VERSANT

Roads wind by sharp cliffs to Mestia in Upper
Svaneti. Previous page: the village of Cholashi.
The men gather at dawn near the stone tower, cradling knives in callused hands. After
a night of snowfall — the first of the season in Svaneti, a region high in Georgia’s
Caucasus Mountains — the day has broken with icy clarity. Suddenly visible above
the village of Cholashi, beyond the 70-foot-high towers that form its ancient skyline,
is the ring of 15,000-foot peaks that for centuries has kept one of the last living
medieval cultures barricaded from the outside world.
Silence falls as Zviad Jachvliani, a burly former boxer with a salt-and-pepper beard,
leads the men — and one recalcitrant bull — into a yard overlooking the snowdusted
valley. No words are needed. Today is a Svan feast day, ormotsi, marking the
40th day after the death of a loved one, in this case Jachvliani’s grandmother. The
men know what to do, for Svan traditions — animal sacrifices, ritual beard cutting,
blood feuds — have been carried out in this wild corner of Georgia for more than a
thousand years. “Things are changing in Svaneti,” Jachvliani, a 31-year-old father of
three, says. “But our traditions will continue. They’re part of our DNA.”
In the yard he maneuvers the bull to face east, where the sun has crept above the
jagged crown of Mount Tetnuldi, near the Russian border. Long before the arrival of
The men gather at dawn near the stone tower, cradling knives in callused hands. After
a night of snowfall — the first of the season in Svaneti, a region high in Georgia’s
“Things are changing in
Svaneti,” Jachvliani says. “But
our traditions will continue.
They’re part of our DNA.”
Photo © Corinne Thrash
Caucasus Mountains — the day has broken with icy clarity. Suddenly visible above
the village of Cholashi, beyond the 70-foot-high towers that form its ancient skyline,
is the ring of 15,000-foot peaks that for centuries has kept one of the last living
medieval cultures barricaded from the outside world.
Silence falls as Zviad Jachvliani, a burly former boxer with a salt-and-pepper beard,
leads the men — and one recalcitrant bull — into a yard overlooking the snow-dusted
valley. No words are needed. Today is a Svan feast day, ormotsi, marking the 40th
day after the death of a loved one, in this case Jachvliani’s grandmother. The men
know what to do, for Svan traditions — animal sacrifices, ritual beard cutting, blood
feuds — have been carried out in this wild corner of Georgia for more than a thousand
years. “Things are changing in Svaneti,” Jachvliani, a 31-year-old father of three, says.
“But our traditions will continue. They’re part of our DNA.”
In the yard he maneuvers the bull to face east, where the sun has crept above the
jagged crown of Mount Tetnuldi, near the Russian border. Long before the arrival
of Christianity in the first millennium, Svans worshipped the sun, and this spiritual
force — along with its derivative, fire — still figures in local rituals. As the men with
knives gather in front of him, Jachvliani pours a shot of moonshine on the ground, an
offering to his grandmother. His elderly uncle chants a blessing. And then his cousin,
cupping a candle against the wind, lights the hair on the bull’s forehead, lower back,
and shoulders. It is the sign of the cross, rendered in fire.
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