Lijendes aldidancuei

Lijendes aldidancuei

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Lijendes aldidancuei

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01. Territory 6-13

03. Identity 18-23

05. Interviews Chapters

46-65

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02. Language 14-17

04. Legends 24-45

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Dolomites realize the peculiarity of the rock that forms the so-called “Monti Pallidi” (Pale Mountains), which remained for a very long time exclusive to the few inhabitants and occasional visitors. That discovery would later make the Dolomites a “world heritage site”. In addition to the praised natural beauty, the Dolomites conceal other less conspicuous but equally precious treasures: fossils and archaeological above • all the Ladin language and culture.

Today’s geographical name for the Dolomites was coined during the Enlightenment: it was the French geologist • Déodat de Dolomieu (1750-1801) who discovered the particular nature of the calcareous material of which the landforms are made, nestled between the gneiss and schist rocks of the eastern Alps and the clay hills that descend towards the Adriatic. As usual, the newly discovered mineral, Dolomia, • took its name from the author, and consequently the whole group of mountains formed by these rocks were called Dolomites, which literally means “mountains made of Dolomite”, a particular composition of double calcium and magnesium carbonate. of the mountain chain, in the Alps aligned in the direction from hypothesize the origin of those particular mountains, which

south-west to north-east, but rather the principle of the coral

arose not by orogenesis, but by submarine processes. The Dolomites were, in fact, born in the depths of the warm thetide

origin. Thus in the Dolomites, austere and sublime mountain

of the Triassic, about 250 million years ago. They are the

forms alternate with extended and pleasant plateaus becoming

remains of gigantic coral banks, which emerged during the violent geological period that saw the formation of the Alps,

also the geography of the valleys characterized by a rather

between tectonic forces and lively phenomena of deep volcan-

complex water system of the Dolomites. Since the individual

ism. Exposed to atmospheric agents, the crumbly limestone

groups, at the bottom, are islands, the waters descend like a

deteriorated rapidly, giving rise to the impressive avalanches

star on all sides, creating small worlds in turn isolated, limited

of crushed rubble and stone from which the vertiginous spires

at the top by the frightening walls of the main mountain, and closed in the valley by frightful ravines, carved by the waters -

created to live and grow on the seabed and certainly not to align with the mountain ranges and their harmonious development

period of glaciation, were seasonal hunters who followed the

in continuous lines according to the tectonic movement. The

traces of the precious game and to their eyes a landscape opened up which - after the settlements at the bottom of the

from this reason: the individual groups do not follow the logic

valley - must not have been very different from what it is today.

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Today, of course, ent, the streets have distorted the original perspective. At one time, in the Dolomites, people did not pass for pleasure, but went for a spe-

They were retreat zones, islands in the proper sense of the word. “Monti isole” (Mountains islands) of an archipelago that has as its center the Sella Group. From there, you can identify the south, the oldest route climbed from the Val d’Adige up the San Lucano pass to the Cavalese basin in Val di Fiemme.

From the west, starting from the Valle dell’Isarco, the ravine of the Val d’Ega blocked the road and forced it up the slopes of Nova Levante or Nova Ponente until it reached the small lake of Carezza, the Costalunga pass, and then reached Vigo in Val di Fassa. The Costalunga Pass itself was crossed after crossing the Val di Tires and the Porte Neigre Pass. In the north, along the Valle dell’Isarco, the Derjon river blocked the direct access to Val Gardena, forcing to climb up the Alpe di Siusi, Castelrotto and the Pinedo yoke to Ortisei. From Chiusa, on the other hand, one could only tackle the dreaded Roa de Puntives, always reaching Ortisei. Even further north, at the the Passo delle Erbe, which leads to San Martin de Tor, in the Martin de Tor. Lastly, there is still the route to Cortina d’Ampezzo, eastwards from the Sella Group, the centre of an ideal quadrant, but in this case you had to reckon with the Serrai di Sottoguda, a route that is still not easy today.

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Now this hostile and wild landscape, which required the people who lived there to work very hard during the summer, repaying them with hunger during the winter, in the eyes of the tourist, who came from far away, revealed itself as a world of sublime beauty.

The area of the Dolomites, immersed in wellness, is nowadays considered a beautiful place for holidays, until a few decades ago was instead a closed and archaic environment, where the land gave little fruit and people led a hard life. The valleys of the Dolomites were not crossed by great communication routes, there were no city centres of any importance at all, the economy was pure subsistence based on poor agriculture, some alpine pasture, exploitation of the forest heritage and some mining activities. The whole area was, almost unimaginable today, a land of marginalisation and emigration, until, towards the middle of the 19th century, when the boom began with the birth of mountaineering.

The perception of the landscape changed completely. Once upon a time, outside the microcosm of his village, the valley dweller saw nothing but an unknown and potentially dangerous world, made up of thick and dark woods, desolate and rocky lands, scree, with the constant danger of avalanches that continually shrank the already scarce arable land. The led to treating the mountain as a place of recreation, leisure and sporting competition. Lost villages were transformed into splendid centres of worldly and high-class tourism, the mountain became accessible through the construction of streets and roads, and the high mountains and their once deadly environment, made of glaciers and dizzying walls, began to become a source of formidable richness. The First World War, despite was only a setback, but it could no longer interrupt the process of transformation that had already taken place. In the 1930s the second pole of today’s tourist economy, winter sports, began to develop and after the Second World War, the area was destinations. Today the valleys of the Dolomites are almost a synonym for holidays in the mountains.

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Named after the legend To the south starts the Val di Fassa, to the east the Fodom, to

Sonnenburg, in Val Pusteria, to which the territory was given as to interpret. The same is also true for the many names of the Dolomites. Apart from descriptive names such as Sasso lungo pioneers to reach the top, such as Punta Grohmannoppure Cima Scotoni, what name did the locals give to those mountains before the advent of mountaineering, which removed that closed and lost world from centuries of isolation?

There was once an ancient kingdom in those valleys, legend has it, and the mountains were black and dark like all the Alps, but the young prince had married the daughter of the moon, a girl of delicate beauty and gentle soul who risked dying of nostalgia for her homeland. So, the prince, desperate and determined to save his beloved bride at all costs, made a pact with the salváns, the wise primitive people who know all the mysteries of nature: he would give their lineage eternal refuge in the woods and hills of his kingdom, in exchange for an enchantment that would cover all the peaks of pale moonlight, so as to prepare the princess a suitable landscape. And so it happened. In a single night the salváns spun the moon’s rays, woven a dense web of light and silver threads, and covered the whole country with the moon’s pale pallor. The ancient kingdom has long since disappeared, the legend concludes, but to this day the mysterious presence of the salváns can be felt in the forests and high meadows and the peaks shine in the white glow of the moon. People call them Monti Pallidi (the Pale Mountains).

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Rai de Lum Test de Roland Verra

Vel un dijova che l fova na piera raienta, stizënta, zënza parëdl L majer tresor tla tiera dla montes, funtana de tuesse, mort y revina L fova mé n sas, na scaia de lum, l priesc de n rëni y de n popul cundanà

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Ladin valleys the Austrian border. Articulated in 18 municipalities, they cover a total area of 1,217.64 square kilometres moreover, for historical, linguistic, and cultural reasons, they represent a transitional area between the German Tyrolean and Italian Trentino-Veneto territories.

Gherdëina

Fascia and

Fodom

omous province of Trento, while Lavinallongo and Ampezzo

Grup dl Sela (or Mëisules) following the cardinal directions.

Starting from the north and proceeding counterclockwise, Val de Mareo

recognition of the Ladin minority in the three provinces. In fact, Al Plan

the residents of the Livinallongo and Ampezzo valleys were

La Pli de Mareo

penalized by inadequate political recognition, and they were

Gran Ega torrent, into which the Marebbe stream,

not granted the essential rights, which in the other valleys,

San

allowed a relatively good preservation of the Ladin language

Martin

La Val

La Ila

and culture. The strong inequality of treatment resulting from

Calfosch. Towards San Urtijëi

the political-administrative tripartition of the Ladin area therefore remains a current problem.

