© Jürgen Sauer

"The Hutsul’s independent spirit may have been enhanced by their rugged landscape. Unlike most other peasants in Europe, Carpathian highlanders had little experience of being enserfed. Large-scale farming was not practical on the steep slopes, where labor was also scarce, so medieval lords (who in Ukraine were mostly Polish and Lithuanian) never much bothered trying to enforce feudal restrictions on the remote and valued land 'improvers'—farmers, shepherds, lumbermen, raftsmen, and hunters..."

— page 144, Into the Carpathians, Part 1
© Alan E. Sparks