Kashubians and their culture

Kashubia, the northern part of Poland, is characterised by the beauty of its landscapes and its numerous architectural monuments. The heart of Kashubia ts the Carthusian district, known as the "Kashubian Switzerland" and one of the most beautiful parts of Poland. Owing to the preponderance of hills, hillocks, forests and numerous lakes, Kashubia has come to be known as "the land of a thousand lakes".

Kashubians are a very ancient ethnic group of Slavonic Balts. They resisted polonisation for centuries but regard themselves as Poles. After the partitions of Poland, despite systematic germanisation, the Kashubians maintained close ties with Poland. They did not lose their identity, historical heritage or original culture. Although the Kashubians have lived between and among two great nations - the Poles and the Germans - they have always been conscious of their Kashubian souls... the Nobel laureate, Gunther Grass, despite being a German citizen, proudly calls himself a Kashubian.

The Kashubians love their "blue country", which is best attested to by the following legend:

'When God created the world He looked at everything He had done and found that it was good. Then all His angels gathered around Him and also saw that it was good. But there was one angel standing sadly in the corner of the bright vault of heaven. This was the Angel of Mercy. "Why are you so unhappy?" God asked. "Is not the world I have created beautiful?" "It is very beautiful indeed," answered the Angel, "but how can I be happy when I behold only sand and stones in Kashubia!" The Angel fell on his knees before God and implored, "Oh Lord! Do you not have any spare fertile land?" And God directed His attention to a piece of land. There was fertile soil and clear water, leafy trees and flowering plants, tall hills and beautiful valleys. "Take these," said the Creator, "and act as your heart directs you!" Then the Angel of Mercy distributed these lands around the Kashubian region and called them "Mary's Paradise".'

The individual character of the Kashubian character and language was first described by the Russian scholar Aleksander Hilferding, to whom we are indebted for the first data about the range of Kashubian dialects. In 1856 he travelled to the Kashubian region and demarcated the borders of contemporary Kashubia. He researched the Kashubian language, describing its properties and origins. The native language is the most distinctive emblem of the ethnic separateness and identity of the Kashubians, who learned it with the aid of a characteristic alphabet, a sung declamation and drawings (e.g. huts, oxen, violins) which helped them to emorise texts. The alphabet (Kashubian notes) was, in the nineteenth century and possibly even earlier, a kind of game. Initially the Kashubian notes were drawn in chalk on wooden boards. The language and religion, together with other customs and traditions of their ancestors, were transported by the Kashubians to Canada, where there still live descendants of numerous Kashubian migrants from the first half of the nineteenth century.

Apart from their own language, the Kashubians also boast beautiful and original folk art, including embroidery, which was begun in two nunneries - in Zukowo and Zarnowiec. Originally the embroidery was used for old folk costumes, then later it was used to decorate different forms, such as table-cloths and doilies. In the eighteenth century the embroidery was used to decorate Kashubian women's caps, the so-called 'cloth of gold', since it was embroidered with gold and silver threads. A unique collection of eighteenth-century items can be found in the Franciszek Treder Kashubian Museum in Kartuzy.

Five colours are used in traditional Kashubian embroidery: green, red, yellow, black and blue (in three shades). Each of these colours has its own symbolic representation - the three shades of blue symbolise the sky, the lakes and the sea, yellow symbolises the sun, green the forests, black the land and hard labour, red fire and blood shed in defence of one's homeland.

After embroidery, ceramics is the second form of folk art which is still alive in Kashubia. It astounds us with the attractiveness of its decorative features. Ceramics has a centuries-old tradition - the oldest workshops producing pottery artefacts were found in Chmielno and Kartuzy. Kashubian ceramics is characterised by the unique motifs of the Kashubian star, fish-scales, tulips, lilies, wreaths, lilac branches, all complemented by wavy lines and dots.

Kashubia is also associated with amber jewellery, which has fascinated and enchanted people since time immemorial. Not having access to the technologies available to the Gdansk craftsmen, the folk jewellers worked out simple methods subsequently handed down by word-of-mouth from generation to generation as a family tradition. Amber has always been the most precious of ornaments, hiding within itself magic, life and love. It is true "Kashubian gold".

