Social networks
One of the main differences between the Halubje bell ringers and all the others is that they gather men from the entire area of the Viškovo municipality, and partly from the municipality of Kastav, too. In other words, these are not men from a single village, as is usually the case, but from a larger area, broader than Halubje itself.
The area where most of the bell-ringers’ processions take place
(p. 31 „Zvončari i njihovi odjeci“ [Bell Ringers and Their Echoes], Lidija Nikočević)
The basic part of the bell-ringers’ attire are the bells. In the past, the Halubje bell ringers wore five or six smaller bells around their waists – those were bells they had in their barns, for cows and sheep. Later, in the mid-19th century, they began ordering bigger, specially made 7-liter bells from Slovenia.
There is an anecdote about this: „[A man] ordered bells from a factory in Ljubljana, and they asked him what kind of livestock would be carrying them, as he kept asking for bigger and bigger ones. They thought it was for animals, but it was actually for two-legged ‘animals’” (Kukurin, 1981:115, cf. Ivo Jardas).
Today, the Halubje men wear just one large bell, with a capacity of ten to twelve liters.
On each of the three days of the procession, the bell ringers set out from the house of the Bačurkini family. For many years, there was a famous tavern in that house, and up until the mid-20th century a bakery as well, with an oven that could bake 80 kilos of bread at once. Until the late 1980s, this tavern was the main gathering place for bocce players from the entire region.
People from Klana, Lisac, and Studena would customarily stop at this tavern on their way back from Rijeka, where they transported coal, wood, milk, and other goods. Between the two world wars (when Rijeka was under the Italian rule, and the Viškovo area part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), this house also served as an office for issuing permits to cross the state border.