Sëlva, La

Veisc

Cianacei, Poza

Mazin

Vich and Moena,

opens towards the south. To the east, the Livinallongo valley Cordeol (or Cordol) Rèba Plié de Fodom

La Col. Slightly dislocated Anpezo valley,

The orographical boundaries, which were once the main obstacle to the homogeneous development of the Ladin valleys, have been overcome in part thanks to the substantial improvement during the 20th century, of the connecting roads through Ciaulunch (or Ciaulonch Sela Parora (or Intrà i Sass

Frara (or Frea

Pordú (or al

Falzares (or Fouzargo) and

Fedaa. time by Napoleon in 1809, and then restored by the Fascist government in 1923, remains nowadays. After the Second World War, despite numerous petitions from the Ladins, the demo-

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The orography of the Dolomites, characterized by passes that are makes the passage from one Ladin valley to another particuFrom the political and administrative point of view, the Ladin-BrissinTyrolean valleys are divided into two regions, Trentino-Alto Adige-SĂźdtirol and Veneto, and into three provinces: Bolzano, Trento and Belluno.

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Linguistic peculiarities Today there are about 36,000 people living in the Ladin-Dolomite valleys, most of whom are native Ladin speakers. The language is the main element that makes it legitimate for the Ladins to represent an independent linguistic ethnic group.

only dates back to the second half of the 19th century. Some scholars became aware of its existence in three different linguistic islands: in the Grisons in Switzerland, in the Dolomites and in Friuli. Glottologists noted that the Ladin language retains many traits of the regional popular Latin, which has established itself quite uniformly not only in the Po Valley (Pianura Padana) but also in the three Roman provinces Venetia et Histria, Raetia and Noricum. In fact, it maintains phonological and lexical traces of the substratum of Rhaetian and Noricicic languages, as well as Celticism in the strict sense. Words still in use and dating back to ages prior to Romanization and therefore to the birth of Ladin, such as dlàsena (cranberry), zondra (rhododendron dàscia (branch), baràntl (hickory pine), cìer (swiss pine), crëp (stone), ròa (gravelly landslide), morona (chain), brënta (fountain, tub, basin), brama (cream), nìda (whey), (chamois), aisciöda the mountain for which in popular Latin probably did not offer

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The Ladin language, veined in some areas of Celtic traits and in others of Alpine pre-Latin traits, is a direct continuation of regional vernacular Latin dating back to the Roman Empire. The the three “Ladin” or “Rhaeto-Romanic” islands was the Italian glottologist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli. He theorized the existence, in Roman times, of seamless linguistic unity that included the entire Alpine arc (from the Danube in the north, to Lake Garda in the south, from the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland in the west, by the toponymy which is known to be the most conservative feature of the language. In fact, numerous place names in while their Latin origin indicates the capillarity and extent of its own internal linguistic articulation. The spoken Ladin in Val badiot in the upper valley, ladin (de mesaval) in the municipality of San Martino, and marô (marèo) in Marebbe. In Val Gardena instead, there is only one idiom, the gherdëina different idioms: cazét in the upper part of the valley, brach in the central part (from Soraga to Mazzin), while the idiom of Moena is called moenat. In the valley of Livinallongo the fodom (or livinallese) is spoken, while in Ampezzo the anpezan.

Today Ladin presents in all its idiomatic variants traces deriving from the long economic-cultural contacts with the two surrounding and linguistically different areas. There are, in fact, many elements deriving from the northern Italian spoken language, as and of the German assimilated in the modern age. Alongside lished in the Dolomite valleys. The monolingualism, once very widespread among the population, has almost disappeared.

The historical-social developments, the position between two linguistically and culturally distinct areas (Italian and German), as well as the intense development of the tourist economy in recent times, have forced the Ladins to become multilingual.

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What is Ladin?

“Ladin is our language” might answer an “ampezzano”. The same could be said by a “badiotto”, a “gardenese”, a “fassano”, a “fodom”.

Even many Cadorini, Agordini and Zoldani would answer like that today. A Swiss Engadine or a Friulian could also give such an answer.

Nevertheless, all local variations of Ladin differ from one to another. In fact, they are more different from each other than the “non Ladin” dialects (but always romance languages) that border with them. On the contrary, the differences between the Ladin dialects and the bordering subalpine Italian dialects are almost non-existent in the lexicon and limited in morphology, and in any case they are further weakened if we retard the comparison to previous centuries; in a diachronic sense, the same phonetic differentiation with respect to the northern Italian dialects, today rather accentuated, is also completely attenuated.

The reason for this great differentiation within “Ladinia” is well based on medieval Latin (also called Neolatine or Romance), which is the evolution of Latin that penetrated into the Alpine valleys and Friuli in eras that were also very distant from each other: it is obvious to imagine that it was not originally the same Latin and that, in any case, the process of its spontaneous evolution has experienced considerable local differentiation, in territories that are far from each other and therefore exposed

It should be remembered that Cadore and Friuli boast the stable and historical presence of populations since a few centuries before Christ and that in those areas the Romanization took frequentation of the Sella Valleys, instead, dates back only to a thousand years ago or a little more (therefore in the Middle Ages, not in Roman times). From a historical point of view, it must also be stressed that the Ladin areas have never formed an ethnic or political unity and identity, neither in pre-Roman times, nor in Roman times, nor in the Middle Ages, in reality terms such as Ladin and Ladinia, in the meaning we use today, are erudite and very modern terms, which are less than two centuries old.

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This lack of historical unity is crucial to contradict the “thesis of the substratum” which, for study hypothesis, in the nineteenth century indicated the reason for the peculiarity of the Ladin in gins, while the area of the Dolomites was two thirds outside the Rhaetian known to the Romans, belonging part to the Noricum and part to the X Regio Venetia et Histria. It should be pointed out that the most historically inhabited section of the Dolomite Ladinia, i.e. Cadore, was a tributary of Paleovenetians and Celts such as the Friuli area. These few considerations on Rhaetian Ladin, together with the fact that it is not actually possible to indicate any lexical, morphological or phonetic element of Ladin that can be attributed to the Rhaetians, show how misleading and fundamentally wrong is the denomination of “Rhaeto-Romanic” to indicate Ladin (i.e. a mixture of the language of the Rhaetians and Neolatin), a denomination that is still widespread today in the German-speaking world. Among the reasons for differentiation within Ladinia, it should also be remembered that some of South Tyrol’s Neolatine (“Ladin”) erence language - in particular Ladin in Val Gardena - an event that has objectively widened the difference with neighbouring other. It must be clearly stated that there is and has never been and ecclesiastical, which could have had the unifying function among the local variants.

in the province of Trento, a fourth is Ladin fodom spoken in

the former Tyrolean one that has now been crossed, as a political border”, by the demarcation of the Ladin area descended ognizing also the Ladin cadorino (as the sixth variant) and the Ladin-Venetian dialects (as the seventh variant). So, seven of less than one hundred kilometres -, none of which is more prestigious than the others, capable of being considered to be the “reference language”. Not to forget that in each of the seven the linguists, such as the Ladin of Cadore, which is divided into four: Ampezzo, Oltrechiusa, Centro Cadore, Comelico.

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Zent Ladina Who are the Ladins? What excentric language does this micro indigenous ethnic group speak, locked between the Germanic world in the north of its territory and the Trentino-Venetian people in the south?

Wolff was moved by a sincere interest in the Ladin phenomenon, or Rhaeto-Romanic, as the Austro-Hungarian government administration preferred to classify it, and prudence was a must, because behind the apparently innocent skirmish of the different denomination there was an explosive dispute. Wolff was not only involved in tourism promotion, he was a good journalist attentive to local political events and the great currents of

Who the Ladins were, was a matter of the lowest importance for an exterminated empire, it was not a question of pure ethnic-linguistic curiosity, but the core of the problem that only a the longest-lived political realities in Europe. Here, right here, in this remote corner of wild mountains, in this land forgotten for millennia by God and men, two great powers came into in the reorganization of modern Europe: on the one hand the ancient order based on the concept of the Reich, the ancient Ghibelline myth of the Empire, and on the other the winning idea of the nation, result of the French Revolution and German romanticism. The order of the Ancien RÊgime, which for centuries had guaranteed the stability of political power, basing as the legitimate secular symbol of the divine, had long since exhausted its capacity to create cohesion and consensus. The new idea that was developing, the dream of a dynamic social order, fair and free from religious protections and constraints, found the fulcrum of the emancipatory drive in the bursting idea of national identity, the basis of today’s Europe of Nations, but for the old multi-ethnic monarchy that idea turned out to be a lethal thought. The challenge to the past, which did not want to give way to the modern world, sparked a world-wide war, before the modern principle of the nation state could be belonged, at that precise moment in history had a symbolic meaning of fatal tragedy.

