The Sarakatsani are an ethnic Greek population subgroup who
were traditionally transhumant shepherds, native to Greece, with a smaller
presence in neighbouring Bulgaria, southern Albania, and North Macedonia.
Historically centred on the Pindus mountains and other
mountain ranges in continental Greece, most Sarakatsani have abandoned the
transhumant way of life and have been urbanised.
The traditional Sarakatsani settlements, dress and costumes
make them a distinct social and cultural group within the collective Greek
heritage. Their distinctive folk arts consist of song, dance, and poetry, as
well as decorative sculptures in wood and embroidery on their traditional
costumes, which resemble the geometric art of pre-classical Greece.
In medicine, they use a number of folk remedies including
herbs, honey and lamb's blood.
The Sarakatsani traditionally have spent the summer months
in the mountains and returned to the lower plains in the winter. The
Sarakatsani were not always nomads, but only turned to harsh nomadic mountain
life to escape Ottoman rule. The Sarakatsani were found in several mountainous
regions of continental Greece, with some groups of northern Greece moving to
neighbouring countries in the summer, since border crossings between Greece,
Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia were relatively unobstructed until
the middle of the 20th century.
After 1947, with the beginning of the Cold War,
borders between these countries were sealed; and some Sarakatsani groups were
trapped in other countries and not able to return to Greece.
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