Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

by Simon Winder

The more time I spent in Viscri, the more it seemed to suggest interesting things: a context for suspicion of strangers, the importance of Jews and Roma as the itinerant links that tied the country together, and the significance of that quintessential folk-tale moment, the arrival of the tinker’s cart with its manufactured, brightly coloured materials which could make young male or female villagers dream of a life beyond their one muddy street. These outsiders could bring scissors, dyes, salt, but also plague, which could, with one unlucky visit, kill almost everyone within a week. Above all what is so chilling about these villages is their insecurity: that far more even than plague, it was images of lawless bands, whether Magyar rebels, undisciplined Imperial troops or, most of all, Tatar raiders that filled villagers’ heads as they spent their long, cold, relentless and weary winter months endlessly pickling footstools and adzing geese, or whatever.