The last Greek shepherds and the end of cross-border transhumance in the 20th century

Greek shepherds are a most interesting and, in our day, extremely small group, preserving age-old traditions of transhumant pastoralism and the way of life that goes with them. Barely a century ago, thousands of shepherds would calmly cross mountain valleys many kilometres wide to reach their ancestral pastures, scattered among the highlands of Greece, Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria. But the twentieth century put an end to these migrations. If a few representatives of the ancient pastoral communities have survived, they can move only within the borders of a single state, and even then only inside national parks or nature reserves. Deutsche Welle once ran an impressive report on the last Greek shepherds driving a flock of several thousand sheep. It is a beautiful, genuine and unrepeatable story of the life of one of the oldest nomadic ethnic groups in Europe.