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The etymology refers to the concept of Latin and Ladin is, in fact, a vulgar language, but it is not one of the many dialects that characterize Italian. Some form of Ladin language was never recognized as a national language for the simple reason that there is no Ladin nation. The various Ladin idioms were born during the long centuries of Roman rule, following the incorporation of the Alps into the classical Latin world. The Rhaetian War, mountain populations put the centres of Cisalpine Gaul at risk and made the transalpine road system, of strategic interest to the Roman Empire, unsafe. In the following centuries of the long pax romana the language of state, the Latin, spread in the new provinces, slowly supplanting the indigenous idioms and was spoken in a vast territory that included the entire Alpine arc, from the ancient Raetia passing through the Noricum to the Decima Regio, the land of Venetia et Histria. During the slow agony of the Roman Empire, the ever more frequent invasions of Germanic peoples pushed new languages southwards and along the great roads of the Roman road network other realities were established, especially along the Via Claudia Augustache which served the most important passes of the central Alps, and the Via Annia with its various junctions, including the Julia Concordia, which guaranteed the connection of the eastern Veneto with the Danube lands, crossing the Tarvisio pass.

The ancient late-Latin language fell apart during the epochal upheavals that marked the end of the empire and the turbulent period of the dark centuries, and only in isolated territories inaccessible to raiders did the indigenous population continue to use Ladin idioms, until only three residual areas remained, true linguistic islands within the framework of Europe that was heading towards the new organization of the medieval order.

Ladin-speaking lands of Friuli managed to keep up with history, adapting to the new hegemonic languages north and south of the Alps, without giving up their Ladin cultural matrix. The remote and archaic Dolomite area, on the other hand, thanks to the inhabitants in a millenary isolation. The entire area came under the rule of the ecclesiastical principalities of Trento and which in turn was annexed to the Habsburg Empire in 1363.

Alongside Latin, the cultured language par excellence, German became established in public administration and Italian was used mainly by churchmen, the only to know how to read and write. Nobody cared about the presence of the Ladin spoken language.

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Identity The heterogeneous world of the Ladin spoken language is generally

in the Italian sphere. The double denomination is not a simple habit of academic meticulousness, but the cornerstone of a very precise dispute that involved above all the Ladins of the Dolomites, caught between the growing Habsburg concerns and the irredentist aims of the young Kingdom of Italy.

It was the glottologist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli (1829-1907) who analysed and described, in the Ladin Essays published in 1873, the Dolomites and Friuli, recognising their unitary linguistic typology. While underlining the fact that this minority branch of the Neolatine languages was composed of a great variety of idioms that were also very different from each other, without a common recognized standard, Ascoli formulated the theory of a hypothetical Ladin unity, according to which these languages would have a common ancient pre-Latin substratum, probably of Rhaetian origin.

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Are they by any chance Latins, close relatives of Italians and therefore unreliable, inclined to make common cause with the enemy or are they an ethnic group of a Rhaeto-Romanic, precisely and therefore probably Austrian?

Empire, torn apart by the unstoppable centrifugal impetus of its nationalism as its most fearsome enemy. Despite the system of pacts and alliances, the integrity of the immense territory was in serious danger. The Panslavist movement was certainly the most serious cause for concern, but it was obvious that sooner or later there would be no way to control the irredentist uprisings in the provinces of the empire on the border with Italian territory, the interests of Italy and the Austrian empire, then formally allies, were too divergent. The military experts had no doubt about the location of the battle, and began to study the likely hot spots. The real causes that led to the construction of the great road of the Dolomites were, as already mentioned, military considerations focused on the defense of government in distant Vienna discovered with some discomfort that along that potentially disputed line in the near future lived a tiny ethnic group of dubious identity, certainly not German.

At the Vielvรถlkerstaat, the multi-ethnic empire par excellence, ence of this umpteenth nationality should not have created embarrassment, given the small numbers of subjects settled in the Dolomites, but in case of war actions, now considered likely within a certain period of time, the orientation of the local population can make the difference. And so you began wondering, for reasons far from high and noble, what kind of people the Ladins were. If on the one hand the Trentino and Italian claim the ancient Latinity of the irredent lands, declaring the Ladins citizens of Italian culture and tradition, on the other hand the Austrian patriotism exalted the peculiarity of the Rhaetian strain, making the Romansh subjects a kind of indigenous, of Urvolk, who had always resided in these places and therefore inalienable property of the Habsburg house.

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What image did Ladins have of themselves?

The problem of Ladin identity was not felt until the Ladin-speaking ethnic groups lived in their isolation, in the lost lands around the Sella massif. The rural context, supported by a traditional and often pure subsistence economy, was locked on itself, with no great need for contact with the world beyond the mountains of its own valley.

particularity with the mass schooling in the early nineteenth century. The Austrian empire, the entire Dolomite territory, did not of the State was Latin, the language in which the most important acts of government were formulated, while in the territory of the and a myriad of local idioms and dialects were spoken, the language of greatest presence was German, being the language of the capital Vienna and the ruling house, that is the Habsburgs.

German served as a kind of koinè, a code common to all the colorful inhabitants of the empire, being at the same time the predominant language in the army and administration. However, it was an established practice that alongside the hegemonic German dominated the language commonly spoken by the majority of a particular country, and for a good Habsburg subject it was absolutely normal to use different language registers. The knowledge, at least rudimentary, of several languages was a simple necessity, as well as a fact of considerable political and economic advantage.

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The areas of the “tera ladina�, as marginal as they had always been, could not cope without the two great languages of the historical County of Tyrol. German had, in fact, long been present in the daily life of the Ladins, as it was the language spoken in the cities and markets to which they referred, as well as the language in which they addressed the administration and government authority: it was, in short, the language of the state.A second aspect was given by the presence of the priest, often also with the function of teacher. Therefore, Italian also circulated among the Ladin-speaking people, being the language of the church. For very long periods of time the inhabitants of the Ladin valleys made use of their native idioms, German-speaking dialectal or written German-speaking codes, or Italian-speaking registers, always dialectal or with a cultured imprint, so much so that the fact remained limited to a few individuals, local administrators, and the clergy.

With the advent of compulsory schooling the legitimate propriate to literacy these farmers and shepherds, lost in the mountains of the Dolomites, since their local language was elementary education, i.e. the question of which language of instruction was more suitable, there was some contrast between the two national languages, i.e. between German and Italian, until the controversy was set aside, choosing for the Dolomite territory the formula of the utraquistic school that provided for teaching in both (uterque) languages, a formula that had already proved to be valid for many other mixed-language territories of the question arose: what about Ladin? Is it really true that it is of its identity was emerging through language, the territory was upset by the nascent mountaineering that put a traumatic end to the secular isolation of the Ladin lands, projecting them into modernity.

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Ladin Legends Some scholars, whose leader is Karl Felix Wolff, have traced the origins of the Ladins back to prehistoric times, a time when popular legends and folk tales were born from Alpine oral culture, which still entertain the imagination of those who read or listen to them, Pale Mountains.

Wolff’s hypothesis, however, arose from the epic fervour of Romanticism, which tried to answer in its own way to the questions about the origin of the Ladins, considering them the heirs of an ancient legendary population such as the Fanes, led

by Princess Dolasìla, heroine par excellence of the Dolomite legends. Many other “ancient stories” similar to the one of the Fanes, that have been preserved in the narrow Dolomite valleys thanks to a prolonged orality, were collected, transcribed, studied and partly published, as they had been narrated, by various authors in the years between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among these, besides the already mentioned

Don Lorenzo Felicetti from Predazzo and Hugo de Rossi from Vigo di Fassa.

