli, Listasafn Íslands og Fríkirkjan í Reykjavík. Við Tjörnina er einnig Hljómskálagarðurinn, eini lystigarðurinn í miðborg Reykjavíkur. Í og við Tjörnina er mikið fuglalíf. Vinsæl afþreying hjá foreldrum með ung börn er að fara niður að Tjörn og „gefa öndunum“ (þ.e. brauðmola).

 

Tjörnin er dæmi um sjávarlón þar sem sandur og möl hefur myndað malarrif sem lokar smám saman af lónið. Gamli miðbærinn í Reykjavík stendur á rifinu. Rifið var ekki fullmyndað fyrr en fyrir um það bil 1200 árum og þá hófst lífræn setmyndun í Tjörninni en undir þeim setlögum eru sand- og malarlög. Þegar lífræn efni tóku að safnast saman á botni Tjarnarinnar gætti lítilla seltuáhrifa og grunnvatn hefur streymt þangað frá Vatnsmýrinni og holtunum í kring. Tjarnarbakkarnir voru grónir gulstör (carex lyngbyei) og öðrum tegundum af hálfgrasaætt en svo komu tímabil þegar seltan verður meiri þá hörfuðu háplöntur. Um 1900 mun engum fugli hafa verið vært á Tjörninni, allir fuglar voru drepnir. Andaveiðar voru eitthvað stundaðar á Tjörninni allt fram á annan áratug síðustu aldar. Með lögreglusamþykkt frá 19. apríl 1919 var bannað að skjóta í borgarlandinu. Um sama leyti var sett siglingabann en áður höfðu margir átt báta og vegna umferðar þreifst ekkert kríuvarp í Tjarnarhólmanum fyrir 1919. Með skotveiðibanninu og siglingabanninu fjölgaði mikið stokköndum og kríum.

Muggia (Venetian, Triestine dialect: Muja; German: Mulgs; Friulian: Mugle; Slovene: Milje) is an Italian town and comune in the south-west of the Province of Trieste, in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia on the border with Slovenia. Lying on the eastern flank of the Gulf of Trieste in the northern Adriatic Sea, Muggia is the only Italian port town in Istria. The town's architecture is marked by its Venetian and Austrian history, and its harbour hosts a modern 500-berth marina for yachts (Porto San Rocco).

 

Muggia lies in northern Istria. Its territory, limited on the sea-side by a shoreline of more than 7 kilometres (4 mi) featuring a coastal road and on the border side by a hill system, Monti di Muggia, including Mt. Castellier, Mt. S. Michele, Mt. Zuc and Monte d'Oro, that dominate over a vast landscape of Triestinian and Istrian coast, is characterized by a rich sub-continental vegetation of both Karstic and Istrian type.

 

It has a border crossing, known as San Bartolomeo, with Slovenia and the extreme east of the comune at Lazaretto. The Slovenian border crossing is called Lazaret in the Municipality of Koper.

Muggia was attested in historical sources as Mugla in AD 933. The origin of the name Muggia is uncertain; it may have arisen from Latin mūtila 'cut short, mutilated', in reference to a short projection from the land or a cape (cf. the cape north of Zadar, attested in Latin as Muchla bona in AD 1250, now Croatian Oštri rat). Another possibility is derivation from Latin *mūcla 'milestone', and another hypothesis is that it comes from Vulgar Latin *Lamūc(l)a 'small swamp'. The Slovene name Milje was borrowed from Proto-Romance Mugla (developing via *Mygla > *Migla > Milje).

 

Muggia originated as a prehistoric fortified village (castelliere), around 8th-7th century BC. The territory was conquered in 178–177 BC by the Romans, who created here a settlement (Castrum Muglae). After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Muggia was under Ostrogoth, Lombard, Byzantine, Avar and Frank dominations, until, in 931, king Hugh of Italy donated it to the Patriarch of Aquileia.

 

Before the year 1000 a new settlement was built on the seashore. After the 13th century the new village, now grown to the status of city, pronounced itself a municipality and defined its territory as bordering with those of Trieste and Koper, but stayed still politically bound to the Patriarchy of Aquileia. From this period are the cathedral and the city hall, the latter having been rebuilt in the last century.[clarification needed] In 1420 it became part of the Republic of Venice.

 

After Venice's fall in 1797, Muggia became part of the Austrian Empire, under which it developed an important naval shipbuilding industry which flourished until after World War II. Throughout the Austro-Hungarian period it remained part of the Margravate of Istria, first within the Kingdom of Illyria and then, after 1861, within the Austrian Littoral. The municipality of Muggia historically extended further south than today, including several settlements that are now part of Slovenia: Ankaran, Hrvatini, Elerji, Škofije, and Plavje.

