Romanian pastoralism is a holistic phenomenon that includes a complex lifestyle, an important cultural heritage, and an economic activity that skillfully uses the resources of the Carpathian landscape. The most extensive type of Romanian pastoralism consists of vertical transhumance on foot between the high Carpathian alpine pastures grazed during summer and, during winter, the lowlands situated towards the Danube River valley and the Black Sea. It is a long path that often extends more than a hundred kilometers. Wool, cheese, and meat are usually produced “on the go” using simple traditional manufacturing techniques that have not changed much over centuries, and where the shepherds must by necessity adopt tools from the natural surroundings or those that can be carried on their donkeys’ bags. These products are thus witnesses of pastoralists’ challenges, such as facing wild predators, inclement weather and nowadays modern infrastructure or privatized lands impeding their accustomed transit paths. Hopes that their livelihood will be protected and put on the legislative agenda were raised recently when transhumance in Romania was recognized, along with 9 other European countries, by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
Because the handmade wool industry decreased drastically in Romania during this century, cheese remained the most important pastoral product and the major source of income for mountain shepherds. Mountain-made cheese seems to capture the experience of the long pastoral journey, bringing back to the lowlands the spirit of the unreachable mountain peaks. In the imagination of urban dwellers, this cheese absorbs the freshness of alpine meadow breezes and the essence of the wild grass untouched by urban pollution. But cheesemaking had to be adapted to the itinerant circumstances of transhumance. In the mountains, there are limited possibilities to utilize cooking appliances and convenient preservatives. Thus, it is logical for shepherds to use natural containers for storing their white treasure. Minced and salted, cheese is stored either in a carefully cleaned and prepared animal stomach, or in a handmade box of soft outer fir bark sown together to look like a proper container. The stomach ‘bag’ creates a perfect airtight package, allowing the cheese to preserve its qualities for up to three months during the mountain pastoral summer season of Romanian transhumant shepherding. Additionally, the fir box adds a certain woody flavor, due to the distinctly scented conifer resin that brings strong mountain memories to even the most sophisticated urban palate. Beyond any romantic stereotype, thanks to these unusual containers, this cheese also offers undoubted proof of the daring entrepreneurship of Carpathian pastoralism, telling a story of the long and hard vertical road that the cheese itself follows together with the herds and herders. Use of the stomach may now seem unpalatable for modern consumers, but it was commonly used in traditional recipes of many peoples even in the Western world, such as sheep stomach for Scottish haggis or pig bladder for Italian Mortadella.
But this tale of cleverly devised food storage and pastoral functionality may soon end. Through a bill voted on the 22nd of November 2023, the European Parliament intends to reduce packaging waste by 10% by 2035. The new regulations require packaging to be recyclable by 2030 and made from recycled materials by 2035. Due to strong lobbying by French cheesemakers, the only exceptions to this directive were awarded temporarily to wooden boxes (for Camembert cheese) and wax envelopes. No news or discussions about other EU member-states exceptions were reported. Mountain cheesemaking in Romania is as far away from EU policy concerns as it is from the global high-end cheese market. Fortunately, for now, the Camembert defenders saved the non-branded Carpathian organic containers. No matter how wise the environment the ecologist directive may seem, if we look at the world we are trying to regulate from afar, we will overlook the longstanding and enduring experience of self-dependence and small entrepreneurship. The stomach and the bark are eco-friendly because they are inherently organic; fir is one of the most readily degradable wood essences. Today, the lifeworld of traditional pastoralism is also fragile and easy to disrupt by top-down interventions. It is easy to change and difficult to preserve. This may be one of the many invisible clashes between the perceived outdated pastoralist worlds and the future-oriented bureaucracy.
Ioana Baskerville is a senior researcher in ethnology and a professor of cultural anthropology in Romania. She coordinates an interdisciplinary team of Romanian experts in Carpathian pastoralism and community associations of mountain shepherds, which worked to document and inscribe transhumance on the UNESCO Representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
- Ioana Baskerville coordinates the Anthropology Living Labs in the Cesar2030 Center of Excellence.
