A Product of mountains, plains, and state-socialism
Viktor Pál was born and raised in the beautiful mountains and valleys of Northeast Hungary.
Viktor's ancestors were proud Rusyn farmers who arrived from Western Ukraine in the village of Görömböly in the eighteenth century. Three of Viktor's grandparents spoke Ruthenian as their first language in childhood. After WWII, similarly to other Rusyn families, their language, traditions, and thus Rusyn culture gradually became assimilated by the surrounding Hungarian majority. Viktor does not speak Rusyn but honors Ruysn ancestors who settled in and loved the lands around the Bükk Mountains.
Mountains and Plains
Since childhood, Viktor has often wondered how humans have changed the mountains and plains around Northeast Hungary and, vice versa, how nature has influenced various ethnic groups living in the area. Viktor's fascination turned into a research stream and numerous publications in this vein.
Minimalism and Socialism
As a child, Viktor's family, similarly to most living in Hungary's heavily industrialized, grim Borsod Basin, had to get by with little. A minimalist lifestyle and the minimization of resource use via reuse, repair, and recycling thus became a passion for little Viktor in the 1980s. Viktor has taken those minimalist ideas seriously ever since and developed a second research stream about discards and waste.