Baština (Jan 2018)
'The wedding of Kraljević Marko' on the day of White shrove in Štrpce
Abstract
The paper discusses 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko', the event of a collective character, named after a famous epic character in Serbian tradition, which is practised in Štrpce on the day of White Shrove. I presented this event taking into account its main participants and the spatial and temporal frameworks in which it takes place, with the aim of contributing to the research of the culture of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohia. This research aims to replace general topics with specific topics, usually involving the interpretations based on the absence of clear space and time coordinates, by looking at precisely defined events, in order to provide an ethnographic material that could serve for possible comparative or repeated surveys of the same phenomena. The results presented in this paper were obtained from the field research of qualitative type carried out in Štrpce on White Shrove in 2018. The results of the study showed that 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' is a central ceremony during the celebration of White Shrove in Štrpce. It shows a wedding ritual, distinguished by a clearly defined organization at three levels: 1) of space, 2) time, 3) participants. The actors of 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' include only men, mostly younger, who make a masked procession through Štrpce, with several main characters, such as, in the first place, Kraljević Marko, as a 'groom', and snaša, as a 'bride'. Playing wedding roles, in which the central attention is dedicated to 'the newlyweds' as bearers of a marital relationship that symbolizes the birth of the offspring, points to the ancient origin of the phenomenon of the shrovetide procession in Štrpce, which can be accommodated in that past when it was believed that the transition from winter to spring season by imitation of a wedding ritual can affect the fertility of nature, crops, people and cattle. That the roots of this phenomenon do not rely only on this belief, which speaks in favor of its complexity, indicate the other elements from which it is compiled, such as the connection of the shrovetide procession to the beginning of the Easter fasting as a period in which, due to spiritual 'purification', people are supossed to enter good mood and forgive insults, intrigues and quarrels. 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' shows the characteristics similar to the shrovetide weddings recorded in other regions inhabited by the Serbs, the characteristics by which these phenomena are recognizable, such as ritualism, collectivity, colorfulness. According to these characteristics, this custom can primarily be described as a folk festivity, or as an event of social and entertainment character. As a collective joy, 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' is also a type of social valve, that is the kind of unusual practice which under controlled conditions enables the release of the pressure of the proclaimed social principles and the inversion of the existing order into an apparent, another world, different from the world of the established everyday reality. The shrovetide wedding in Štrpce reflects inversion of reality exactly in the sphere of marital relations, where the roles of the main actors, above all the 'bride', as a female principle, are mostly shown in the reverse mirror of generally accepted social values, through satire and lasciviousness. Accordingly, the role of 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' ceremony could be viewed as the role of a latent criticism of the established way of marrying, especially in the context of the patriarchal social order, where a woman, with a position subordinated to the position of a man, has a limited freedom of behavior, where two things most often expected from her are innocence and physical beauty. The significance of 'The Wedding of Kraljević Marko' for Serbs in Štrpce is of particular importance in the context of contemporary social and political processes in Kosovo and Metohia, where in the majority Albanian environment, and under the pressure of full integration into the so-called Kosovo institutional system, proposed by the 2013 Brussels Agreement, their position is largely uncertain. The preservation of the shrovetide wedding, which they perceive as a part of their traditional heritage, is therefore of crucial importance for the Serbs in Štrpce today, because it is an important issue of their cultural and historical continuity, especially in a situation where under the mentioned circumstances they have a great need to express their ethnic identity.
