VERSANT

History
After the blessing, the men lasso one of the bull’s legs with a rope and, heaving in
unison, truss the bellowing beast over the branch of an apple tree. Jachvliani grabs
its horns, while another villager, unsheathing a sharpened dagger, kneels down next
to the bull and, almost tenderly, feels for the artery in its neck.
Over the course of history many powerful empires — Arab, Mongol, Persian,
Ottoman — sent armies rampaging through Georgia, the frontier between Europe
and Asia. But the home of the Svans, a sliver of land hidden among the gorges of
the Caucasus, remained unconquered until the Russians exerted control in the mid-
19th century. Svaneti’s isolation has shaped its identity — and its historical value.
In times of danger, lowland Georgians sent icons, jewels, and manuscripts to the
mountain churches and towers for safekeeping, turning Svaneti into a repository of
early Georgian culture. The Svans took their protective role seriously; an icon thief
could be banished from a village or, worse, cursed by a deity.
In their mountain fastness the people of Svaneti have managed to preserve an even
older culture: their own. By the first century B.C. the Svans, thought by some to be
descendants of Sumerian slaves, had a reputation as fierce warriors, documented in
the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo. (Noting that the Svans used sheepskins
to sift for gold in the rivers, Strabo also fueled speculation that Svaneti might have
“Nowhere else can you find
a place that carries on the
customs and rituals of the
European Middle Ages.”
been the source of the golden fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts.) By the time
Christianity arrived, around the sixth century, Svan culture ran deep — with its own
language, its own densely textured music, and complex codes of chivalry, revenge,
and communal justice.
If the only remnants of this ancient society were the couple of hundred stone towers
that rise over Svan villages, that would be impressive enough. But these fortresses,
built mostly from the 9th century into the 13th, are not emblems of a lost civilization;
they’re the most visible signs of a culture that has endured almost miraculously
through the ages. The Svans who still live in Upper Svaneti — home to some of the
highest and most isolated villages in the Caucasus — hold fast to their traditions of
singing, mourning, celebrating, and fiercely defending family honor. “Svaneti is a
living ethnographic museum,” says Richard Bærug, a Norwegian academic and lodge
owner who’s trying to help save Svan, a largely unwritten language many scholars
believe predates Georgian, its more widely spoken cousin. “Nowhere else can you
find a place that carries on the customs and rituals of the European Middle Ages.”
What happens, though, when the Middle Ages meet the modern world? Since
the last years of Soviet rule a quarter century ago, thousands of Svans have migrated
to lowland Georgia, fleeing poverty, conflict, natural disasters — and criminal
gangs. In 1996, when UNESCO bestowed World Heritage status on the highest
cluster of Svan villages, Ushguli, the lone road that snakes into Svaneti was so terrorized
by bandits that few dared to visit. Security forces busted the gangs in 2004.
Photo © Corinne Thrash
42 • versant