The Vlachs have always been transhumant, and the Mankia brothers’ photographic archive in Bucharest includes several frames depicting scenes of transhumance with an extraordinary cinematic effect. Theodor Capidan, himself a Vlach, spoke at the beginning of the 20th century of the Vlachs’ movements in one of his books: “In summer, from April to October, they stay in the summer pastures on the mountain heights; in winter, from October until the first days of spring, they move to the plains. They are so accustomed to these periodic movements that today there are Vlach communities whose inhabitants, although not engaged in shepherding, still do not stay in their mountain settlements during winter. In autumn, they leave for the plains, just like the nomadic shepherds, leaving only two or three families in their villages to guard the settlement.”
This rhythm involved splitting the family in two, as wives often remained alone for long periods, taking on responsibilities that women did not have elsewhere in the Balkans. They managed the household and made decisions. The journey also meant commercial activity; the shepherds sold cheese and butter and other products, buying various goods in return, which they brought back to the mountain villages. The Vlachs knew multiple languages and were always bilingual at the very least. It was a magical world of beliefs and, from the outside, superstitions.
Every so often, fortune graces us in unexpected ways. By the fall of 2019, I had identified and rephotographed nearly all the Manakia brothers’ localities. The landscape in the transhumance scenes seemed familiar after so much field research, so I set myself an almost impossible task: to identify those remaining locations, even if only approximately.
A one-minute and 20-second film by the Manakia brothers, preserved in the Bitola archive, entitled Scenes from the Life of the Nomadic Vlachs, helped me. Clearly, the film was made at the same time as the photographs. I was also assisted by a Greek album of archival photographs by Vanggelis Nikopoulos. For a few seconds, in the background of the film, a town appeared. By comparing the vague outlines with period photographs, I identified it as Grevena, and the large building next to it, which has long since disappeared, was an Ottoman garrison. I set out to find the landscape from the photograph. Almost nothing from Grevena of that time has survived.
As I was taking today’s photograph, a flock of sheep and a shepherd appeared. I greeted him in Vlach. He was working for Stergios Antulis, from Samarina, the highest village in Greece and legendary among the Vlachs. Stergios, among the last, was walking with his flock from Samarina to Tirnavos, a three-week journey. He looked at the photographs and said the people in the Manakia brothers’ images were not from his village. They could be from Avdela or Perivoli, he added. How do you know? I asked. By the saddlebag; each village has its own pattern, he replied. A lesson in past identity – when costumes served as identity markers. In August 2024, I met Stergios Antulis, again by chance, in Samarina, during the Saint Mary Festivity.
Near the site where the Manakia Brothers once captured their transhumance photographs, the Egnatia Odos highway now stretches across the landscape. Completed in 2009, this major infrastructure project intersects with the transhumance route that Vlach shepherds have used for centuries, and European laws prohibit crossing highways with flocks. The shepherds from Perivoli, Avdela, and Samarina have long followed the same path, descending each autumn from the highlands of Western Macedonia to the plains of Thessaly and returning in the spring. This 130-to-150-kilometer journey was marked by key rest stops, known as “konakia”, unchanged for centuries.
Authorities now provide subsidies for transporting flocks by truck, and underpasses have been built for transhumance, though very few shepherds use them, preferring the trucks. To write their book, The Nomads of the Balkans, Wace and Thompson walked with flocks from Tirnavos to Samarina in the spring of 1909. One hundred and ten years later, in the autumn of 2019, I met the flocks of Stergios Antoulis retracing that same route in reverse. An old world blends with the new, which is entirely natural. Yet, the old one is not completely gone.