Here is the town of Mestia at night. All the Svan Towers are lit up with spotlights. Every family had their own tower for when inter-clan warfare broke out in the village and the family needed somewhere to hide. Also, when avalanches came, or other natural disasters. Women would be hidden up here to prevent the art of "bride-napping" which is still a tradition up here from time to time, but not a very accepted one. The traditional rule is that if she screams when she is being 'napped' the family has a right to go after her and kill whoever is trying to marry her. If she doesn't scream the family doesn't have that right. However, if she does scream, but the family can't catch the man who is stealing her by day break then she is considered not a virgin anymore, and therefore is married off to her kidnapper. If a feud begins between clans it can go on for 12 generations, but no more than that-it's the cut off. There was recently a movie made about this, where a man was going to literally take a bullet for his family to end a blood feud, but then died seconds before from a heart attack and the other family went after and killed one of his children. Another note on the remoteness of this area: While Georgia has been conquered by Turks, Mongols, Greece, Russia (twice), ect, ect, ect, Svans, with the help of their landscape were able to defend themselves every time, so while Georgia is kind of a cultural melting pot made from a series of conquerers, Svaneti was never touched by any of this, and therefore developed a very different existence. |