The Bagpipe Society

Traditional Croatian Bagpipes

Introduction

Croatia (Hrvatska) is a small country, but with very rich and diverse traditions. Each region in Croatia has specific costumes, dances, songs and musical instruments, often completely different from all the others. There are several reasons for this.

The first is the age of the Croatian people.The Croats occupied the area of today’s Croatia in the 7th century at the invitation of the Roman emperor Heraclius, in order to defend the Roman Empire from the Avars. Croats came from what was known as White Croatia (areas of present-day Poland, the Czech Republic,SlovakiaandUkraine).ThislargeareaofEuropewasinhabitedby Croats together with other Slavic tribes from the 2nd to the 7th century. There are still remnants of the old Croatian tradition in these areas (for example the city of Krakow was founded by Croats, the areas of western Ukraine are still called White Croatia (Bijela Hrvatska), in many of these areas there are still versions of the name Hrvat-Croat in various variants, etc.). The international name for our state and nation is Croatia (Croat), however, our real, original name is Hrvatska (Hrvat).

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