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At the end of the millennium, Romania thus remains one of the few places in Europe where one can still see centuries-old traditional community life and understand a different connection to the environment and among people."
The story of Romanian tradition and folklore is the story of those peoples and the marks they left behind.
In legend Dionysius was born here and Jason was here on his search for the Golden Fleece. In recorded history, no later than the seventh century B.C. the Greeks came to Tomis and Istria to trade with the Dacian peoples of Transylvania. The Romans came here. Trajan, after two years of fighting, established the easternmost colony of the Empire and left a language as his legacy. After the Romans, there were migrations of Goths, Huns, Avars Slavs, Bulgars and Magyars. They washed across the alluvial plain. And each left a mark upon the culture .
In the tenth century the Magyars consolidated control of the land to the west and north of the Carpathians and Transylvanian population was divided from the Romanian language population to the south. In the thirteenth century the Hungarian kings, seeking to erect a defensive line against raiding Tartars, invited German Saxons to settle in the Carpathians. Hungarian and German influences are still in Romania today. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Romanian language principalities to the south of the Carpathians were the battlegrounds where the Ottoman Empire contested with the Hungarian kings. Vlad Tepes, son of Vlad Dracul, defended Wallachia against the Turks until his death in 1476 and Stefan cel Mare ('the great') defended Moldavia, but when Hungary collapsed in 1526, all three of the Romanian-speaking countries, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia came under Turkish control. And the Turks left their mark. As the Ottoman Empire began to decay, a Russian influence came to Romania. In the 19th century the Russians under General Kisselef occupied Moldavia and Wallachia. The Hungarians and Austrians controlled Transylvania. Moldavia and Wallachia became the independent nation of Romania in 1862. In 1878, the Turks finally had to concede defeat and northern Dobrogea was added to the new country. After the second Balkan War southern Dobrogea was added as well. Transylvania joined Romania after World War I. Although lines have been redrawn since then, this became today's Romania: Wallachia, Transylvania, Dobrogea, southern Moldavia.
Romania is a cross-roads. It has been a trading center and a battleground, but Romanized vlach peasants have assimilated the intruders they could not repel. Their Latin-based language continues to this day. Their art, their crafts, their music, and their dance are the unique and special result of the blend of peoples that make up Romania: Vlachs, Magyars, Saxons, and Rroma, and of the peoples who were here and left their legacies: Dacians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars Turks and Russian.
