The secrets of the most terrible winters on the Danube. What was hiding the river turned ice bridge

Several extreme winters, in which the waters of the Danube froze, turning the river into a white expanse, remained in history. People feared the dangers brought by the ice, but they also sought to take advantage of the opportunities brought by this phenomenon.

The Danube in winter. Photo: Pixabay.com

The Danube crosses Romania for a distance of over a thousand kilometers, outlining the southern and southwestern borders of the country, with Bulgaria and Serbia. The waters of the river are considered extremely dangerous due to strong currents, eddies and large differences in depth over very short distances. In winter the river is considered even more dangerous, but the freezing, more frequent in the past, gave it a special charm.

The river of ice that captured the ships

Since ancient times, the Danube has been a testing ground for daredevils, and accounts of its appearance in winter have entered into legend. Historical sources described how the ancients used the frozen Danube.

Two millennia ago, the river remained ice-covered during the winter, and the ice blocks carried by the waters sank under the weight and currents, forming deep layers of ice. Ships heading to the Black Sea ended up completely immobilized, sometimes for months at a time.

“The ice on the Istru (not the name given to the Danube in Antiquity) freezes so hard that it surrounds a descending merchant ship and holds it captive: it is useless to spread the sails; the man in the bow no longer looks ahead; the captain can no longer move the rudders, they are completely stiff. The whole ship is caught in the bonds of the ice, and, I say, it no longer resembles a ship, for it is no longer battered by the waves, but seems rather a hill rising out of a vast plain, or, altogether, a high watch-tower.” informed the Latin scholar Plinius the Elder, in the 1st century, in Naturalis Historia.

When the frost caused the Danube to freeze over, travelers and sailors would get off the ships and move the cargo to the shore, waiting for the winter to end so that the vessel could be freed from the grip of the ice.

The giant fish of the Danube, taken out from under the ice

The locals on the shore took full advantage of the bounty of the frozen river, in which they fished with ease.

“The fishermen take hammers and break the ice where they please, making a round hole to the water. You would say it is the mouth of a fountain or a huge vessel, very bulging. Then multitudes of fish, desiring to escape the ice that presses upon them like a roof, and longing for the light, swim with joy to the opening, come in untold numbers, crowd into each other, and, being caught in a space narrow, they are easily captured”, added the author of the first great Romanian encyclopedia.

Prey was plentiful, from carp and ravenfish to perch, swordfish and young sturgeon. Mature sturgeons of huge size, the historian stated, preferred to remain in an inert state during the winter, hiding under rocks or burying themselves in the sand at the bottom of the water. There were fish so big in the Danube that the locals, called Istrians, pulled them out of the water with the help of ropes pulled by yoked oxen and horses.

“To the other end of the rope he ties a strong, well-sharpened hook, which he sticks into the lungs of a bull and lowers into the water as bait, even the favorite food of catfish from the Istru, after fixing enough lead above the hook so that it will not be pulled downstream. As soon as the fish feels the flesh of the bull, it quickly grabs it. Then, finding its prey, with its jaws open, it shoots without beware of the fatal food that has come his way. This glutton, attracted by the pleasure of the taste, is pierced by the hook without realizing it, and in the desire to escape the misfortune that has struck him, he shakes and jerks the rope with all his might. When the hunter realizes this, he is overcome with joy.”notes the ancient author from the 1st century AD.

There was a real struggle to get the giant out of the water, in which oxen and yoked horses did the hard work, but, most of the time, the giant fish had no escape.

The Danube, the frozen bridge to the Roman Empire

In Antiquity, the lands north of the Danube were marshy expanses, adorned by countless lakes, from the Iron Gates to the Black Sea. During the winter, they became ideal places for the inhabitants of the Carpathians, who made a living from raising animals, to come down here with their herds, in transhumance.

“There were the ponds with fish, but especially with hydrophilic flora, which constituted the winter pasture for the herds of Dacia. The herds were of immense wealth, and not only sheep, but also herds of oxen. The herds, the herds, in free stables, at that time, in “Dacian” Europe, could only graze in the winter in the ponds on the left bank of the Tisza and on the bank left of the Danube, to the Dniester. The only possibility to save the herds, the herds of oxen, was the pasture with hydrophilic flora. Otherwise, in the summer pastures, the cattle would have perished with them.”archaeologist Sever Dumitrașcu pointed out.