Wolff’s collection is, however, the largest and most famous, so he is especially entitled to the merit of having saved from oblivion the last traces of a very ancient era. A journalist and an artist who tried to recompose the shards of a shattered statue: from the early twentieth century and for several decades, he transcribed piece by piece the stories heard by the elderly and the shepherds, trying to arrange them in systematic studies of history and mythology. As a “good” Austro-Hungarian citizen, however, he limited himself to seeking points of reference only

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The scholar Ulrike Kindl, who carefully analyzed Wolff’s work, highlighted instead the direct correspondence between the the minor mythology like the salvans and the ganes, primitive inhabitants of the Ladin valleys - and the deities of the classical Mediterranean tradition. The Dolomite legends are therefore also “true and proper myths of the origins”, in which human and divine facts are regulated according to the inscrutable designs of fate. Another problem related to the material collected by Wolff derives from the fact that the so-called “ancient stories” (veies dic, in Ladin) have been handed down for many centuries to the Dolomite landscape and even if they have been subject to a constant process of reformulation and remodulation of the contents by storytellers and characters who, according to their individual creative talents, have preserved them. Moreover, the stories handed down have crystallized in the form given to them by the last witness, that is, the collector or the compiler who transcribed them, Karl Felix Wolff. As is the case for all is therefore the work of a narrator who is rarely endorsed by the whole treacherous community, especially in the case of minority traditions such as the Ladin one. Nevertheless, the contìnes, as the Ladins call the legends, are bearers of a symbolic thought of extraordinary effectiveness, which narrates the Dolomite world of old times but which can only be understood through precise interpretations.

Ulrike Kindl that“symbolic thought is primarily eschatological explanation, profound truth: it does not seek the true fact, but the truth behind the facts, the revelation of the invisible, not the description of the phenomenon obvious to everyone [...]”.

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The Ladin contìnes therefore do not tell a true story, but evoke an image and provide with it a truth older than true history. For this reason, it is necessary to decipher the iconic signs in order to interpret the message correctly. In the oral tradition, particular attention is paid to the contents considered really important, such as the story of the origins and the fall of time, according to the eternal alternation of fatum et fortuna. And it is precisely here that the contìnes touch the world of myth, since only the numinous sphere can assume the primordial creative power and and measure, to allow man to live on earth.

Like every other human community, the Ladins have their own heritage of myths of origin, characterized by metaphors of overwhelming narrative and imaginative power. As in classical myths, the main theme of the contìnes is the ancient conjecture of the fatum, the collective memory of the primordial creation, of the prosperous golden age, inevitably followed by original sin and then the consequent loss of the paradisiacal glory.

The narratives of Fanes’ reign illustrate this primordial fatality, evoke images, do not provide a true story, but an older truth: the legend of the fall of time.

The legends of the Kingdom of Fanes are therefore “much older stories”, as some witnesses interat the beginning of the 20th century revealed to him: “les stories de Fanis, köres è trop plü vödles...”.

If the Dolomite legends cannot therefore be considered as a form of popular historiography or testimonies of facts and events of ancient times, least of all are they purely fantastic tales like fairy tales, free from any realistic constraints. As Ulrike Kindl points out, “the legend is always linked to a precise content, a motif, thus preserving a dimension of immediate reality, impossible in the context of the fairy tale [...]” Consequently it is real: it does not tell facts that really happened, but provides keys to reading - motifs, images, ideas and roles organized according to precise guidelines - of reality for the community that tells it.

Ladin legends, therefore, express an imaginatio mundi handed down through the centuries of Dolomite oral culture and represent an important metaphor of identity; offering the opportunity to rediscover the Pale Mountains through the eyes of the Ladin population of the past”. They allow us to perceive the close relationship between mountains, man and nature fog and storms turning into humanoid forms.

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Important is to keep in mind that the functioning of the pre-illuministic imagination to which the world of contĂŹe refers follows a type of reasoning that interprets reality according to symbolic keys of interpretation, oriented to the fabula, not to history.

Symbolic thought is primarily eschatological explanation, deep truth: it does not seek the true fact, but the truth behind the facts, the revelation of the Invisible, not the description of the phenomenon obvious to all. To orient in the world you need the laws of cause and effect, but to read it, to understand its meaning and ultimate end, for a long time, only the narration of the myth offered the only model of world history.

For the Ladin valleys the reference was, as for all Christian Europe, the biblical account of Genesis which was simply true, apart from its sacred dimension of redemption and salvation.

The Ladin Counties follow the same matrix: they do not tell a true story, they evoke an image instead, and together with that image they provide a truth older than true history: the correct interpretation of the message, the reading, should not be sought in any reality, but in the deciphering of the iconic signs, because they are images, precisely, not texts that can be questioned according to the discursive logic of poetic hermeneutics.

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Beyond pure fantasy of a remote past. The rocks and peaks of the Dolomites which, according to the collective imagination, were covered in moonlight, for example, indicate a world dominated by the phases of the moon.

-The strong presence of queens and heroines such as Soreghìna, Merisana, Chenìna, Tanna, in addition to the already mentioned Dolasìla, suggests a probable existence of races held by a matriarthe salvans, the “men of the forest”, and their women, the “ganes”, sometimes also called “anguane”, as they were seen near the watercourses, it transpires the existence in the Dolomitic area of some primitive tribal groups, which, at the time when more advanced people arrived, took refuge in the higher areas, becoming slowly extinct.

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The close proximity between the legends and reality seems to be demonstrated also by the discovery of an archaeological site which happened following the indications reported in a legendary story. It is well worth mentioning in this context the Castle with enchanted walls” which belonged to the noble Von text transcribed by Karl Felix Wolff could suggest that the cas-

In fact, he wrote that “in a secluded place of Val Gardena, on Mount “Balest”, there is the locality “Pincan”.

This is a precipice with landslide terrain.

Clinging to the edge runs the Troi Paian path and on the jagged peaks once stood out a castle”.

Only a careful examination of the original German edition suggested to the researchers to move the investigations from Mount Pincan in Val d’Anna (at 1,4000 m), which recurs several times in the text. The Costa was an excellent observation point, from as the Pinei Pass on the opposite side of the valley could be controlled. This inaccessible access made the place easily defensible. The following excavation campaign promoted in 2000 by the Municipality of Ortisei on the Costa da Pincan brought to light the walls of a castle dating back to the 13th century, which, according to tradition, collapsed into the ravine below.

Other stories, on the other hand, turned out to be just a

walls of the Sciliar and the Sella massif: rings that according to tradition were “used to attack boats in ancient times, when the Dolomites were still under water. Until a century ago, in fact, once submerged by a large lake. In reality these rings acted as boundary stones according to a widespread Celtic custom.

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Ladin heritage A lot has happened during the history of the Ladins and considering the rapid evolution, it is almost a miracle that the native inhabitants of the area have managed to save at least part of their ancient heritage of story telling that has been handed down for centuries only orally and almost lost in the traumatic events of the First World War that saw the evacuation of entire villages, breaking the social link essential for the succession of generations.

Fortunately, folkloric interest had already ignited before the

The fact that the Ladin heritage has been taken over by scholars of AustrianGerman origin and training creates some problems, since these researchers were often unable to respect the typ-

war and in this way it is possible to have a number of written testimonies, collected by the nascent curiosity for the world of popular culture, in the last decades of the nineteenth century until the fateful date of 1915 which marked the beginning of the tragedy. Almost all the research of materials, available today, was carried out by German-speaking scholars, since most of the territory in question was then part of the Kronland Tirol, the County of Tyrol, an ancient land in possession of the Habsburg became interested in popular traditions in the valleys around the central Sella massif soon realised that in this remote corner of Tyrol, where the Germanic world and ancient Italian culture had been meeting for over a thousand years, a third entity, a tiny

the Ladin tradition, which is neither entirely comparable to the Italian nor to the GermanTyrolean one.

ethnic group, survived, which preserved, thanks to the particular conformation of the territory, the memory of the original Ladin related and similar, certainly to the traditions of the two great cultures on their borders, but of an authenticity, genuine and surprising autochthony.