 

After World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the town was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy and incorporated into the Province of Trieste. In the 1930s, the area developed a strong Communist underground activity against Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. In 1945, it was occupied by the Yugoslav People's Army and from 1947 to 1954 it was part of the Free Territory of Trieste, a formally independent territory directly administered by the United Nations. The territory was internally divided into two zones ruled by military governors - Muggia ended up in the northern Zone A ruled by Anglo-Americans, while the southern Zone B was ruled by the Yugoslav army. In 1954 the two zones were handed over to Italian and Yugoslav civilian governments and de facto annexed by the two countries in an arrangement finally formalized in the 1975 Treaty of Osimo, which established the former borders between Zones as the new Italy-Yugoslavia international border. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s it formed the border between Italy and the newly independent Slovenia. Following Slovenia's accession to the European Union in May 2004 and the passport-free Schengen Area in January 2008, all border controls have been removed, making the Italian-Slovenian border which runs just south and east of Muggia, practically invisible to travellers.

Muggia provides many evident traces of its Venetian traditions and origin, as showed by the dialect, the gastronomic traditions, the gothic-venetian style of some houses, the devious "calli", the loggias, the ogive arches, the ancient coats of arms on the façades but mostly the main square, a true Venetian "campiello".

 

Memories of its early ages include an important pre-historic "castelliere" on Mt. Castellier (S. Barbara) and Roman (Archaeological Park of Castrum Muglae) and medieval remains in Muggia Vecchia (Old Muggia), once one of the guarding castles that in the 10th century were built to defend the Istrian border against the invasion of the Hungars.

 

The Castle of Muggia, destroyed in 1353 by the Triestines, retains several remains of the previous period such as the ruins of the walls. A tower dating back to 1374 was due to the Patriarch of Aquileia Marquard of Muggia. Later in 1735, under the government of the Republic of Venice, it was restored, but it was totally abandoned during the following century. The Castle was restored by its current owners, the sculptor Villi Bossi and his wife Gabriella, and may be visited upon request.

 

The most important art attraction is the little basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (10th-13th century), housing frescoes from the 14th-15th centuries.

   

english

 

Tjörnin (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈtʰjœrtn̥ɪn], The Pond) is a prominent small lake in central Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. Most visitors to the city pass along its shore, as it is situated in the city centre next to the Reykjavik City Hall and several museums. Tjörnin means "the lake" or "the pond". Tarn, meaning "mountain lake", is a northern English dialect word derived from the Norse word tjörn and its genitive/plural tjarnar. Bird feeding on the lake shore, a popular pastime, has led to the lake being called "the biggest bread soup in the world" (stærsta brauðsupa í heimi). Tjörnin was the setting for scenes in the 2010 Icelandic movie Gauragangur.

 

Geography

Tjörnin is described as a lagoon next to a barrier beach. The lake's formation is attributed to the lagoon which was part of a reef that existed at the present location of Hafnarstræti (a city street, "Harbour Street").This street, which passes through the business section of the city, lies on the southern side of the lake and leads to the gardens. The Vatnsmýri marsh feeds the lake. There is a landscape park that runs from north to south, with a variety of greenery. The outflow from the lake is Lækjarin, an open water channel that flows through the city centre. During the winter, the lake usually freezes and is used for ice skating. Both banks of the lake are paved and terminate at Tjarnargarður, a new science park. The southern shoreline of the lake has well-tended parks decorated with statues. The winding paths are frequented by joggers and cyclists. Notice boards along the shore give daily reports of the numbers of birds on the lake.

 

Avifauna

 

The lake is frequented by 40-50 species of water birds, including the Arctic Tern, Eider, Gadwall, Greylag Goose and other goose species, mallard, seagulls, and scaup. Whooper Swan are viewable within close proximity. The Arctic Tern's arrival heralds the start of summer. Birders from all over the North Atlantic come to pursue their hobby in the lake area. The lake is also a favorite place to take young children to watch and feed birds. The popularity of bird feeding has led to the lake being poetically referred to as "the biggest bread soup in the world" (stærsta brauðsupa í heimi).

 

Cityscape

 

The earliest urban development of Reykjavík took place between the lake and the northern coast of the peninsula. Over the years, the lake became an integral part of the urban environment. Development of the city has centered around the lake. The postmodern City Hall, Ráðhús, stands in the northwest corner on the edge of the lake: it looks as if it is rising out of the lake. Other notable buildings in the area are the Supreme Court, Reykjavík Art Museum, National Museum, Living Art Museum, Reykjavík City Library, National Theatre, Alþingi (the Parliament of Iceland), and the Domkirkja cathedral, apart from a shopping complex and restaurants. Several buildings belonging to the University of Iceland are also close by.

 

There is a bridge over the Tjornin Lake made of wood that was originally built in 1920.