In Kashubian tradition the borders between everyday life and work and folk art are blurred. Craft and folk art are emanations of a common creativity arising from natural needs. Objects of daily use became masterpieces of folk art. For example pine roots and straw were turned into baskets, containers for crops, plates, bowls, sides of carts and sleighs. The technique of weaving was so precise that even jugs and water-buckets could be woven. At the beginning of the twentieth century pine roots became the material from which men made decorative objects. The Kashubians have an amazing abiliry to create woven articles. This art-form astonishes people with the permanence and constancy of its forms and techniques, which have become so accepted in local tradition that they still exist today as living monuments.

The outstanding feature of Kashubian art is painting on glass. In the Kashubian region there originated a local and original form of painting, limited almost exclusively to flower patterns encircling images of saints. The figures of the saints were borrowed from folk woodcuts. Alternatively woodcuts were stuck onto painted backgrounds. Various techniques were used to execute these paintings, but the most common was tempera covered with varnish. This kind of painting is characterised by a lack of restraint and great panache, together with a well-thought out sense of composition. The painters do not make use of perspective - everything is in the foreground, flat but artistically strong and expressive.

A prominent place in Kashubian folk art is occupied by sculpture. The origin of folk sculpture is connected with the construction of crosses and wayside chapels. Such crosses and chapels are called "The Passions of Christ" in Kashubia and are erected at cross-roads and forks, by bridges and lakes. They were and are symbols of the "Polishness" of Kashubia, which was something remembered by the Germans during the Second World War. As a result many crosses were cut down but many survived and others were restored anew. Even today new ones are erected, constituting a typical element of the Kashubian landscape. Not only sacral sculpture existed in Kashubia, however. Sculptors created walking sticks, animal heads and musical instruments. The most characteristic for Kashubian bands is a percussion instrument - the devil's fiddle, composed of a stick and a board in the shape of a violin, capped with a coloured demon in a spangled hat. Another interesting instrument is the "burczybas", a kind of double bass in the shape of a barrel with a horse-hair tail. It is the only instrument to be played by three musicians.

Another absolutely unique feature of Kashubia is the production of items from cows' horns. The horns are boiled, then flattened and trimmed into the shapes of snuff-boxes. This original art-form is connected with the Kashubians' particular fondness for snuff, which is powdered tobacco. The snuff is ground at home in special pots with the use of a juniper stick. It is a tradition for guests to be greeted with snuff as a symbol of joy at the meeting, a sign of good luck and an invitation to future meetings. Snuff-taking in Kashubia has a history dating back to the seventeenth century. A pinch of snuff is placed on the back of the hand in the indentation at the base of the thumb, which - according to Kashubians - is a sign of manhood.

Fables and legends, handed down from generation to generation, constitute the heritage of the Kashubians. Each town, each village, each lake has its own story to tell.

Apart from art, another wonderful element of Kashubian heritage is to be found in the huts, many of which have been preserved to this day. Traditionally the huts are wooden and covered with thatch or cane. They stand on foundations of stones buried in the ground. The most common construction was a mesh of pine beams - in the nineteenth century the spaces between the beams were filled with metal rods, interwoven with straw cords and clay. The roofs were decorated with various shapes, one of the few decorative features of the huts.

The customs of the Kashubians stand out from Polish tradition. They constitute evidence of the ethnic and cultural individualiry of perhaps the last surviving tribe of the ancient Balts. This individuality has been almost entirely preserved, both in domestic and annual ceremonies and in agricultural customs.

The most popular custom in Kashubia is the carolling of "Whistlers" at Christmas. Boys dress in fancy dress and carry strange props - sheepskins, straw crowns, figures of horses, storks and goats, masks of devils, beggars, chimney-sweeps and soldiers (made of fur and paper) - as they roam from hut to hut, creating a unique theatrical spectacle. At Easter the Kashubians beat one another with birch or juniper twigs. Despite the beginning of the new millennium, the Kashubians cultivate their family customs -- engagements and weddings, or the "empty night" before the burial of the dead. Even the youngest generation is proud of the old customs and zealously attempts to preserve the original Kashubian culture.

Norbert Maczulis