The Sheila Variations

Hungary - Part I - Geography as Destiny

More essays from the "Country of the Week" thing I did on my old blog. Here are the other essays, for those of you new to me, or for anyone who is interested.

I had done a bunch of them, focusing on Turkmenistan, Macedonia - and I got a random email from someone: "Could you do Hungary?"

Uh ... Could I "do" Hungary? In what way, might I ask?

But anyway, I took on the challenge.

All errors of facts or interpretation are my fault, if any come up.

HUNGARY - PART I - GEOGRAPHY AS DESTINY

There is an enormous field on the eastern side of Hungary which is called "The Great Plain". I suppose "Field" is a ridiculous word choice, but if you can imagine a field which takes up an entire half of a country, then you will know what I am talking about. Like the western plains in America. An unbroken field, stretching for hundreds of miles. As has been described in this blog before, only in regards to other places, this plain was a crossing-ground, a land-bridge, a connector of peoples way back into antiquity.

This is a long way of saying geography is destiny.

It makes a lot of sense if you check it out on a map. I actually just spent 15 minutes searching the Web for a good topographical map of the area, and came up lacking. Frustrating. If you have access to a globe, just look at Hungary, and look at the inverted "C" of the Carpathians, cutting a swath through Romania. See how those mountains block Romania off from surrounding areas, and also see how the Great Plain on the eastern side of Hungary runs right up to the Carpathians, spreading upwards into the foothills of the mountain range, leaving the plain open to the north.

Such a simple thing, but crucial to the development of nations. A huge open plain, surrounded by a curving mountain range, with foothills to the north, provided easy access to the nomadic tribes and wandering people in the Middle Ages and before. This is how Hungary was born.

In 896 A.D. (how in the world do people come up with such specific dates??) seven "Magyar tribes" entered what is now modern-day Hungary, through the Great Plain, after being on the move for more than a thousand years. The Magyars are the ancestors of Hungarians. Who were they? To be honest, I'm not sure. Please feel free to illuminate me. Here is all I know, and this is basically regurgitated from one of my books: In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Magyars, along with the Finns, were the first Ural-Altaic peoples in Europe. (Those are two regions in Siberia, by the way.) They were horsemen of the Asian steppe, distantly related to the fantastic Uighur Turks. I have an endless fascination with these ancient little-known equestrian tribes.

The Magyars spent a thousand years migrating from the western edge of Siberia. Who knows why. They passed through the Caucasus, where they encountered Bulgars and Turks before coming in to Hungary.

Here is one of the things I have picked up about the Magyars. They had a genius for assimilation. Their culture was enormously flexible and expansive. Well, perhaps "culture" is not the correct word for a tribe who basically lived on their horses, with no country to call their own, without even the concept of "country" or "nation-state" in their collective consciousness. But this assimilative talent is very important to keep in mind, if you want to understand Hungary and present-day Hungarians. It seems that the open intelligence of the Magyars, their willingness to transform, their willingness to add words to their language taken from the Bulgars and the Turks, is one of the keys to the character of Hungary today.

I love that. The thought that an ancient tribe's personality can course through the culture of the generations to follow, 600 years later. It seems to me that this view may not be a very politically correct one, but it also seems to me to be true. Why else would my heart rise up out of my chest when I hear the beat of a bodhran or the sound of Uilleann Pipes? Why else would the stamp of riverdancing feet make me feel like I am remembering something? I personally did not grow up in Ireland, I was not part of a Celtic tribe, I cannot speak Gaelic ... but there is something familiar about the entire thing. I go to Ireland and there is something about it that feels like home. Is this just a trick of the mind? As in: I know that my ancestors are Irish and so I relate to the Irish experience? Maybe. But I think that that is just part of what is going on. Perhaps it's a Jungian view of the world. That there is such a thing as a collective unconscious. In my case, I tap into the collective Irish unconscious in a way which does not feel intellectual, or analytical, or understood in any normal way. It is like a memory. Only these memories are not my own, personally. They are of "my people".

Tangent over.

Anyway, what is known of the Magyars is that they had a genius for evolution and assimilation. They came to Europe from Siberia, they were primitive people who lived on their horses, who were buried with their horses, and within a century, a CENTURY, had completely adopted European manners, and a European mindset. This is extraordinary. A century is a blip on the radar screen of history. But the Magyars accomplished this. They must have been an amazing people.

Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, with many words of Turkish. A bizarre mix, and it is one of the legacies of the nomadic Magyars.

The Great Plain of Hungary had been important long before the arrival of the Magyars. Way earlier, it had been the northeasternmost frontier region of Rome, and like all frontier regions, it was filled with chaos and conflict. The order provided by the Roman empire dissolved a bit the further away you got from the center, and the Great Plain was filled with tribes, fighting for supremacy.

The Magyars were not the first tribes to pass through this area. For centuries, nomadic tribes with fascinating ancient names (Scythians, Huns, Avars, Tartars, Kumyks) migrated here. But they did not have the staying power of the Magyars, who arrived, settled in, and prospered. These other Central Asian tribes came, left a genetic imprint of one kind or another, and then disappeared off the face of the earth.

I love the idea that ancient history is a better guide to current events than the major newspapers of our day. Apparently, in Hungary now, Inner Asian studies has become enormously popular, because the country (after decades of crushing communism) is now interested in understanding its ethnic roots.

The other thing I have mentioned here which continues to be important in Hungary today, is the topography of the country. It is a small and very flat country. Budapest is in the center. Because there are no physical barriers (like the Carpathian mountains in Romania) it makes it very easy for ideas, movements, influences to move out from Budapest into the rest of the country. Things like Western investment (now a big big deal in Budapest) is fanning outwards, and the entire country is benefiting.

Take a look at Romania - again, on a globe if you have one. You can't get topographical maps online, obviously. Romania is filled with enormous mountain ranges, cutting one side of the country off from the other, and the rest of it is thick forests. It must be incredibly beautiful, but perhaps it makes it difficult for Romania to cohere. Eastern and Western Romania may as well be two different countries.

Hungary remains open, assimilative, flexible, expansive. Maybe partly due to the ancient Magyar culture coursing in the collective unconscious of the country to this day.

That's just a guess, though.

Posted by sheila