Our Ancestors Embraced the Gifts Particular Seasons Gave Them: An Interview with Sergiusz Niczyporuk

sergiusz-niczyporuk-pion-fot-archiwumprywatne.jpg, default, Sergiusz Niczyporuk in Białowieskie Sioło, photo: private archive, Our Ancestors Embraced the Gifts Particular Seasons Gave Them: An Interview with Sergiusz Niczyporuk

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An amazing storyteller, Sergiusz Niczyporuk, manager of the Białowieskie Sioło agritourism venue and a wooden house construction expert, discusses the complicated identity of residents from the Hajnówka region, rural architecture, and local culinary traditions.

Michał Dąbrowski: I’d like to begin with a question about identity, as it’s a complicated matter here in the Hajnówka region.

Sergiusz Niczyporuk: Absolutely.

MD: Who are you?

SN: This is a very interesting question, I hear it often. When I answer, I usually try to say what I feel.

When it comes to some sort of social awareness, one should be able to have a straight and unambiguous answer. But only some people have this luxury, like for example the Poles, our brothers. They say: ‘I’m a Pole and a Catholic.’ And that’s their answer, an absolutely appropriate one. I have many Polish friends I refer to as brothers. They accept when I say I’m not Catholic, that I’m Eastern Orthodox. It isn’t however that easy to answer the question: ‘Am I Polish?’ I usually reply: ‘Abroad, I’m always a Pole, but not in my own country, here I’m “Ruski”’.

MD: Is that how you feel or how you’re perceived?

SN: It’s how I feel and what I’m being called. In some way, it’s fair.

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Open-air museum in Budy near Białowieża, photo: Jan Włodarczyk / Forum

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MD: Taking this further, do you consider yourself a Belarusian, or perhaps a so-called Little Ruthenian?

SN: Nowadays, when we say: ‘I’m a Rusin,’ [a Ruthenian], most Poles hear that and think ‘He’s a Moskal [a Moscovite], a Great Russian.’ Meanwhile, when we we talk about Ruthenians, we have numerous ethnic groups in minds. It’s similar for Poles – we know highlanders, Silesians, the Lesser Polish, the Greater Polish, Kurpie, Masovians, Kashubians and lots of other ethnic groups, together which make up a particular cultural circle.

The Małorusini [the Little Ruthenians of Little Rus'] are the oldest group of Ruthenians, a bit like the Małopolanie [the Lesser Polish] in Poland. The so-called Little Ruthenians inhabited Kyivan Rus’, the oldest Rus’ that never fully established its statehood. That territory, which we now call Ukraine, had only one king in its history – Daniel of Galicia, crowned in our Drohiczyn [a town in the Podlaskie voivodeship].

Kyivan Rus’ – a mediaeval state located in Eastern Europe, established around Kyiv in the 9th century as a result of the unification of East Slavic tribes.

Little Rus' – a term established in 14th century to describe historical southwestern Kyivan Rus’; in contrast to northeastern Ruś which later became the Grand Duchy of Moscow. It initially referred to the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and the orthodox lands of Little Rus', later it also referred to the Ruthenian lands of the Kingdom of Poland and southern lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

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Inside a Podlaskie house in Nowoberezowo, photo: Agnieszka Sadowska / Agencja Gazeta

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MD: How does this all connect with you?

SN: It’s a specific connection, because I’m still seeking my identity. The question ‘Who are you?’ is an interesting one for me too. I’m trying to find an answer in history and the present.

I’m aware that my ancestors were Ruthenian. I think they belonged to two separate ethnic groups. Given my last name, it’s undisputed that I have roots in northern Ukraine.

MD: Contemporary Ukraine?

SN: Right – just how far north did Ukraine span? How come it also impacted our land? Kyivan Rus’ reached the River Narew on our territories. Its people lived here, so perhaps so did my great-great-grandfather. That’s what my last name suggests. And since I carry the name of male ancestors, my grandmother wasn’t necessarily from this area. Who used to live here? Who did my great-great-great-great-grandfather meet?

MD: Do you have a theory?