 

Conservation

 

Vatnsmýrin Reserve, the protected area around Tjörnin, has deteriorated in recent years as evidenced by a drop in the variety of reported birds. Part of the issue is attributed to the lack of appropriate nesting grounds due to invasive flora species as well as the presence of animals in the reserve. Action plans have been initiated jointly by the Nordic House, the University of Iceland, and Reykjavík City Council, to improve the reserve's condition with appropriate wetland vegetation, construction of embankments and sedimentation ponds to improve the water flow, as well as some desilting of the lake.

  

Icelandic

 

Tjörnin (eða Reykjavíkurtjörn) er grunnt stöðuvatn í miðbæ Reykjavíkur. Vatnið í Tjörnina kemur úr Vatnsmýrinni sunnan við hana og rennur úr henni um Lækinn sem rennur undir Lækjargötu til sjávar í víkinni. Við Tjörnina standa margar merkilegar byggingar, þar á meðal Ráðhús Reykjavíkur, Iðnaðarmannahúsið, Tjarnarskóli, Listasafn Íslands og Fríkirkjan í Reykjavík. Við Tjörnina er einnig Hljómskálagarðurinn, eini lystigarðurinn í miðborg Reykjavíkur. Í og við Tjörnina er mikið fuglalíf. Vinsæl afþreying hjá foreldrum með ung börn er að fara niður að Tjörn og „gefa öndunum“ (þ.e. brauðmola).

 

Tjörnin er dæmi um sjávarlón þar sem sandur og möl hefur myndað malarrif sem lokar smám saman af lónið. Gamli miðbærinn í Reykjavík stendur á rifinu. Rifið var ekki fullmyndað fyrr en fyrir um það bil 1200 árum og þá hófst lífræn setmyndun í Tjörninni en undir þeim setlögum eru sand- og malarlög. Þegar lífræn efni tóku að safnast saman á botni Tjarnarinnar gætti lítilla seltuáhrifa og grunnvatn hefur streymt þangað frá Vatnsmýrinni og holtunum í kring. Tjarnarbakkarnir voru grónir gulstör (carex lyngbyei) og öðrum tegundum af hálfgrasaætt en svo komu tímabil þegar seltan verður meiri þá hörfuðu háplöntur. Um 1900 mun engum fugli hafa verið vært á Tjörninni, allir fuglar voru drepnir. Andaveiðar voru eitthvað stundaðar á Tjörninni allt fram á annan áratug síðustu aldar. Með lögreglusamþykkt frá 19. apríl 1919 var bannað að skjóta í borgarlandinu. Um sama leyti var sett siglingabann en áður höfðu margir átt báta og vegna umferðar þreifst ekkert kríuvarp í Tjarnarhólmanum fyrir 1919. Með skotveiðibanninu og siglingabanninu fjölgaði mikið stokköndum og kríum.

The Toraja are an ethnic group indigenous to a mountainous region of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Their population is approximately 1,100,000, of whom 450,000 live in the regency of Tana Toraja ("Land of Toraja"). Most of the population is Christian, and others are Muslim or have local animist beliefs known as aluk ("the way"). The Indonesian government has recognized this animist belief as Aluk To Dolo ("Way of the Ancestors").

 

The word toraja comes from the Bugis Buginese language term to riaja, meaning "people of the uplands". The Dutch colonial government named the people Toraja in 1909. Torajans are renowned for their elaborate funeral rites, burial sites carved into rocky cliffs, massive peaked-roof traditional houses known as tongkonan, and colorful wood carvings. Toraja funeral rites are important social events, usually attended by hundreds of people and lasting for several days.

 

Before the 20th century, Torajans lived in autonomous villages, where they practised animism and were relatively untouched by the outside world. In the early 1900s, Dutch missionaries first worked to convert Torajan highlanders to Christianity. When the Tana Toraja regency was further opened to the outside world in the 1970s, it became an icon of tourism in Indonesia: it was exploited by tourism developers and studied by anthropologists. By the 1990s, when tourism peaked, Toraja society had changed significantly, from an agrarian model - in which social life and customs were outgrowths of the Aluk To Dolo - to a largely Christian society. Today, tourism and remittances from migrant Torajans have made for major changes in the Toraja highland, giving the Toraja a celebrity status within Indonesia and enhancing Toraja ethnic group pride.

