This was the very first time I brought my own cut birch torch, burning, to the festival where every man or boy in Svaneti does the same thing. Every hamlet of every village has this tradition, though with variations and on slightly different dates. Lamproba, it’s called, its origin a military victory won up here with such torches, though the details seem to be lost to the mists of time.
Why birch, specifically? I once asked. “Because Christ was once running away from someone, in the forest, and only the birch tree offered Him shelter.” Huh. Now I know. Plus, it burns well.
I wrote last week about my Dutch friends and I making the arduous trek to a place above Etseri’s abandoned hamlet to cut our own torches, each about 2m long and the thickness of a man’s upper arm. Then, back home to dry them out as well as we could; split the wider end of each with an axe and hammer; dry some more; soak that end in diesel; then light and carry them in the darkness of this morning’s dusk to the waiting bonfire of our hamlet of Iskari.
But…we nine men should have: cut them earlier; dried them out more; made more than two splits in each; pointed the other end with an axe; and soaked them in the diesel for at least an overnight if not longer. We really struggled to keep them alight, in the end bringing a burning bucket of the fuel with us to re-dip and -light each torch just before we came around the corner to the waiting bonfire. At least we showed up with them burning, though. And if anyone joked about our efforts, they were polite enough to do it in Svan, none of us understanding!
The men and boys received us well; even a visiting lady from the lowlands was allowed, unusually, to carry in a torch: Anuka Maisuradze, freelance journalist, pictured here. Then our ladies showed up with their three little round loaves of bread and wine and some cut cheese, as is custom. Others came with these things too. One after another, we faced the rising sun, raised our bread and prayed out loud (to the Big God) for each family the loaves represented, and for each family in the village.
Then it was all just community time, getting to know or catching up with one another, enjoying the bonfire. I drank a shot of cognac from my inverted Svan cap. We ate kubdari, khachapuri, bread and cheese, drank wine and a bit of moonshine too. Lamproba is one of the events in which I am delighted to participate every year, wherever I am in Svaneti, whenever possible. We are one here.
Later that day, I reviewed my photos and video, posted a few of the best on Facebook, and saw in other posts that this holiday was being enacted all over the province, by many other people now familiar to me, even outside Svaneti, where they gathered for it. Wonderful to see how it is interpreted by other eyes, in stills and motion. Eventually, maybe next year, someone will capture it extensively by moving drone for the first time ever (I think). This medium has been gaining in popularity since I first saw it here a few years ago. Cheers to Lamproba! May you meet many more of them, as the saying goes!
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