SN: Perhaps with someone, who had inhabited this land for centuries. I believe one of my ancestors came here from the south, maybe from Volhynia.

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Porch with spiral posts, Trywieża, photo: Michał Dąbrowski

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MD: When do you think that happened?

SN: A few hundred years ago, a cholera epidemic spread nearly all over Europe. It had reached our Białowieża Forest [one of the last and largest remaining parts of Europe’s immense primaeval forest, located in the region of Podlasie – translator’s note] but hadn’t spread any further, because of the drainage divide we have here. Some of our rivers flow to the Baltic, but others run towards the Black Sea.

It was during the epidemic that the legend of Grabarka, a holy mountain for the Orthodox, was established. Supposedly people found shelter there. It’s our Mecca, our Częstochowa. The Hajnówka region holds the so-called ‘old cemeteries’, choleric cemeteries. There was one in my home village Zaleszany.

MD: What had happened to it?

SN: It’s gone, because a friend of mine ploughed it. I asked him: ‘Michał, you ploughed the cemetery?’ and he replied: ‘Not exactly, my sons did, they didn’t have this awareness. I found bones there and I buried them back in the ground’. It will be forgotten, but I still remember.

MD: When did your ancestors appear on these lands?

SN: Over 50% of the locals died during the cholera epidemic. When the plague was gone, Poland’s king gave what I think was a reasonable order. He introduced people from Volhynia to the region – he believed that they'd assimilate easily, because their culture and language was similar. It was the 18th century, not long before the partitions. This is where the Belarusians and people from Black Ruthenia lived. The latter are never mentioned anymore, as if they never existed. Around where the contemporary Hajnówka region is, these Ruthenians lived alongside Poles, at the time so-called Lachy. The name Podlasze [the root name of the Podlasie voivodeship] originates from pod Lachami, meaning ‘under the Lachy’.

So who am I really? Eastern Orthodox. Citizen of the Republic of Poland. But in terms of ethnicity? I have no idea, to be honest.

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Sergiusz Niczyporuk (seventh from the left), chairman of the Solidarity Circle of Individual Farmers in Dubicze Cerkiewne, decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, 2020, photo: Krzysztof Sitkowski / KPRP

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MD: I saw on Facebook that you describe yourself as a resident of Białostocczyzna, the Białystok region.

SN: That’s who I am, absolutely.

MD: Let’s talk about the rural architecture of these areas.

SN: Building a home has always been constrained to materials found in reasonable proximity. Limestone was used in the Świętokrzyskie region, granite in the mountains, white stone in Lubelszczyzna. Here people used fieldstones, erratic boulders and of course wood, which was a basic building material. Wood was available for people of average wealth.

MD: What time period are we talking?

SN: About 300 years back. Wood shaped the architecture of our region.

MD: How come the Białowieża Forest survived, if wood was such a desirable building material?

SN: Transport used to be much more expensive. Wherever it was possible, materials were floated down the river, but our rivers were too shallow and too meandering. That’s why the forest survived, because its logs couldn’t be floated away. There were attempts – people arranged areas of it for log driving, tried to take advantage of spring flooding to reach the Narwa, then the Wisła to Gdańsk. But none of that was cost-effective. People gave up and that’s why this forest still exists.

MD: Who taught you to build wooden houses?

SN: My father-in-law. One day he just started telling me about trees. It was one of the most precious lessons I ever learned. He told me about the value of particular trees, he could see the structure of wood as if he had x-rays in his eyes.

Rural architecture was the architecture of the poor, who would bend over backwards to obtain the best possible building materials. How do you pick the best pines out of a few hundred? I’m lucky to have learned this knowledge.

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Sergiusz Niczyporuk gives children a tour of Białowieża Forest, photo: Białowieskie Sioło

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MD: Was your father-in-law a carpenter?

SN: He was a carpenter, a wheeler, a cooper and a stove maker. We talked a lot, his knowledge fascinated me. He once told me: ‘Trees are like people, Sergiusz. Take a thousand people, they’re all alike, but each person is different. You can never find two trees the same in our backwoods’. And that’s when I realised something.