In the lands of Dobrogea, people braved the cold and cold, wearing thick animal skins, which covered their entire bodies, leaving only their faces visible, noted the ancient poet Ovidius, at the beginning of the 1st century AD. The frozen Danube brought signs of war and plunder, to which the ancient tribes of his northern lands were accustomed, added the author exiled to Tomis in AD 8–17, the last years of his life.

“The Sarmatians surround me, a race of wild men, the Besi and the Getae, names so unworthy to be mentioned by my talent. As long as a warmer wind blows, the Ister that separates us defends us from them. When it flows, it repels their onslaught with its water. When the wild power of Boreas fixes in place the water of the sea or that which flows in the rivers, at once, precisely because the dry winds made the Ister as with the land, the barbarian enemies rush in on their swift horses. The enemies are skilful horsemen, they shoot well with the arrow, and lay waste far and wide all the neighboring land.” informed the Latin poet.

During the winter, groups of Dacians, Getae, and Sarmatians would cross the frozen Danube and raid the Roman provinces of Pannonia, Illyricum, and Thracia, endangering the frontier areas of the Roman Empire.

Scene XXXI on the Column. Source: the volume Columna lui Traian, by Radu Vulpe

“The Dacians live not detached from the mountains. From thence, under King Cotisoni, they used to descend and desolate the neighboring lands, whenever the Danube, frozen by frost, joined its banks. Augustus determined to remove this population, which was very difficult to approach. Thus he sent Lentulus and drove them to the other side; from there garrisons were placed. Thus the Dacians could not be defeated, but only repulsed and scattered,” recounted the Latin historian Anneus Florus (70 AD – 140 AD), describing the raids that the Dacians led by Cotiso were making in the lands south of the Danube.

Such a raid is also captured on Trajan's Column. Scene XXXI dramatically illustrates the Dacian and Sarmatian cavalry invasion of Moesia Inferior in the winter of 101, depicting the warriors crossing the frozen Danube, braving the currents and dangers of the river.

“In scene XXXI, the artist wanted very much to show us the crossing of the Danube by Decebal's allies through one of the most disastrous episodes. An unforeseen accident happened here: the breaking of the ice crust of the river under the weight of the barbarian cavalry. But from the fact that the ice did not support the mass of the Transdanubian cavalry, which had always been accustomed to use the frost to cross rivers as a solid bridge, it turns out that in that winter the cold was milder than usual, forming a too thin crust on the surface of the water”, pointed out the historian Radu Vulpe.

The frozen Danube, the white road

In the following centuries, the Danube frequently froze over in winter, becoming a seasonal traffic route for armies, travelers, caravans and transhumance herds. In the modern era, the Danube freezing over large areas has become rarer, but some winters have remained famous due to this phenomenon.

“A road on the frozen Danube is not an everyday occurrence, and whoever has done it once remembers it for a long time, for its special novelty, for its great beauty, for some inconveniences and dangers connected with it. Abandoned fishing boats, boats packed between the ice walls – that's all you can see in this great white wasteland, on which the rough wind walks, masterfully playing with the snow”noted historian Nicolae Iorga, at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1912, the Danube was frozen for 40 days. However, the winter of 1929 brought much lower temperatures.

“Severe frost like never before. The Danube froze to a depth of two meters. Automobiles and carriages loaded with heavy weights pass from Oltenita to Turtucaia, as if on a boulevard. We are pleased that the Danube froze in this way, because we make postal runs much easier.” recounted a postman from Oltenita, in 1929, quoted at the time by the publication Viitorul.

In 1985, one of the memorable winters of the 1980s, due to the prolonged cold waves that gripped Romania, the Danube froze again on large areas in Dobrogea.

“The layers on the Danube climbed over each other near Isaccea, the river froze, becoming one with the ground, and an ice dam appeared in the water's path, which choked the flow of the river. The Danube froze under the plateau of ice layers”. informed Flacăra magazine then.

In recent years, the phenomenon of frost on large areas on the Danube, in the territory of Romania, was increasingly rare.