“If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia
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Until the final decades of the 20th century, the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia practiced a rather unusual funerary custom about which very little was known: exhuming people who died very young 40 days after the funeral, so that the inconsolable family could see them once more. Apart from bringing peace and consolation to the family, it seems that the belief behind this custom was that if the corpse is taken out of the grave once more, so that the sun shines on it, the deceased would have two lives. The rare ethnographic references from the beginning of the previous century indicate a wider spread of the phenomenon in Eastern Serbia, among the Vlachs, but at the end of the 20th century, when the last exhumations were done, only a few villages in the Homolje region celebrated the custom. This paper draws on the few Serbian ethnographic sources from the first half of the last century and on the limited later mentions, and presents the narratives recorded by the authors in 2022 with Vlach inter...locutors who had heard about the ritual, conducted it, or took part in it between 1970 and the 1990s. Special attention is paid to the area in which this phenomenon took place, situations in which the exhumation was done, and the beliefs underlying it.
Кључне речи:
funerary customs / traditional culture / burial / exhumation / Balkans / Vlachs / Eastern Serbia / pogrebni običaji / tradicionalna kultura / sahrane / ekshumacija / Balkan / Vlasi / Srbija istočnaИзвор:
Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore, 2024, 1-2, 32-47Издавач:
- Bucureşti : Ed. Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne
Институција/група
Балканолошки институт САНУ / Institute for Balkan Studies SASATY - JOUR AU - Sorescu-Marinković, Annemarie AU - Repedžić, Aleksandar PY - 2024 UR - https://dais.sanu.ac.rs/123456789/16450 AB - Until the final decades of the 20th century, the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia practiced a rather unusual funerary custom about which very little was known: exhuming people who died very young 40 days after the funeral, so that the inconsolable family could see them once more. Apart from bringing peace and consolation to the family, it seems that the belief behind this custom was that if the corpse is taken out of the grave once more, so that the sun shines on it, the deceased would have two lives. The rare ethnographic references from the beginning of the previous century indicate a wider spread of the phenomenon in Eastern Serbia, among the Vlachs, but at the end of the 20th century, when the last exhumations were done, only a few villages in the Homolje region celebrated the custom. This paper draws on the few Serbian ethnographic sources from the first half of the last century and on the limited later mentions, and presents the narratives recorded by the authors in 2022 with Vlach interlocutors who had heard about the ritual, conducted it, or took part in it between 1970 and the 1990s. Special attention is paid to the area in which this phenomenon took place, situations in which the exhumation was done, and the beliefs underlying it. PB - Bucureşti : Ed. Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne T2 - Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore T1 - “If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia SP - 32 EP - 47 VL - 1-2 DO - 10.59277/JEF.2024.1-2.03 UR - https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_16450 ER -
@article{ author = "Sorescu-Marinković, Annemarie and Repedžić, Aleksandar", year = "2024", abstract = "Until the final decades of the 20th century, the Vlachs of Eastern Serbia practiced a rather unusual funerary custom about which very little was known: exhuming people who died very young 40 days after the funeral, so that the inconsolable family could see them once more. Apart from bringing peace and consolation to the family, it seems that the belief behind this custom was that if the corpse is taken out of the grave once more, so that the sun shines on it, the deceased would have two lives. The rare ethnographic references from the beginning of the previous century indicate a wider spread of the phenomenon in Eastern Serbia, among the Vlachs, but at the end of the 20th century, when the last exhumations were done, only a few villages in the Homolje region celebrated the custom. This paper draws on the few Serbian ethnographic sources from the first half of the last century and on the limited later mentions, and presents the narratives recorded by the authors in 2022 with Vlach interlocutors who had heard about the ritual, conducted it, or took part in it between 1970 and the 1990s. Special attention is paid to the area in which this phenomenon took place, situations in which the exhumation was done, and the beliefs underlying it.", publisher = "Bucureşti : Ed. Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne", journal = "Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore", title = "“If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia", pages = "32-47", volume = "1-2", doi = "10.59277/JEF.2024.1-2.03", url = "https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_16450" }
Sorescu-Marinković, A.,& Repedžić, A.. (2024). “If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia. in Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore Bucureşti : Ed. Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne., 1-2, 32-47. https://doi.org/10.59277/JEF.2024.1-2.03 https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_16450
Sorescu-Marinković A, Repedžić A. “If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia. in Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore. 2024;1-2:32-47. doi:10.59277/JEF.2024.1-2.03 https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_16450 .
Sorescu-Marinković, Annemarie, Repedžić, Aleksandar, "“If the Sun Shines on Him Once More, He Will Live Two Lives”: Exhuming the Dead in Eastern Serbia" in Revista de etnografie și folclor / Journal of Ethnography and Folklore, 1-2 (2024):32-47, https://doi.org/10.59277/JEF.2024.1-2.03 ., https://hdl.handle.net/21.15107/rcub_dais_16450 .