 

ETHNIC IDENTITY

The Torajan people had little notion of themselves as a distinct ethnic group before the 20th century. Before Dutch colonization and Christianization, Torajans, who lived in highland areas, identified with their villages and did not share a broad sense of identity. Although complexes of rituals created linkages between highland villages, there were variations in dialects, differences in social hierarchies, and an array of ritual practices in the Sulawesi highland region. "Toraja" (from the coastal languages' to, meaning people; and riaja, uplands) was first used as a lowlander expression for highlanders. As a result, "Toraja" initially had more currency with outsiders - such as the Bugis and Makassarese, who constitute a majority of the lowland of Sulawesi - than with insiders. The Dutch missionaries' presence in the highlands gave rise to the Toraja ethnic consciousness in the Sa'dan Toraja region, and this shared identity grew with the rise of tourism in the Tana Toraja Regency. Since then, South Sulawesi has four main ethnic groups - the Bugis (the majority, including shipbuilders and seafarers), the Makassarese (lowland traders and seafarers), the Mandarese (traders and fishermen), and the Toraja (highland rice cultivators).

 

HISTORY

From the 17th century, the Dutch established trade and political control on Sulawesi through the Dutch East Indies Company. Over two centuries, they ignored the mountainous area in the central Sulawesi, where Torajans lived, because access was difficult and it had little productive agricultural land. In the late 19th century, the Dutch became increasingly concerned about the spread of Islam in the south of Sulawesi, especially among the Makassarese and Bugis peoples. The Dutch saw the animist highlanders as potential Christians. In the 1920s, the Reformed Missionary Alliance of the Dutch Reformed Church began missionary work aided by the Dutch colonial government. In addition to introducing Christianity, the Dutch abolished slavery and imposed local taxes. A line was drawn around the Sa'dan area and called Tana Toraja ("the land of Toraja"). Tana Toraja was first a subdivision of the Luwu kingdom that had claimed the area. In 1946, the Dutch granted Tana Toraja a regentschap, and it was recognized in 1957 as one of the regencies of Indonesia.

 

Early Dutch missionaries faced strong opposition among Torajans, especially among the elite, because the abolition of their profitable slave trade had angered them. Some Torajans were forcibly relocated to the lowlands by the Dutch, where they could be more easily controlled. Taxes were kept high, undermining the wealth of the elites. Ultimately, the Dutch influence did not subdue Torajan culture, and only a few Torajans were converted. In 1950, only 10% of the population had converted to Christianity.

 

In the 1930s, Muslim lowlanders attacked the Torajans, resulting in widespread Christian conversion among those who sought to align themselves with the Dutch for political protection and to form a movement against the Bugis and Makassarese Muslims. Between 1951 and 1965 (following Indonesian independence), southern Sulawesi faced a turbulent period as the Darul Islam separatist movement fought for an Islamic state in Sulawesi. The 15 years of guerrilla warfare led to massive conversions to

 

CHRISTIANITY

Alignment with the Indonesian government, however, did not guarantee safety for the Torajans. In 1965, a presidential decree required every Indonesian citizen to belong to one of five officially recognized religions: Islam, Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism), Hinduism, or Buddhism. The Torajan religious belief (aluk) was not legally recognized, and the Torajans raised their voices against the law. To make aluk accord with the law, it had to be accepted as part of one of the official religions. In 1969, Aluk To Dolo ("the way of ancestors") was legalized as a sect of Agama Hindu Dharma, the official name of Hinduism in Indonesia.

 

SOCIETY

There are three main types of affiliation in Toraja society: family, class and religion.

 

FAMILY AFFILIATION

Family is the primary social and political grouping in Torajan society. Each village is one extended family, the seat of which is the tongkonan, a traditional Torajan house. Each tongkonan has a name, which becomes the name of the village. The familial dons maintain village unity. Marriage between distant cousins (fourth cousins and beyond) is a common practice that strengthens kinship. Toraja society prohibits marriage between close cousins (up to and including the third cousin) - except for nobles, to prevent the dispersal of property. Kinship is actively reciprocal, meaning that the extended family helps each other farm, share buffalo rituals, and pay off debts.

 

Each person belongs to both the mother's and the father's families, the only bilateral family line in Indonesia. Children, therefore, inherit household affiliation from both mother and father, including land and even family debts. Children's names are given on the basis of kinship, and are usually chosen after dead relatives. Names of aunts, uncles and cousins are commonly referred to in the names of mothers, fathers and siblings.

 

Before the start of the formal administration of Toraja villages by the Tana Toraja Regency, each Toraja village was autonomous. In a more complex situation, in which one Toraja family could not handle their problems alone, several villages formed a group; sometimes, villages would unite against other villages. Relationship between families was expressed through blood, marriage, and shared ancestral houses (tongkonan), practically signed by the exchange of water buffalo and pigs on ritual occasions. Such exchanges not only built political and cultural ties between families but defined each person's place in a social hierarchy: who poured palm wine, who wrapped a corpse and prepared offerings, where each person could or could not sit, what dishes should be used or avoided, and even what piece of meat constituted one's share.