The question is linked above all to the fact that almost all the testimonies were reported in German, which is understandable, given that the Ladin language, at the time, did not yet have minority language, but nevertheless worthy of autonomy. The German folklore tradition, on the other hand, already boasted a consolidated experience of investigation and evaluation of the popular imagination, was well prepared and ready to be

narratology, the collections containing Märchen und Sagen, i.e. Tales and Legends of the Ladin population, were written, corresponding the two genres to the guidelines of cultural anthropology inspired by Grimm.

30

31

Fairy tale or legend?

The traditional distinction between fairy tale and legend is not always an easy choice. The fairy tale is now considered a full part of folklore scholars.

The causes of the gap between fairy tale and legend, so similar and at the same time so different, are multiple and complex, partly due to reasons intrinsic to the two genres, partly due to historical choices made during their literary-cultural develop“Kinder- und Hausmärchen” (1812-15, The Hearth Fairy Tales)

structure from the world of oral traditions, and instead elevating the new code of the fairy-tale to the narrative genre of invention par excellence.

Everything is fairytale, apparently, if the gesture of telling is equated to the almost intrinsic paradigm of the interpretatio mundi, if, in other words, the world exists because it is created story that explains time before time, that is to say the myth. Fairy tales, in this capacity, are always true: they certainly do not tell real facts, but speak of truth. Fairy tale stories are nothing but structures and models to create the order of things, to give a name to destiny and a face to fate, to open a space to hope and save the necessary balance between fatum et fortuna, to set a beginning and compose an end. Fairytales are the story of the world.

Things have turned out differently for the legend. It was paring their famous collection of fairy tales, they edited almost simultaneously, the other major collection “Deutsche Sagen” (1816-18), or “Legends of the Germans”, and in so doing they discovered, working with both fairy-tale material and traditions the two genres.

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“Das Märchen ist poetischer, die Sage historischer”

“Fairy tale is mainly poetic, legend tends instead to be more historical” the Grimms noted in the preface of the “Deutsche Sagen” collection and on the basis of this sentence they inserted the fairy tale in the literature, attributing instead to the legend a place between the reliable historical testimony and the fantastic conjecture of historical content or believed such that it would characterize it as something more and above all different from a mere narrative discipline. The observation, which was actually very cautious, had disastrous consequences.

Scholars and folklorists of dubious philological and scienthat tends to be historical) of the legend the connotations of a real historical tradition, raising the legend almost to popular historiography, able to testify facts and events of remote times, in dangerous and often tendentious competition with the unequivocal clarity of the written document.

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Narrative gestures The Grimms, in fact, although they had the right intuition, codunsuitable criterion: the form of the narrative they believed intrinsic to the two genres. They did not realize that they themselves, at that precise moment, were canonizing the forms according to the literary codes in force. The folk tale knows no form, the oral tradition has no literary canons of any kind, it only provides content to be told. The gesture of narrating is in fact a primordial need of the human race, it is an anthropological fact that in the cultural development of humanity has given the most varied results, from the short and perhaps a little rough arcane myth to the gay and irreverent satire. There is no culture that does not possess a rich patrimony of fantastic tales, fairy tales or legends, and the Ladin people are not an exception, as documented by the collections found just in time in the early twentieth century. the imagination of the narrator, depending on the circumstances in which it has been narrated. Scholars engaged in the work of preserving, all of them grown up respecting the school of contĂŹe, which, thanks to their origin from an exquisite oral betrayal culture, do not know the difference between fairytale and legend at all, but are simply gestures of pure narration. The forced transfer of the Ladin tradition into the language and cultural categories of the German (or in some cases Italian) world has for years obscured the simple fact that the novels dedicated to the Pale Mountains are not works of ingenuity inspired

had not focused so much on form, creating ambiguities and and had instead recourse to the folk tale typology, they would between the genres, using a correct criterion.The oral story consists exclusively of content, i.e. motives, images, ideas and roles organized according to precise guidelines.

The fairy tale, focused only on a structuring code, that never crosses the dimensions of its subject, the fairy tale is a fantastic tale par excellence, completely autonomous and free from any realistic constraint, in fact, the fairy tale matrix is so effective

34

that it envelops any detail in its utopian magic atmosphere.

In other words, everything is a fairy tale.The legend, on the other hand, always remains linked to a very precise content, a motif, preserving in this way a dimension of immediate reality, impossible in the context of the fairy tale This leads to the postulated historicity of the legend, which is nothing more than the pretension to narrate things that really happened. The legends, therefore, are real: they certainly do not tell facts that have really happened, if not historically ascertained, but provide keys to interpret reality for the community that tells them. A legendary tradition does not preserve any remote memory of by the testimony evoked with a large number of details taken from real everyday life. The narrative gesture of the legend demands the unanimous consent of the purveyor community, i.e. it tends to make subjectively true what is handed down in the narrative taken from the collective memory. This creates a different tension between content, often no less fantastic than in fairytale plots, and the position of the narrator, always anchored to reality. Fantastic dimension and real dimension are therefore integrated in a descriptive representation of facts that to interpret and metaphors to decipher.

Every community based on oral tradition develops the right images suitable for their environment, whose iconic implications only work within the local horizon. Each community develops the right images suitable for its environment, whose iconic implications, however, only work within the local scenario. The reasons, often, are the same as in the fairy tale: legends of origin, etiological legends, which try to explain a mysterious phenomenon as a consequence of a fact that happened illo tempore, legends of encounters with strange beings, religious legends to ensure the right alternation of sacred and profane time. However, it will be the careful research into the evolution of the purveyor community that will provide the appropriate trace for the correct reading of the images narrated, since the imagination of legends is never identical to the imagination of the thought of which it is a testimony.

Our European culture has for many centuries been a pro-

the arrogance of the winning writing made entire areas of culture

foundly literary, or rather, book culture, which does not tolerate

disappear, drowning out whole fringes of minor languages that

and appreciate forms of cultural expression based on the ap-

were unable to evolve into literary languages in time. Today a

preciation of storytelling. It is not always said that the two forms of tradition, oral and literary, must necessarily exclude each

existing heritage of written tradition, and through this heritage,

other, nor does it seem a historical necessity that literary culture, the invention of writing, automatically leads to the decline

fundamentally constituted: history is what happened and what be studied, reviewed, rediscovered and ultimately interpreted.

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A perfect model Karl Felix Wolff was the perfect incarnation of the Austro-Hungarian citizen. He was born in Karlovac, Karlstadt at that time, in Croatia, to a Slesian, German-speaking father and mother from the Val di

young Wolff, used from his earliest childhood to live in the jumble of different languages and cultures that formed the Habsburg empire, he met the tiny Ladin ethnic group. He also met people from the various Dolomite valleys settled in one of the most important centres of the German-speaking Tyrol, in that then cosmopolitan and open city, a point of support for the nascent cultured and aristocratic tourism to discovering the wonders of the Alpine sojourn.

Wolff began to learn the writer’s trade, worked in the editorial industry’s early market required marketing services, i.e. the promotion and dissemination of information for tourists. The mid-mountain places around the rich city in a strategic position along one of the key passages crossing the Alps in a northsouth direction were used to establish holidays since ancient times; new was the discovery of sport holidays, hiking in the high mountains, the challenge of climbing in the Dolomites’ vertical world. Alpine tourism, as already mentioned, was not born in the mountains, but in the great European cities in full transformation, and Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire, was one of the most important centres of young mountaineering, where strategies for the use of the territory were planned.

Also in Vienna, in 1862, one of the oldest sections of the Alpine born and here the idea of planning a road that crosses the end’Ampezzo. The realization of the so-called “Great Road of the Dolomites” was wanted by members of the Austrian Alpine Club who were able to involve the military exponents of the Defense for the huge funds needed. In fact, the route roughly follows the ancient border between Italy and the Habsburg Empire, and for some time Austrian strategists had been watching with great concern the events in the nearby Italian territory, which had become a sovereign national state only a few decades earlier.

The fact that the road also had a military purpose was not a mystery, but nevertheless remains a masterpiece of engineering and entrepreneurial foresight.

