Nestinarstvo or Ritual Fire-Dancing: Background information when reading Stork Mountain

Nestinarstvo or Ritual Fire-Dancing

This article relates to Stork Mountain

Nestinarstvo, or ritual fire-dancing, plays an important role throughout Stork Mountain.

The practice, which involves walking barefoot across burning coals, is specific to the Strandja Mountain region in southeast Bulgaria, an area that shares both borders and cultural ties with Greece. Indeed, it's believed that the rite originated with the ancient Thracian peoples of Greece as part of their cult of sun worship. As Christianity spread throughout the area, over the centuries the customs were gradually adapted so that they would fit into the new religious framework.

The dance is said to celebrate St. Constantine (the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who gave Christianity legal standing) and his mother, St. Helene. As patron saints of the nestinari (fire dancers) it is believed they provide healing during the ceremony and grant revelations to those they've chosen. The celebration, which is highly ritualized and involves the whole community, takes place on the evening of the feast day of these two saints, June 3.

During the feast day, sacred icons from the head nestinar's house are decorated with flowers and taken to a spring in a procession, where they are consecrated with holy water. The icons are then carried to a nearby chapel dedicated to St. Constantine, where they are perfumed with incense; candles are lit and the nestinari pray before the icons for blessings from the saints. A ritual drum is played throughout, which is intended to invoke a trance in the dancers.

Meanwhile, an enormous wood fire is prepared in the central square of the village and allowed to burn all day. Toward evening the fire dies down and the embers are spread out in a circle.

As darkness descends, the nestinari walk from the chapel to the village square, accompanied by beats from the sacred drum as well as music from bagpipes. All community residents surround the circle of coals as the nestinari approach. The first to enter the ring are the most elderly dancers, who go around the circle three times before walking across it. They are followed by others who believe they have been chosen by the saint to participate. The dancers are said to enter a trancelike state in which they feel no pain and their feet don't burn, and many utter prophecies which the community holds to be true. The ceremony culminates in a dance performed by the entire village called the horo, a circle dance unique to the region.

The Christian church repeatedly tried to eliminate the nestinarstvo in spite of its association with St. Constantine. As a result, by the early 20th century, the tradition had nearly died out, with the ritual only continued in a handful of isolated villages in the Strandja. It experienced a revival in the 1990s and is more widely performed now, but primarily as a tourist attraction.

Click on the video below to see a fire dance being performed:

Picture of fire dancers in village Balgari, Bulgaria by Apokalipto

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to Stork Mountain. It originally ran in April 2016 and has been updated for the March 2017 paperback edition. Go to magazine.