 

CLASS AFFILIATION

In early Toraja society, family relationships were tied closely to social class. There were three strata: nobles, commoners, and slaves (slavery was abolished in 1909 by the Dutch East Indies government). Class was inherited through the mother. It was taboo, therefore, to marry "down" with a woman of lower class. On the other hand, marrying a woman of higher class could improve the status of the next generation. The nobility's condescending attitude toward the commoners is still maintained today for reasons of family prestige.

 

Nobles, who were believed to be direct descendants of the descended person from heaven, lived in tongkonans, while commoners lived in less lavish houses (bamboo shacks called banua). Slaves lived in small huts, which had to be built around their owner's tongkonan. Commoners might marry anyone, but nobles preferred to marry in-family to maintain their status. Sometimes nobles married Bugis or Makassarese nobles. Commoners and slaves were prohibited from having death feasts. Despite close kinship and status inheritance, there was some social mobility, as marriage or change in wealth could affect an individuals status. Wealth was counted by the ownership of water buffaloes.

 

Slaves in Toraja society were family property. Sometimes Torajans decided to become slaves when they incurred a debt, pledging to work as payment. Slaves could be taken during wars, and slave trading was common. Slaves could buy their freedom, but their children still inherited slave status. Slaves were prohibited from wearing bronze or gold, carving their houses, eating from the same dishes as their owners, or having sex with free women - a crime punishable by death.

 

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION

Toraja's indigenous belief system is polytheistic animism, called aluk, or "the way" (sometimes translated as "the law"). In the Toraja myth, the ancestors of Torajan people came down from heaven using stairs, which were then used by the Torajans as a communication medium with Puang Matua, the Creator. The cosmos, according to aluk, is divided into the upper world (heaven), the world of man (earth), and the underworld. At first, heaven and earth were married, then there was a darkness, a separation, and finally the light. Animals live in the underworld, which is represented by rectangular space enclosed by pillars, the earth is for mankind, and the heaven world is located above, covered with a saddle-shaped roof. Other Toraja gods include Pong Banggai di Rante (god of Earth), Indo' Ongon-Ongon (a goddess who can cause earthquakes), Pong Lalondong (god of death), and Indo' Belo Tumbang (goddess of medicine); there are many more.

 

The earthly authority, whose words and actions should be cleaved to both in life (agriculture) and death (funerals), is called to minaa (an aluk priest). Aluk is not just a belief system; it is a combination of law, religion, and habit. Aluk governs social life, agricultural practices, and ancestral rituals. The details of aluk may vary from one village to another. One common law is the requirement that death and life rituals be separated. Torajans believe that performing death rituals might ruin their corpses if combined with life rituals. The two rituals are equally important. During the time of the Dutch missionaries, Christian Torajans were prohibited from attending or performing life rituals, but were allowed to perform death rituals. Consequently, Toraja's death rituals are still practised today, while life rituals have diminished.

 

CULTURE

TONGKONAN

Tongkonan are the traditional Torajan ancestral houses. They stand high on wooden piles, topped with a layered split-bamboo roof shaped in a sweeping curved arc, and they are incised with red, black, and yellow detailed wood carvings on the exterior walls. The word "tongkonan" comes from the Torajan tongkon ("to sit").

 

Tongkonan are the center of Torajan social life. The rituals associated with the tongkonan are important expressions of Torajan spiritual life, and therefore all family members are impelled to participate, because symbolically the tongkonan represents links to their ancestors and to living and future kin. According to Torajan myth, the first tongkonan was built in heaven on four poles, with a roof made of Indian cloth. When the first Torajan ancestor descended to earth, he imitated the house and held a large ceremony.

 

The construction of a tongkonan is laborious work and is usually done with the help of the extended family. There are three types of tongkonan. The tongkonan layuk is the house of the highest authority, used as the "center of government". The tongkonan pekamberan belongs to the family members who have some authority in local traditions. Ordinary family members reside in the tongkonan batu. The exclusivity to the nobility of the tongkonan is diminishing as many Torajan commoners find lucrative employment in other parts of Indonesia. As they send back money to their families, they enable the construction of larger tongkonan.

 

WOOD CARVINGS

To express social and religious concepts, Torajans carve wood, calling it Pa'ssura (or "the writing"). Wood carvings are therefore Toraja's cultural manifestation.

 

Each carving receives a special name, and common motifs are animals and plants that symbolize some virtue. For example, water plants and animals, such as crabs, tadpoles and water weeds, are commonly found to symbolize fertility. In some areas noble elders claim these symbols refer to strength of noble family, but not everyone agrees. The overall meaning of groups of carved motifs on houses remains debated and tourism has further complicated these debates because some feel a uniform explanation must be presented to tourists. The image to the left shows an example of Torajan wood carving, consisting of 15 square panels. The center bottom panel represents buffalo or wealth, a wish for many buffaloes for the family. The center panel represents a knot and a box, a hope that all of the family's offspring will be happy and live in harmony, like goods kept safe in a box. The top left and top right squares represent an aquatic animal, indicating the need for fast and hard work, just like moving on the surface of water. It also represents the need for a certain skill to produce good results.