The trees from our forest here are particularly valuable, because they’re very tall, the wood has high density and low annual growth. That’s why here homes were constructed differently than in neighbouring Masovia. Long logs were used on our lands. You won’t find them in Ostrów Mazowiecka or Brańsk [towns where the Masovia and Podlasie regions meet – translator’s note] or anywhere further. You could cut a 20-metre-long log from a pine tree from our forest. A log like that was called ‘a calm log’ – it didn’t twist, it didn’t warp. It was top-notch.

MD: Fieldstones were often used for understructure.

SN: Yes, it was a very interesting way to construct foundations. Houses with stone foundations weren’t built until the end of 19th century. Before that people used to live in cottages with nothing like the foundations we know today. First a log was placed directly on the ground. These cottages had an estimated stability of 50-70 years. They had to collapse eventually, because the understructure rotted and its replacement basically meant building the house all over again.

Buildings with stone foundations were more durable and lasted for a hundred or more years. There is a 180-year-old home in our heritage park. It looks primitive, but it’s not. At the time it was a very modern construction that became popular at the turn of the 20th century.

MD: Can you describe it?

SN: It comprises of three compartments: a hallway with two doors – the main door on one side and the other leading to the backyard – so you can walk through the hall. There’s a room on the left and a komora on the right.

A komora was a chamber with no windows, or with just a tiny skylight, that served as the homestead bank. Anything that had any value was stored here, grains in particular, as it was then a stable currency. People used to say: ‘He who has rye, has it all’. Times and currencies were changing, but grain trading could give you what you needed. At the same time, a reasonable supply could save you from hunger in case of a harvest disaster.

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A wooden house on stone foundations, photo: Michał Dąbrowski

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MD: How were the building methods different from today?

SN: When people wanted to build a house, they bought felled trees from the wood or cut trees from their forest. Cutting them into logs or planks took place in the backyard. Manual work was very cheap the, so if they could afford it, people were hired to help. Walls were sealed with moss.

At first there were no floors, just dirt or sand. Floorboards needed to be dried for a year or two. The outer parts of the logs, the poorest quality parts, were used for ceiling construction. Those materials weren’t very stable, so clay and straw were used for support. But due to the movement of wood, this supporting material would also break. Therefore, sometimes it wasn’t used at all, but then heat escaped through the roof during winter.

MD: How did people cope with the cold?

SN: Ceilings were insulated with hayseed. Oat and wheat were considered best. Walls made of baulks were too thin on their own as well, so they too were insulated with ogata, a strip of soil piled up along the underpinning of a house. In our region, pine needles were often used in ogata. But they were removed for spring, as they were flammable.

MD: How did this type of insulation impact air circulation inside the house?

SN: As many people lived inside and hygiene was poor, it turned musty quite easily. During spring and summer, natural ventilation removed the problem. In winter, pine needles from the ogata released essential oils and the house would smell like a pine forest. They served as a natural air refresher and had a positive impact on the respiratory tract.

Turpentine, which is a pine tree extract, used to be a cold medicine people reached for first. People would rub their back, chest, throat and neck with it and symptoms would disappear instantly.

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Wooden buildings in Białowieskie Sioło, photo: Marek Kosiński / Forum

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MD: What were roofs made of?

SN: Roofs used to be covered with rye straw, namely thatch, because it was available in the homestead. There were some homes in the forest that had roofs covered with dranica, wood which was processed to enhance its durability. Some roofs still have dranica under a layer of asbestos.

People were very practical. The availability of materials, economic potential and build quality were considered most important. There is a lot more I could say about all these topics, but I’d have to prepare long lectures for each one to do them justice.

MD: How were those homes decorated on the outside?

SN: Right, you’d also want your house to look nice.

We’re not above snobbery – we want our house to be nicer than our neighbour’s. When you’re satisfied with how your house looks, you enjoy living in it and enjoy coming home. When it’s not as nice as you wish, you just come in thinking: ‘Who cares, I need to get up and go to work tomorrow anyway.’