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The work, was completed in 1907 after ten years of hard work and marked the beginning of the irresistible rise of the whole area to one of the most famous landscapes in the world. Wolff was at the service of the necessary promotional activities, wrote countless articles on the wonders of the Dolomites for almost all the German tourist magazines, published guides and practical booklets with all the useful information for a stay in the new paradise that had just been discovered, and provided the cultured public of the time with some nice essays of literature, always referring to the Dolomites, in order to guarantee the demanding clientele a pleasant recreation between one excursion and the next. For this market Wolff created the remarkable is still interesting halfway between a guide and a travel diary, which, along with all the necessary descriptions of places and landscapes, brings to the attention of the guest the fact that the Dolomite valleys are truly “tera ladina�.

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The saved memory Karl Felix Wolff, fascinated by the scenic beauty of the Dolomites and intrigued by the presence of an ancient ethnic group in the valleys that had just been made accessible, began a work originally inspired by professional interests, but over the course of very long years it proved to be of fundamental importance for the Ladin cultural heritage. ing Dolomitensagen, the Legends of the Dolomites, was published, until the ninth edition, in 1957, in which all the individual volumes were gradually published in a single integral edition, Wolff’s work contributed to documenting the particular world of Ladin traditions. The merit of having saved, at a very delicate moment in Central European history, the remote memory of a minority suspended between a past of archaic immobility and a present of whirling changes will always remain undisputed.

Without Wolff’s work much of the priceless treasure of Ladin legends would probably have been lost between the tragic events of the First World War and the political and economic upheavals after the Second World War. The question is, was the material presented by the Wolff really the authentic Ladin tradition?

As already mentioned, the transformation of the landscape

origin of the Ladin ethnic group from an ancient Rhaetian root,

of the Dolomites from a land of rural Alpine culture into one

therefore not Latin, if not even pre-Latin, removed the Ladins

of the great centres of world tourism did not take place in the

from the dangerous sphere of Italian irredentism, weakening

Ladin imagination, but in the European one of romantic inspi-

the claim of Ladin-speaking territories as lands of ancient Latin

ration. The Dolomites were not discovered by the Ladins, but

vocation. Wolff supported, convinced, the various theories dis-

by English, French and German pioneers who challenged each

cussed at the time on the autochthony of the Rhaetian ethnic

other to conquer the towers and spires, and even the names

groups and his sincere interest in Alpine anthropology would

of the mountains often had to surrender their Ladin origins to

later push him towards very questionable racial drifts, the error

foreign heroes. The Ladins themselves had developed, over the

of the amateur anthropologist does not detract from the merit

centuries, a completely different relationship with their moun-

of the passionate collector of Ladin traditions.

tains, but they themselves did not write and no one realized

Wolff was correct: the legends of the Pale Mountains, can-

the very special dialogue that the ancient rural culture had

not be assimilated to the traditions of the adjacent German-

with their habitat.

Tyrolean and Trentino-Venetian cultures, but they hold a different, perhaps more archaic memory, certainly of surprising

that the Ladin tradition of his territory had gained, he again -

the contĂŹe, he took it into account during the elaboration of the

selves, but by an author of German cultural extraction. For the

stories heard in the valleys, but it was in this writing work that

Austrian vision, given the fatal historical moment, the postulated

manipulation crept in.

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It was no mere coincidence that the author, having brought to

On one side stood the young Italy, on the other the heirs of the

light the treasure hidden in the Ladin valleys, gave his collection

extinct Holy Roman Empire, the ancient Habsburg monarchy,

the title of Dolomitensagen, i.e. Legends of the Dolomites and

allied to the aggressive Reich of Germany’s Williamine. The

not Ladin Legends, thereby choosing the territory as a signif-

Ladin people, on the other hand, who suffered on their territory a war of which they understood neither the causes nor the im-

culture in which the stories were handed down. That choice

plications and which had nothing to do with their problems, saw

turned out to be a triumph and was an extraordinary success.

entire valleys fall into ruin, the few poor countries reduced to

The Dolomites had entered the imagination of the whole

rubble, vast areas destroyed and abandoned by the population

of Europe, while who the Ladins were, not even the cultured classes who frequented the elegant environments of the nas-

they had been divided, again in the name of interests unrelated

cent hiking tourism, knew it. However, it must be pointed out that

to their needs, into different provinces and regions, crushed

Wolff added a correct subtitle to the title of undoubted journal-

between nationalistic interests on both sides and seriously

istic appeal, specifying that the volume contained Sagen und

threatened in their dignity as a minority culture.

Überlieferungen, Märchen und Erzählungen der ladinischen

Ladin, without a common autonomous national norm, was

und deutschen Dolomitenbewohner, then Legends and tradi-

still not perceived as a language in its own right, but only as a

tions, fairy tales and tales of the people settled in the Dolomites,

spoken language, worthy of protection as a cultural peculiarity,

both Ladin and German-speaking.The book was immediately

more or less as an interesting vernacular for its archaic nature

welcomed by the public and even before the world of scholars

and as a testimony of past times. The fragile oral tradition to

-

which the Ladin identity, immersed for centuries in the timeless

covery, the storm of the First World War occurred.

Speaking of the Dolomite front, it is often forgotten that the Dolomites are “tera ladina”.

The territory where Italy and Austria clashed, in the name of historical and political ideas, was neither German-Austrian nor Italian culture; the rivers of blood that dyed the pale dolomite red

spaces of its rural rhythms, entrusted the custody of its rich The war interrupted the vital thread that linked the generations of storytellers, the wise old repositories of ancient knowledge, to the younger generations of the heirs to the imaginatio mundi, who in the future will have to hand it down to posterity. This culture, which must continually renew its own historio-contìa, risks extinction if the rite of storytelling is no longer celebrated.

The Ladin tradition has been able to create an imaginary world of extraordinary poetic power, otherwise it would not have been able to withstand for a long time the impact of cultures like the German or the Italian one with their immense heritage of forms and metaphors. The arsenal of motifs handed down by the Ladin contìe fears no comparison, it contains images capable of being loaded and reloaded with polyphonic symbologies of the best epic and mythical tradition, exquisitely linked to decline of this unparalleled tradition, the doubt about the authenticity of the material gathered around Wolff’s work became apparent: are these unusual legends really Ladin, or are they a false historian?

in the name of princes who had nothing to do with the soul of those valleys.

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Author’s tales There were two reservations from which scholars and experts in the

core and the manipulation he carried out according to the Grimmani question: “How was it possible for the Ladins to hand down the complex legends being so detached from the cultural world?”

The need to somehow transform the oral story into a written text was not in question, which in any case implies the loss of the immediate liveliness and truthfulness of the oral gesture.

With regard to Wolff’s work, however, the question was much more delicate, given that these were Ladin traditions transcribed into another language.

Wolff must surely have been able to recognize the ladinness of the traditions he was collecting, but when he was looking for the form to transcribe them he could only choose the models present in his culture of reference, elaborating the Ladin material according to the model proposed by the two Grimm. The result was, in the eyes of scholars of cultural anthropology, a very questionable confusion between motives and forms from two different and distant cultures, a motive comparable like the Ladin one to explain the origin of the land on which to live, however, does not appear in the imagination of the European folk tale, it is necessary to resort to the conjectures of the great Mediterranean myths of creation, the legends that narrate its origins.

Their second reservation was expressed through a question: is it possible that in those remote corners of the Dolomites, among people who are illiterate and detached from any cultural discourse, such a complex world has been handed down for centuries? A reality of images all their own, built on the sublime themes of beginning and end? On the question of the reliability of the oral tradition, especially with regard to the heritage of legends, battles are being fought bitterly, since the birth of modern folklore in the footsteps of the Grimm brothers, two schools of opposite trends.