 

Regularity and order are common features in Toraja wood carving (see table below), as well as abstracts and geometrical designs. Nature is frequently used as the basis of Toraja's ornaments, because nature is full of abstractions and geometries with regularities and ordering. Toraja's ornaments have been studied in ethnomathematics to reveal their mathematical structure, but Torajans base this art only on approximations. To create an ornament, bamboo sticks are used as a geometrical tool.

 

FUNERAL RITES

In Toraja society, the funeral ritual is the most elaborate and expensive event. The richer and more powerful the individual, the more expensive is the funeral. In the aluk religion, only nobles have the right to have an extensive death feast. The death feast of a nobleman is usually attended by thousands and lasts for several days. A ceremonial site, called rante, is usually prepared in a large, grassy field where shelters for audiences, rice barns, and other ceremonial funeral structures are specially made by the deceased family. Flute music, funeral chants, songs and poems, and crying and wailing are traditional Toraja expressions of grief with the exceptions of funerals for young children, and poor, low-status adults.

 

The ceremony is often held weeks, months, or years after the death so that the deceased's family can raise the significant funds needed to cover funeral expenses. Torajans traditionally believe that death is not a sudden, abrupt event, but a gradual process toward Puya (the land of souls, or afterlife). During the waiting period, the body of the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept under the tongkonan. The soul of the deceased is thought to linger around the village until the funeral ceremony is completed, after which it begins its journey to Puya.

 

Another component of the ritual is the slaughter of water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered at the death feast. Buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner, who is in the "sleeping stage". Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering tens of water buffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family. However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony. As with the sacrifice of the buffalo and the pigs, the cockfight is considered sacred because it involves the spilling of blood on the earth. In particular, the tradition requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is common for at least 25 pairs of chickens to be set against each other in the context of the ceremony.

 

There are three methods of burial: the coffin may be laid in a cave or in a carved stone grave, or hung on a cliff. It contains any possessions that the deceased will need in the afterlife. The wealthy are often buried in a stone grave carved out of a rocky cliff. The grave is usually expensive and takes a few months to complete. In some areas, a stone cave may be found that is large enough to accommodate a whole family. A wood-carved effigy, called Tau tau, is usually placed in the cave looking out over the land. The coffin of a baby or child may be hung from ropes on a cliff face or from a tree. This hanging grave usually lasts for years, until the ropes rot and the coffin falls to the ground.

 

In the ritual called Ma'Nene, that takes place each year in August, the bodies of the deceased are exhumed to be washed, groomed and dressed in new clothes. The mummies are then walked around the village.

 

DANCE AND MUSIC

Torajans perform dances on several occasions, most often during their elaborate funeral ceremonies. They dance to express their grief, and to honour and even cheer the deceased person because he is going to have a long journey in the afterlife. First, a group of men form a circle and sing a monotonous chant throughout the night to honour the deceased (a ritual called Ma'badong). This is considered by many Torajans to be the most important component of the funeral ceremony. On the second funeral day, the Ma'randing warrior dance is performed to praise the courage of the deceased during life. Several men perform the dance with a sword, a large shield made from buffalo skin, a helmet with a buffalo horn, and other ornamentation. The Ma'randing dance precedes a procession in which the deceased is carried from a rice barn to the rante, the site of the funeral ceremony. During the funeral, elder women perform the Ma'katia dance while singing a poetic song and wearing a long feathered costume. The Ma'akatia dance is performed to remind the audience of the generosity and loyalty of the deceased person. After the bloody ceremony of buffalo and pig slaughter, a group of boys and girls clap their hands while performing a cheerful dance called Ma'dondan.

 

As in other agricultural societies, Torajans dance and sing during harvest time. The Ma'bugi dance celebrates the thanksgiving event, and the Ma'gandangi dance is performed while Torajans are pounding rice. There are several war dances, such as the Manimbong dance performed by men, followed by the Ma'dandan dance performed by women. The aluk religion governs when and how Torajans dance. A dance called Ma'bua can be performed only once every 12 years. Ma'bua is a major Toraja ceremony in which priests wear a buffalo head and dance around a sacred tree.

 

A traditional musical instrument of the Toraja is a bamboo flute called a Pa'suling (suling is an Indonesian word for flute). This six-holed flute (not unique to the Toraja) is played at many dances, such as the thanksgiving dance Ma'bondensan, where the flute accompanies a group of shirtless, dancing men with long fingernails. The Toraja have indigenous musical instruments, such as the Pa'pelle (made from palm leaves) and the Pa'karombi (the Torajan version of a jaw harp). The Pa'pelle is played during harvest time and at house inauguration ceremonies.

