The Female Factor: Subtle Shift at the Gypsy Bride Market

Meet the tinkers of Thrace, semi-nomadic Roma who in the early 21st century are among the few in Europe hewing to ancient ways. A woman may govern Germany and men in Sweden may care for infants. But in this corner of southeastern Europe, that thinking is quite foreign, with — so far — limited impact.

Technically, the young women at this traditional St. Todor’s Day “market” were not for sale. But it is at this fair, held each year on the first Saturday of Orthodox Christian Lent, that the Kalaidzhi (as the estimated 18,000 Thracian tinkers are known) conduct the complex negotiations on a bride price that traditionally lead to marriage.

The identity of this semi-nomadic Roma group is based on the ancient craft of its menfolk: producing and repairing pots, pans and caldrons. For centuries, these smiths have scattered in ones or twos in Bulgarian villages to practice this craft, and they get together rarely for events like the St. Todor’s fair.

This is therefore one of the few opportunities for teenagers to meet other Kalaidzhi — and potential spouses. Dating is not really an option when teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet without an adult. Marriage outside the group is equally taboo.

Leaning against his car, surveying the scene, Hristos Georgiev, 18, was pleased to be wrapping up negotiations with the father of Donka Dimitrova, an 18-year-old he expected to marry weeks later. Bargaining had narrowed to between 10,000 and 15,000 levs, or $7,500 to $11,300, well more than a year’s worth of the average Bulgarian’s wages of 8,400 levs. He said he saved the money working construction in Cyprus.

According to Velcho Krustev, an ethnographer with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, “the man is not buying a wife, but her virginity.” The payment ensures the bride will be treated well by her new family, he said.

Good looks nevertheless command a price. “If she’s really beautiful, the price can go up” to 20,000 or 25,000 levs, Mr. Georgiev said, within easy earshot of his prospective bride. (Others said a great beauty might fetch 40,000 levs.)

“I don’t approve,” said Ms. Dimitrova, who unlike less educated Bulgarian Roma girls recently completed a landscaping course. “You shouldn’t look at the money,” she said, “but at the person, his way of speaking, thinking, feeling and all the rest.”

Her cousin Todorka was blunt. The money, she said, “is no guarantee that the marriage will last forever. They can still find another better one 10 days later.”

Kalaidzhi families usually marry off daughters between the ages of 16 and 20 and take them out of school by eighth grade, allegedly to prevent their being “stolen” by suitors. (How often true bride theft occurs is not clear. Young people said it is often a face-saving family story when a daughter elopes.)

Kalaidzhi women have long woven their daughters’ dowries, and stoked the fires for their husbands’ craft. They are wives, mothers and assistant tinsmiths.

Education has not been a priority: the Open Society found in 2004 that one in five Bulgarian Roma women are illiterate — almost double the share among men. Only 10 percent of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, according to the World Bank, compared with 16 percent for the men.

However, support for marriage traditions is waning. A 2007 study by Amalipe, a nongovernmental organization in Bulgaria, found that 52 percent of Roma opposed parents' choosing the spouse of their children, with 35 percent in favor. Only 18 percent of Roma supported the bride price; 69 percent rejected it.

Kalaidzhi are among the most tradition-bound of Roma. But even they are changing — to the distaste of elders like Ivan Kolev, 73.