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One is fundamentally based on the dogma of the short memory of unreliable people, the other on the conservative memory of ancient knowledge, interpreted as a historical-ideological truth. oral tradition uninteresting, completely denies its character of cognitive claim and prefers only the written document as the basis of a serious research, that is, it relies only on the unambiguousness of the text. The second school of thought, of anthropological orientation, appreciates the oral tradition very much, attributes to it an investigative and sapiential character, and considers it as another, however equivalent, form of culture alongside the now hegemonic one, based on the written text. It took more than a century for it to slowly become clear that oral tradition has its own laws, not comparable to those of the constitution of the written text, and that the code of truthfulness of a unfaithful community differs considerably from the paradigms of literary culture. To consider oral testimony valid, however subjective it may be, it is necessary to verify its authentic quality, as an expression of the imaginatio mundi of submerged culture.

The detection of oral testimonies by a researcher, belonging to another cultural context, is already in itself a very delicate matter. If then the fact detected is further manipulated, there is a risk of seriously compromising the original content. In the presence of an intact treacherous community, control and eventual memory is already practically extinct, if the traditions are known only to a few people, in turn, no longer expert storytellers, but last custodians who barely remember the ancient reasoning, then really the doubt increases.

Who were Wolff’s informers? How come other contemporary scholars or those of the previous generation had never heard anything similar in the Ladin quarters? Why didn’t Wolff haps even just for notes, the contìe heard, before turning them into Sagen und Märchen? In so doing he could have documented the original state of oral testimony, a decisive criterion for recognising the reliability of tradition. The verdict was not long in coming: Wolff’s work, in the opinion of the experts, was not to be considered a reliable source to document the Ladin folklore heritage. In the best case scenario it would be fairy tales of authorship, i.e. a few reasons, perhaps even autochthonous, elaborated and made unrecognisable by the writer and essayist Wolff, with serious damage to the Ladin identity, which would

simply as fairy tales of invention, i.e. works born from the creative imagination of our author.

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Rebuilding In the Dolomites, particularly in Val di Fassa, Karl Felix Wolff discovered a very rich tradition of folk tales. The presence of the “véies dic di verriéres valoróus, i.e. old tales of brave warriors, although singular and unsupported by written testimonies, is described in great detail by Wolff from the very beginning of his interest in the customs and traditions of the Ladins. “The people of Fassa are the liveliest and most enterprising of all Ladins” he notes in the pages of the guide Monographie der Dolomitenstraße,

Always in the pages of the Monographie, next to the description of the tourist routes and the geological explanations of the territory, Wolff reports short hints to the popular narrative referring in the various volumes dedicated to the Dolomitensagen, the Legends of the Dolomites. These are valuable testimonies of the various autochthonous motifs found in the area, although Wolff, unaware of the methodological requirements of rigorous does he specify the context in which he heard the story, which testimonies contained in the Monographie with the elaborate drafts collected in the various editions of the Dolomitensagen, it is possible to notice Wolff’s intervention. However, one funwork of re-narrative in itself that constitutes the vulnus of his operation. The oral tradition lives on a continuous process of reformulation and remodulation of the contents by the storytellers and other characters capable of presenting the stories handed down in a dramatic and involving way. It is obvious that each purveyor develops his own personal style, certainly oriented to precise rules in force within the community, but still characterized by individual creative talents. How oral tradition keeps the narrative heritage stable even for long periods of time, given the precariousness of the transmitting chain, is one of the major concerns of modern cultural anthropology.

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The vexata questio is the reliability attributable to human mem-

Wolff’s annotation that “everyone listens attentively to the an-

ory: there is no narrated matter, whether it is the narration of

cient stories” is certainly plausible, supported by other similar

facts really happened or the elaboration of facts only believed

testimonies that document, the existence of a lively habit of

to be such, the transmission of which can exceed the maxi-

-

mum limit of three generations, since human memory based

ple during the haymaking season on the high altitude prairies.

on the memory of eyewitness testimony is extinguished with

Within such a situation everything can be told, as there is no

the death of the ancestral generation. Then the stories told by

limit to the pleasure of inventing within the paradigms of nar-

the grandparents, respectfully collected by the grandchildren,

rative fantasy. There is talk of contingent facts, rumours or

are destined to become narrative material set illo tempore, in

news from the great world far away, beyond the passes of the

an imaginary space where historiae fabula, that is the story of

Costalunga Pass, Pordoi or Fedaia. It is told about witches and

true history and the story of imagined stories is inextricably

salváns, funny fairy tales with an always cheerful ending, we

confused.

listen to phalopee pathophies, making fun of each other and

After all, no one cares about anything, if the contìe narrated refer to precise events that happened at the time of the ances-

however, distinguishes futile talk from serious contention with

tors, important is only the conviction that the story recalled in

severe precision; not that it condemns the one and takes into

the presence of the community represents a valid metaphor of

account only the other. The enjoyment of an evening spent in

identity.In an authentic community, the whole group participates

cheerful chatter strengthens the bonds within the community,

in the spectacle offered by the storytellers, renewing in the col-

-

lective rite of the narrative celebration the sense of belonging

sary conditions for the transmission of the contents considered

to a precise social reality. the mockery is not entrusted to the heritage of traditions to be preserved and handed down with due commitment. At most,

“They have an extraordinary inclination for music and heroic tales, the old fairy tales of valiant warriors. Once, it is said, they used to go from house to house, telling their stories; the audience was often numerous and everyone listened attentively to the ancient stories, the exploits of the Arimanni...”.

a typical constellation is created, easy to memorize, on whose false line future generations can invent similar stories, adapting them from time to time to contingent situations.

It is different if we are dealing with narrative material to which is entrusted the story of the origins and the fall in time, according to the eternal alternation of fatum et fortuna. There is no human community that does not have its heritage of myths of origin and they are always metaphors of overwhelming narrative and imaginative power. Just by thinking of the biblical account of Genesis, for centuries the story of the origins par excellence of Christian Europe, or the classical myths, also their inalienable heritage of Western culture. On the threshold of the invention of writing, every civilization that has passed to the new cultural technique has entrusted the memory of the founding stories to the sacred texts, which today allows the observation of a more or less archaic state of the myths of origin and has provided us with a vast body of study material. In Europeall the great civilizations that created the West transformed their heritage of stories hitherto transmitted orally into writings, the role of the storyteller passed the hand to the poet, literature was born.

Poems such as the Iliad and the Odyssey are obviously maspersonality, the individual nuclei and narrative motifs, however, have their roots in a pre-existing oral culture that has forged them in a long process of continuous re-narration.

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Polyphony is still a very vital practice, widespread and the result of a centuries-old sedimentation of stylistic traits and modes of performance that are not spontaneous as it might seem.

of the Dolomites, a territory with a singing repertoire that sees the coexistence of different linguistic registers. In this territory, as in the whole Alpine area, the expression of singing is in the can be read as a “time windows” on the history of the valley and of the town centres, the educational offers, the formation of music bands and parish choirs, the cultural dynamics of the multi-ethnic state at the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, emigrant workers and the media transmission of tourist folklore.

Thanks to the practice of “singing with several voices” a group of individuals expresses and represents itself: studying the meanings of polyphonic singing means, therefore, to highlight important aspects of the social life of Alpine communities.

One of the most important places to broadcast the repertoire of

to be handed down and preserved and a source of pride. In

songs is the family. It represents a kind of reserve at the time of which is transmitted orally a series of knowledge among

transmitting songs, which are learned by imitation. There are

which singing is often contemplated. Many songs are performed

families recognised by the entire community as dedicated to

privately, especially by small groups of sisters. The poly-vocal

singing. Within them singing is practiced with seriousness, both the repertoire and its correct interpretation are transmitted

poly-vocality in use throughout the Alps and the Po Valley, in

through the strict observations.

which two parts proceed in parallel thirds and in a homorhyth-

The practice of community singing has an important formal-

mic way (i.e. with parallel duration values). It may happen that

ized space also within the religious life meant as that collective

the chant begins in unison and then divides immediately after

musical expression without a conductor, scores and formalized

-

divisions between the vocal parts. As far as the style of vocal

cent. The two parts are generally called by the performers “la

performance is concerned, these songs are sung in the natural register of the singers. The choice of voices to be sung is free for each singer and depends on the initial pitch of the song by

can also sing three parts. The added part is generally called “la

the former. Usually each beginning of a verse is sung by the

terza usc” (the third voice). Another quite common way to name

priest alone, the assembly of the faithful enters afterwards,

the three voices is pröm soprann, secundo sopran, alt (soprano model of the Alpine polyvocal chant. Some songs are perhomorhythmically with the other two voices but has a slightly

formed by contrasting female and male timbres, others show a

wider margin of freedom of movement not following the melodic

clearly division or are performed with mixed voices. The course

parallelism of the two upper parts. Many ethnomusicological

of the chants is syllabic. The rhythmic pulsation is felt by the performers who sing according to unwritten traditional rules.