 

LANGUAGE

The ethnic Toraja language is dominant in Tana Toraja with the main language as the Sa'dan Toraja. Although the national Indonesian language is the official language and is spoken in the community, all elementary schools in Tana Toraja teach Toraja language.Language varieties of Toraja, including Kalumpang, Mamasa, Tae' , Talondo' , Toala' , and Toraja-Sa'dan, belong to the Malayo-Polynesian language from the Austronesian family. At the outset, the isolated geographical nature of Tana Toraja formed many dialects between the Toraja languages themselves. After the formal administration of Tana Toraja, some Toraja dialects have been influenced by other languages through the transmigration program, introduced since the colonialism period, and it has been a major factor in the linguistic variety of Toraja languages. A prominent attribute of Toraja language is the notion of grief. The importance of death ceremony in Toraja culture has characterized their languages to express intricate degrees of grief and mourning. The Toraja language contains many terms referring to sadness, longing, depression, and mental pain. Giving a clear expression of the psychological and physical effect of loss is a catharsis and sometimes lessens the pain of grief itself.

 

ECONOMY

Prior to Suharto's "New Order" administration, the Torajan economy was based on agriculture, with cultivated wet rice in terraced fields on mountain slopes, and supplemental cassava and maize crops. Much time and energy were devoted to raising water buffalo, pigs, and chickens, primarily for ceremonial sacrifices and consumption. Coffee was the first significant cash crop produced in Toraja, and was introduced in the mid 19th century, changing the local economy towards commodity production for external markets and gaining an excellent reputation for quality in the international market .

 

With the commencement of the New Order in 1965, Indonesia's economy developed and opened to foreign investment. In Toraja, a coffee plantation and factory was established by Key Coffee of Japan, and Torajan coffee regained a reputation for quality within the growing international specialty coffee sector Multinational oil and mining companies opened new operations in Indonesia during the 1970s and 1980s. Torajans, particularly younger ones, relocated to work for the foreign companies - to Kalimantan for timber and oil, to Papua for mining, to the cities of Sulawesi and Java, and many went to Malaysia. The out-migration of Torajans was steady until 1985. and has continued since, with remittances sent back by emigre Torajans performing an important role within the contemporary economy.

 

Tourism commenced in Toraja in the 1970s, and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1984 and 1997, a significant number of Torajans obtained their incomes from tourism, working in and owning hotels, as tour guides, drivers, or selling souvenirs. With the rise of political and economic instability in Indonesia in the late 1990s - including religious conflicts elsewhere on Sulawesi - tourism in Tana Toraja has declined dramatically. Toraja continues to be a well known origin for Indonesian coffee, grown by both smallholders and plantation estates, although migration, remittances and off-farm income is considered far more important to most households, even those in rural areas.

 

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Before the 1970s, Toraja was almost unknown to Western tourism. In 1971, about 50 Europeans visited Tana Toraja. In 1972, at least 400 visitors attended the funeral ritual of Puang of Sangalla, the highest-ranking nobleman in Tana Toraja and the so-called "last pure-blooded Toraja noble." The event was documented by National Geographic and broadcast in several European countries. In 1976, about 12,000 tourists visited the regency and in 1981, Torajan sculpture was exhibited in major North American museums. "The land of the heavenly kings of Tana Toraja", as written in the exhibition brochure, embraced the outside world.

 

In 1984, the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism declared Tana Toraja Regency the prima donna of South Sulawesi. Tana Toraja was heralded as "the second stop after Bali". Tourism was increasing dramatically: by 1985, a total number of 150,000 foreigners had visited the Regency (in addition to 80,000 domestic tourists), and the annual number of foreign visitors was recorded at 40,000 in 1989. Souvenir stands appeared in Rantepao, the cultural center of Toraja, roads were sealed at the most-visited tourist sites, new hotels and tourist-oriented restaurants were opened, and an airstrip was opened in the Regency in 1981.

 

Tourism developers have marketed Tana Toraja as an exotic adventure - an area rich in culture and off the beaten track. Western tourists expected to see stone-age villages and pagan funerals. Toraja is for tourists who have gone as far as Bali and are willing to see more of the wild, "untouched" islands. However, they were more likely to see a Torajan wearing a hat and denim, living in a Christian society. Tourists felt that the tongkonan and other Torajan rituals had been preconceived to make profits, and complained that the destination was too commercialized. This has resulted in several clashes between Torajans and tourism developers, whom Torajans see as outsiders.

