From floating timber to Gdańsk

Before the Dunajec became a tourist attraction, it was a trade route. The Wikipedia entry on the Dunajec Gorge indicates that the oldest documents on rafting date from 1589: a polychrome in the former church in Krościenko and 17th-century iconography from a Slovak monastery. The portal dzieje.pl, citing material from the Polish Press Agency, writes more generally that the beginnings of rafting on the Dunajec go back to the 16th century, and that it flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Pieniny highlanders first floated timber. Later charcoal, tar, dried fruit from around Łącko and Nowy Sącz, and grain also travelled on rafts. The entry on Krościenko also mentions lime and honey. Some shipments reached as far as Gdańsk, others ended their journey in Tarnów or in Ujście Jezuickie, where the Dunajec flows into the Vistula and the cargo was taken over by further carriers or merchants. According to dzieje.pl, the last timber shipments could still be seen in the 1970s.

The first tourists on rafts

When exactly the first tourists floated down, sources state with a slight discrepancy. The president of the raftsmen's association, quoted by dzieje.pl, speaks of the oldest recorded tourist rafting trips in 1832. Wikipedia writes of about 1831 and adds that rafting through the gorge was popularised by Józef Szalay. Both versions are linked by the figure of Szalay, a Galician official regarded as the founder of the spa in Szczawnica, which he inherited in 1839. The beginnings of tourism on the Dunajec therefore fall at the start of the 1830s, and the exact year depends on the source adopted.

Szalay organised group excursions for spa patients, sometimes of as many as a hundred people, with singing and music from the Pieniny highlanders. Wikipedia cites accounts from later decades: in 1839 Łucja Rautenstrauchowa described night trips with small lanterns, in 1860 Jadwiga Łuszczewska, known as Deotyma, travelled, and the geologist Ludwik Zejszner recalled a boat with an orchestra and mortars firing at the echoes of the rocks. The memory of Szalay is preserved by the Pieniny Museum in Szlachtowa, which bears his name and tells of rafting, tinkering and the history of the spa. The oldest building of the spa in Szczawnica is the Szalay Manor from 1839.

The association and inscription on the heritage list

The Polish Association of Pieniny Raftsmen has existed since 1934. According to the president's account from 2023 it has nearly a thousand members, of whom about five hundred are active raftsmen, and the skills are usually passed down in the family, from grandfather to father and from father to son. The raftsmen perform in the dress of the Pieniny highlanders, and the association's mission, as its website states, also includes cultivating Pieniny songs, music and legends.

In 2023 the raftsmen's traditions on the Dunajec in the Pieniny were placed on the national list of intangible cultural heritage, kept by the Minister of Culture. The association campaigned for the inscription, and according to the president the effort took about a year and a half. Sources differ on the day: the table on Wikipedia gives 28 June 2023, while the dzieje.pl text appeared on 23 July 2023. It is a national list, not a world one. Pieniny rafting is not on the UNESCO list, and the entry on the national list notes that it is informational in character.

The raft today and a narrowing with a legend

The rafting trip through the Dunajec Gorge begins in Sromowce and ends in Szczawnica or in Krościenko. Wikipedia gives the length of the trip to Szczawnica as about 15 kilometres, the raftsmen's website as about 18, so when planning a route it is worth keeping to the organiser's data. The raftsman steers the raft and on the way tells of the rocks and legends.

The most famous of these concerns Janosik's Leap, a narrowing where the river contracts to about 12 metres. The raftsmen have for years spoken of a depth of eight metres. Echo-sounder measurements made in November 2024 by scientists from Kraków universities showed a greatest depth of 4.5 metres. The legend has it that Janosik, fleeing from the haiduks, leapt across the Dunajec here, but this is precisely a tale, not a historical fact. In the past the raftsmen also spent the night in a gazebo on the Szopka Pass, as mentioned on the page for that pass.

Around the river lies the Pieniny National Park, to which a separate text is devoted.