Traditions

Shepherd by Vocation

Cheesemaking is a long-standing craft in the Carpathians. The locals were making cheese using sheep and cow milk. The original recipes were passed from generation to generation. However, very few people make cheese nowadays. The youth is sure that grazing,...

Kosmach. Cymbals for the son

It’s hard to imagine the Ukrainian native music without cymbals. It’s an ancient stringed instrument was an inalienable attribute of weddings and other celebrating events, folk ensembles always had a cymbalist in its composition. Nowadays hardly anyone can teach play...

Krasnoilsk Malanka. The revival of the carnival

Bukovyna is considered to be a region that preserved old customs of Christmas holidays celebration better than anywhere else in Ukraine. Local people call their original Malanka “pereberiya” (pereberiya comes from the Ukrainian word “pereberatys” meaning to change dress, to...

Opishne – Life Originated in Clay

They say that clayware — a jug, a kumanets (a ceramic vessel for water and wine that is common in Ukraine) or anything else — is like a living creature. Potters themselves referred to their wares as if they were...

Carpathian Lizhnyk — A Hutsul Invention

Yavoriv, a settlement in Hutsulshchyna region, has always been famous for the beautiful works of its artisans; decorated Easter eggs (pysankas), embroidery and woodwork are widespread here. However, there’s something else makes Yavoriv such a special place: the art of...

Mountain Narrow-Gauge Railway. Carpathian Tram

For over a century, a Carpathian village Vyhoda with the population of 3.5 thousand people, has been a starting point of one of still existent unique narrow-gauge railways. Initially designed to serve as a means of wood transportation, narrow-gauge railway...

Wild-honey farmers of Polissia: People of the forest

Derevlyanshchyna is a region of Polissia, situated west of Kyiv and beyond the Teteriv River. It was a favourite place for Kyiv boyars and princes as it was a very rich area for wild-honey farming, so they often visited the...

Potters Family that Changed Opishne

There are about ten pottery centres in Ukraine. Opishne in the Poltava region is the largest among them. This is an old Cossack town (nowadays it has the status of the urban-type settlement – ed.), that is rich in the clay...