 

A clash between local Torajan leaders and the South Sulawesi provincial government (as a tourist developer) broke out in 1985. The government designated 18 Toraja villages and burial sites as traditional tourist attractions. Consequently, zoning restrictions were applied to these areas, such that Torajans themselves were barred from changing their tongkonans and burial sites. The plan was opposed by some Torajan leaders, as they felt that their rituals and traditions were being determined by outsiders. As a result, in 1987, the Torajan village of Kété Kesú and several other designated tourist attractions closed their doors to tourists. This closure lasted only a few days, as the villagers found it too difficult to survive without the income from selling souvenirs.

 

Tourism has also transformed Toraja society. Originally, there was a ritual which allowed commoners to marry nobles (puang) and thereby gain nobility for their children. However, the image of Torajan society created for the tourists, often by "lower-ranking" guides, has eroded its traditional strict hierarchy. High status is not as esteemed in Tana Toraja as it once was. Many low-ranking men can declare themselves and their children nobles by gaining enough wealth through work outside the region and then marrying a noble woman.

 

WIKIPEDIA

typeset dialect is an attempt to gain a better understanding of the people and subsequent culture that embodies the Whittier neighborhood. This is realized by analyzing a detailed source of imagery (captured while exploring the streets on foot) taken from textual samples residing within the prescribed Whittier boundaries.

Parmi les 55 ethnies minoritaires, à l'exception des Hui et des Mandchous qui utilisent les dialectes chinois, 53 ont leur propre langue, 21 possèdent leur propre écriture et utilisent 27 systèmes d'écriture.

  

Liste des « ethnies » chinoises [modifier]

Han (汉族 : Hàn Zú)

Zhuang (壮族 : Zhuàng Zú)

Mandchous (满族 : Mǎn Zú)

Hui (回族 : Huí Zú)

Miaos (苗族 : Miáo Zú) (Hmongs)

Ouïgours (维吾尔族 : Wéiwúěr Zú)

Yi (彝族 : Yí Zú)

Tujia (土家族 : Tǔjiā Zú)

Mongols (蒙古族 : Měnggǔ Zú)

Tibétains (藏族 : Zàng Zú) (incluant les Amdowa et les Khampa)

Buyei (布依族 : Bùyī Zú)

Dong (侗族 : Dòng Zú)

Yao (瑤族 : Yáo Zú)

Coréens (朝鲜族 : Cháoxiǎn Zú)

Bai (白族 : Bái Zú)

Hani (哈尼族 : Hāní Zú)

Li (黎族 : Lí Zú)

Kazakhs (哈萨克族 : Hāsàkè Zú)

Dai (傣族 : Dǎi Zú, appelée aussi Dai Lue, une des ethnies thaīes)

She (畲族 : Shē Zú)

Lisu (傈僳族 : Lìsù Zú)

Gelao (仡佬族 : Gēlǎo Zú)

Lahu (拉祜族 : Lāhù Zú)

Dongxiang (东乡族 : Dōngxiāng Zú)

Va (佤族 : Wǎ Zú) (Va)

Sui (水族 : Shuǐ Zú)

Naxi (纳西族 : Nàxī Zú) (ceci inclut les Mosuo (摩梭 : Mósuō))

Qiang (羌族 : Qiāng Zú)

Tu (土族 : Tǔ Zú)

Xibe (锡伯族 : Xíbó Zú)

Mulao (仫佬族 : Mùlǎo Zú)

Kirghizes (柯尔克孜族 : Kēěrkèzī Zú)

Daur (达斡尔族 : Dáwòěr Zú)

Jingpo (景颇族 : Jǐngpō Zú)

Salar (撒拉族 : Sǎlá Zú)

Blang (布朗族 : Bùlǎng Zú)

Maonan (毛南族 : Màonán Zú)

Tajik (塔吉克族 : Tǎjíkè Zú)

Pumi (普米族 : Pǔmǐ Zú)

Achang (阿昌族 : Āchāng Zú)

Nu (怒族 : Nù Zú)

Ewenki (鄂温克族 : Èwēnkè Zú)

Gin, (Vietnamiens ou Kinh (京族 : Jīng Zú)

Jino (基诺族 : Jīnuò Zú)

De'ang (德昂族 : Déáng Zú)

Ouzbek (乌孜别克族 : Wūzībiékè Zú)

Russe (俄罗斯族 : Éluōsī Zú)

Yugur (裕固族 : Yùgù Zú)

Bonan (保安族 : Bǎoān Zú)

Monba (门巴族 : Ménbā Zú)

Oroqen (鄂伦春族 : Èlúnchūn Zú)

Derung (独龙族 : Dúlóng Zú)

Tatars (塔塔尔族 : Tǎtǎěr Zú)

Hezhen (赫哲族 : Hèzhé Zú)

Lhoba (珞巴族 : Luòbā Zú)

Gaoshan (高山族 : Gāoshān Zú)