The Skyrian Carnival, held in the weeks before Lent, culminates in the Goat Dance (Tragos) — one of the most striking surviving folk rituals in Greece. Men dress in heavy goatskins, hang dozens of goat bells from their bodies so they jangle with every movement, and perform a stomping, circling dance through the streets of Skyros Town in the company of masked figures representing a young bride and a foreigner. The performance is loud, strange, and very old.
The bells are the key element: hundreds of them, some weighing several kilograms, so that the dancers are nearly bent double by the weight while the sound echoes off the stone houses. The ritual has been performed on Skyros every year for as long as anyone can document, and scholars argue about whether it preserves pre-Christian Greek traditions or arrived via some other route. The argument matters less than the event. If your dates allow it, timing a visit to coincide with Apokries (the Greek carnival period, usually February or early March) is one of the better reasons to choose Skyros over its better-known neighbours.