for shrikes, and a closer look at sandbanks in open country and farmland will reveal colonies of holenesting bee-eaters. Stony hillsides are the haunt of rock buntings, stonechats and ravens. Overgrown damp meadows with scattered bushes are the haunt of the shy corncrake. White storks nest on village chimney pots and pylons in a few villages in the hills, but the black stork also breeds in small numbers in the north.
Salamander, Oltâr-patak, Börzsöny, Walk 4
The hills have a variety of habitats suited to reptiles and amphibians. The lidless skink and sand lizard favour the sun-warmed rocks along the trails, and frogs breed precariously in shallow forest pools and flooded ruts of tracks. The spectacularly marked fire salamander can be spotted in the leaf litter along cool wooded stream banks. Despite the depredations of snakeskin hunters over the years, the common viper and other species continue to thrive.
Upland meadows are notable for many species of butterfly such as the beautiful swallowtail. The 25cm carpathian blue slug inhabits the Zemplén, and the black snail, an Ice Age relict, can be found along the old mill streams of the Bükkalja. In summer expect to see many species of longhorn beetle and the rather odd spectacle of stag beetles in flight.
History
Hungary’s highlands are peripheral to Hungarian life today, but they were once the scene of competing empires, faiths and ideologies, and have played a large part in the struggles for national liberation. Settlement in the hills began long before recorded time, and excavations of Hungary’s many caves have provided evidence that the highlands were inhabited about half a million years ago. The region has been notable as a crossing point for the great migrations, and the first important groups were the Bronze Age Illyrians and Thracians, who migrated north from the Balkans into the Carpathian Basin. They built hill forts to defend themselves from another incomer, the northern Celts, who eventually dominated the region. By AD 100 the Romans had defeated the Celts and created the province of Pannonia in the lands west of the Danube. To defend this eastern frontier of the Empire the Romans built a line of fortifications (limes) stretching from the Mecsek to the Danube Bend and deployed Syrian light cavalry against the Sarmatians and Germans.
By the end of the fourth century AD the elite of Rome had retreated, leaving a partly urbanised population practising viticulture and Christianity. Germanic tribes swept south to exploit the power vacuum, but in turn were defeated by Attila the Hun, who harried settlements as far west as the Rhine. After the Huns came Teutonic Longobards, proto-Slavs and Turkic- Bulgars, but they were held in check by another nomadic people from the East, the Avars, who for 250 years ruled over a multi-ethnic empire anticipating the shape of modern-day Hungary.
In the ninth century the Carpathian Basin was divided between the Moravian and East Frankish empires. Large areas of the disputed marches were sparsely populated, and in the year 896 there was little resistance when the Magyar chieftan Árpád led the ancestors of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin. In 906 they destroyed the Moravian Empire and in 907, after defeating Gemanic tribes, occupied Pannonia. In the manner of the Huns before them the Magyars used the region as a base to raid for booty and slaves, and their forays, as far afield as France and Spain, prompted the western prayer: From the arrows of the Hungarians, save us Lord.
The turning point for Hungarian history was the year 955 at the Battle of Augsburg, when Emperor Otto I defeated the Magyar light cavalry forcing the fledgling Hungarian state to align itself with Western Europe. In 972, Géza, great-grandson of Árpád, converted to Christianity, and in 1001 István was crowned with papal approval and laid the foundations of the Hungarian state.
In 1241 the Mongols swept through Hungary and defeated the Hungarian army at the Battle of Muhi. King Béla IV and the remnants of his shattered army retreated through the hills of the Bükk and sought refuge on the Dalmatian coast. There was famine and epidemic, but on his return Béla ordered the building of stone castles to replace the hilltop stockades. The Mongols did not return, but during the fifteenth century the castles served as strongholds for Hussite rebels.
It was King Matthias who drove the Hussites out of the northern hills. The rule of this clever king is considered to be Hungary’s Golden Age, but he was also an expansionist, and with the help of a mercenary army ruled an enlarged kingdom stretching, for a while at least, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. After his death, Hungary was weakened by a succession crisis and a failed peasant uprising and fell easily to Suleiman the Magnificent at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. For 150 years Hungary was divided between the Austrian and Ottoman empires, and during intermittent periods of warfare the hilltop strongholds frequently changed hands. The defeat of the Ottomans at the end of the seventeenth century was followed by Hungarian uprisings against the Habsburg occupation, and for a while the rebels held much of the country and dominated the northern hills. After their defeat the lands of the rebellious nobles were confiscated. German and Slovak Catholics and other ethnic groups were settled in the hills to manage the forests, run the glass foundries and also stem the advance of the Reformation. Those hilltop castles still standing lost strategic importance, and for a while the highlands no longer played a large part in Hungary’s history.
After World War I the price of fighting and losing on the Austrian side was the loss of two-thirds of Hungary’s lands. Important industry was lost and three million Hungarians ended up in foreign territory. During World War II Hungary joined the Axis powers, and as a reward received some of the territory it had lost, but once again a dangerous combination of inept diplomacy, internal weakness and unfortunate geography transformed Hungary and its hills into a battleground for foreign armies. Recalling the Habsburg–Ottoman wars the Zemplén, Bükk, Vértes, Bakony and Pilis became battle fronts.
Walking on Nagy-Mána, Börzsöny, Walk 5
After the war the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party eased itself into power and Hungary became a one-party state and ally of the Soviet Union. At the same time the ethnic composition of the hill villages was radically altered as large numbers of the original German and Slovak settlers were forcibly resettled and smallholders came under pressure to give up their land and join the agricultural co-operatives or work in the cities. The drama of the 1956 Revolution, when Hungarians rebelled against the Communist government and its Soviet backers, was largely an urban affair, but the conflict in Pécs spread into the Mecsek hills. Show trials, detentions, executions and mass emigration followed.
The death of Stalin and the consolidation of the post-1956 Communist state gave the new regime under János Kádár freedom for manoeuvre. Living standards improved, and from 1968 there was a good deal of political and economic liberalisation with experiments in privatisation. This softer brand of state socialism was jokingly referred to as ‘goulash communism’. In the 1980s the Soviet Empire unravelled, and Hungary played a large part in the opening up of the border between East and West. Hungary’s transition from a one-party state to a mixed-economy democracy was relatively smooth and peaceful, although there has been a social cost for hill villagers who had depended on agricultural co-operatives or mining for their livelihood.
Village Life
Without playing down the bitterness felt by better-off smallholders who were forced to collectivise, agricultural co-operatives were often very successful enterprises with profitable spin-off activities. Villagers were guaranteed work in the co-operatives or in the nearby factories and mines. After the petty restrictions of the 1950s were lifted many householders had the opportunity to grow their own produce and rear livestock with fodder provided free by the co-operative. There were other positive aspects such as weekly voluntary work commitment (társadalmi munka) involving community projects. Village children were also deployed to collect litter and clear streams.
The changes after 1989 saw many co-operatives