To make a home attractive, you had to seek inspiration. At the turn of the 19th century, administrative buildings were built in our area, like the Tsar’s Palace in Białowieża, the railway buildings and schools.

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The palace in Białowieża, photo reproduction: Piotr Mecik / Forum

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MD: I often heard that people began to decorate homes after returning from bieżeństwo [the mass relocation of the Eastern Orthodox in 1915]. But you were saying some inspirations were here even before that.

SN: The construction of the palace complex in Białowieża was a significant thing for people living within a 50km radius. People admired beauty they had never seen before. They were thinking: ‘How do you cut these sorts of patterns out of wood? How do you arrange the baulks?’ People wondered which elements could be copied in their homes. Construction foremen wanting to make money thought about that too. Step by step, these inspirations were introduced to our villages. That’s why today we have decorated window-shutters and cut-outs.

This can be observed outside our region too, around Warsaw, for example, in the towns of Otwock and Podkowa Leśna. Tsarist officials had summer villas built in these areas. This style, which had originated in Russia, became popular all around the former Duchy of Warsaw. Back then, technical innovations were introduced quickly to Poland – this was a way for the Tsar to try appease the rebellious Poles.

MD: When you build houses, do you draw inspiration from tradition?

SN: At some point I decided to use the knowledge passed on to me by my father-in-law. My first steps were very careful, eventually I got into frame construction. My father-in-law once described it as ‘a way of building for people who can’t do a thing, who don’t know the rules’ (laughs). I asked him for advice in many fields and began to combine frames with our local building traditions. As time went by, I became an expert in this area.

MD: When did your ‘Białowieskie Sioło’ resort come into being?

SN: Twenty years ago, I was asked to build a lodging in Budy. Afterwards I decided to expand the project myself. After some time, my family and I began to lease the building. Sioło is my dream come true.

MD: What kind of a story does this place tell?

SN: There are three basic aspects: architecture, cuisine and customs. Everything I have mentioned before is tangible here. We have a 180-year-old building aside a modern one, also built from wood. Both have been constructed with our forefathers’ wisdom in mind.

I host many events, none of which have been subsidised. Perhaps I’m naïve, but then – what am I to do in life? Save more money? I’d rather show my identity and the customs of my ancestors.

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Dishes served at Białowieskie Sioło, photo: BS

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MD: What’s on the menu here?

SN: Our kitchen reflects the cultural diversity that has influenced local culinary traditions. So, we have Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Polish meals, but also local ones, those of our microregion.

We serve a honey mushroom soup, it’ll never go of the menu. There’s also venison, deer carpaccio with back fat. We have bison meat when possible. We obtain it from humane culling only.

Russian meals include solyanka soup and pelmeni, while Lithuanian ones include kibinai, which are oven baked dumplings, and bliny żmudzkie [Žemaitija blini], which are similar to cepelinai. Ukrainian dishes on our menu include Ukrainian borscht and pierogi. Meat kishka, my wife’s familial speciality, represents our local cuisine. We also serve hałuszki, tiny potato dumplings baked in a bread oven. We serve them either with cream and blueberries or pork shoulder in hunter’s sauce. If we introduce new items to the menu, we only consider the traditional dishes of our forefathers, who were incredible cooks.

MD: You seem to draw inspiration from many traditions.

SN: Imagine a situation like this, from the past: we’re friends, we see each other often. Let’s say you’re Jewish and I’m Belarusian. How would you host me? With whatever is best in your kitchen. I would be happy to try it, because I don’t have it at my place.

When it comes to cuisine, multiculturalism gives nothing but benefits. You wouldn’t introduce to your menu something you didn’t like.

MD: And what do you like best?

SN: I can’t choose one dish I like most. And there’s a reason for it – traditional cuisine is seasonal. Our ancestors embraced the gifts particular seasons gave them. It’s a very diverse cuisine and we only present a small piece of it in Sioło. With God’s grace I might be able to show more in future.

Interview conducted in Polish, Dec 2020, translated by Agata Dudek-Woyke, Jan 2021

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