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Considering the traditional socio-economic structure of Val decades ago this was not a tourist area of international renown, sentially on agriculture, relegated it to the high mountain areas, its progressive depopulation. The development of tourism has agriculture and providing a new type of urban planning, while in by the consistent presence of rural settlements - viles - with a large number of people residing outside the towns, where each nucleus brings together more than one family. Interesting is the observation of the vila as a type of community in which the sense of sociality and solidarity was particularly strengthened.

The vila also assumes a certain importance as a ‘social entity’ and not only as a set of isolated farmsteads, which is manifested in the common spaces, with the small central square where the fountain and the bread oven were located, which were used by all members of the small community living in the viles.

Therefore, it is possible to see the small vocal groups as the representation of a “social entity” within which the individual assumes importance as the creator of a collective balance.

Singing together means sharing the rules and roles established by the group. It may also happen that singing together functions as a kind of space-time machine that transports people to the mountain pastures, in the middle of haymaking, and reminds us of the frequent occasions in the past when people sang.

With the practice of singing “with several voices”, therefore, the roles and rules of an organisation lived, known, and put to tell its own story as an individual and as a group are also relived.

The repertoire of songs and style are therefore cared as a cultural heritage. In the villages of the upper valley the celebration of collective values and participation in devotional and festive occasions has become weaker, a fact that leaves its traces also in community singing. The insecurity in the intonation of the songs and the almost total lack of polivocality in collective singing are the most evident symptoms of the reduced involvement of the community in some countries, while in other countries the practice of community singing is still rich and “trained”.

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Interview with “Ganes” The singing trio “Ganes” take their inspiration from Ladin mythology. Sisters Elisabeth and Marlene Schuen and their cousin Maria Moling originate from La Val and are united by their language and rooted in their Ladin homeland. In the songs in their album “an cunta che” (“once upon a time”) which came out in 2016 the “Ganes” transport their listeners into the fairy-tale realm of the Fanes and spread the Ladin language in various European countries, especially Austria, Germany and Switzerland. In 2018 Maria Moling left the band and will be succeeded by Natalie Plöger as the new “Gana”.

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“Often, when someone asks where we come from, we use the expression ‘’Ladinia’’ to indicate our country of origin.

We feel part of those places where Ladin is spoken: Ladin is our mother tongue, the real country. Ladin is our small homeland, the deepest root of our culture, of our way of being and living.

We hear and dream in Ladin, it has always been so, and still is today.

Not coincidentally, it’s Ladin that gives the sound to our music”.

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Which path led you to found your musical entity?

As far as I can remember, we sang a lot together when we were

there, blushed together with the Croda Rossa. When Moltina

very young. Our mother made up songs for us and recorded

fell in love with the prince from the valley and moved there, she

them on tapes the way we sang, and that is how we spontane-

missed her mountains with the marmots terribly. When she was

ously came up with songs. Our father introduced us to different

unmasked in the castle, she blushed and took advantage of

instruments already at an early age and soon the whole family

the moment when everyone marvelled at the common “blush-

was making music together. Later we played classical music on

ing� of the Croda Rossa, turned into a marmot and ran back

the violin in the youth orchestra and decided to study music in

to her mountains. The prince searched for her for a long time

Salzburg and Munich. Despite this, we always returned more

and when he found her, he stayed there with her and Moltina

and more to singing and gained international experience on

became Queen of the Fanes. A few years ago, I understood

tour in different formations and musical styles. The polyphonic away from the mountains. At least I moved back home a bit and to us. On a long ship tour with the Austrian musician Hubert

it feels good. Much of these ancient sagas are still very much

von Goisern, the idea arose to found a band and record our own songs. Since 2010 we have been on tour with Ganes and

deal with them was very nice and important for us.

have just recorded the sixth album and produced it ourselves.

One of the most important places for the transmission .Why did you choose the name Ganes? In what charac-

of singing is for you the family. How, through collective performance, does your group represent itself?

We came up with the name Ganes spontaneously and sounds

Singing together is still very much cultivated in the Ladin villag-

good. Since we have been living and working in Germany and

es. It is part of our culture and has a great social component.

Austria for a long time, it made sense to choose a name that

In the family we always have been singing in several voices,

German speakers can pronounce well and at the same time

mostly without notes. Everybody sang his or her own harmony

establish a connection to our home country. The water that two sisters and a cousin, accompanied other musicians on tour dla Gana�. The Ladin legends, the Dolomite legends, have

together, this was our great strength. Our polyphonic singing

accompanied us since our childhood. We were very fascinated

was like an own instrument, a harmonic sounding body. This

by the Ganes and the Fanes sagas and while hiking we often dreamed ourselves into this wondrous archaic world. Ganes

the instrumentation has changed a little.

are water women who have a strong connection to nature.

Our history started near to the water and we also grew up very close to nature. However, we later have taken another path to get out into the world, because that was also very important to us. In some legends the Ganes are also described as singing creatures. In others they have turned their feet backwards, fortunately we cannot speak about that yet.

In what other aspects of your artistic career and personal life do Ladin legends appear?

Although we are very attached to our homeland, to the majestic landscape of the Dolomites, we have felt the great desire to go out into the world to discover something new. For a very long time I did not understand why so many people feel homesick. legends. One of the most beautiful legends is the one of Moltina, the introduction of the Fanes myth. Moltina was raised as an infant by an old gana high up in the mountains. She played with

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What does it mean to sing together and how do you estab-

Your music is characterized by different styles, how much

lish the hierarchical roles in the group? Singing together is

this association, modern and traditional, can make the

a strong bond. The different voices merge into a unique life, as

public aware of the interest and preservation of the Ladin heritage?

form a new fabric and sometimes new shades emerge from it.

We change the pitch more often to reassemble these colours as

do not make any distinction between serious music and light

often as possible also depending on whether we want to sound

music, between classical and pop, this thinking is outdated.

darker or lighter. This is exciting and challenges us.

We combine “old� instruments like dulcimer, natural trumpet, harp, string instruments with electronic sounds. We also use

Vocal polarity has always characterized the Alpine musical

the voices as instruments with different effects, to come back

tradition, what does it mean for you to spread the Ladin

to an archaic yodel, which shows itself in new harmony applica-

culture abroad?

tions. Only by keeping music alive and opening to new things,

We still think it is great how many people listen to our music

remaining curious, not stagnating, can you reach people in the

without understanding the Ladin language. We made the de-

long term. We feel the need to tell our own story, with the old

cision to sing in our mother tongue with our heart because it

and with the new. Just reproducing would mean stopping for

feels most natural. We took a risk with it, but it was worth it and gave us a unique selling point that has become so important to

in a new guise.

survive in today’s fast-moving music industry.

What does it mean for you to sing in a language that only The repertoire of your songs is treated as if it were a cul-

a few people understand?

tural heritage. What makes your music so unique?

Ladin is the language in which we think and dream. Singing should feel natural and easy, straight from the heart. This is only possible in your own mother tongue. People feel this and

new challenges. We produced and recorded the last album all

this is more important than understanding every single word.

by ourselves. Every time it is a new process and we are con-

We also always have something to say about it and never have

stantly learning. The symbiosis of the sound of our language

the feeling of not being understood on stage.

and our voices makes us quite unique. Authenticity is important so as not to become blurred. The aesthetics of the Ganes sound is unmistakable and this is our great strength.

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Les Ganes e i Salvans Ladin myths tell of “ganes” and “salvans” as the people of the woods long considered to be the original inhabitants of the Ladin valleys.

bregostans and bregostènes of Val di Fassa, as mythological

and the ganes “are now extinct, or at least we no longer hear population, he gives a precise description of both: “They are ordinary human make and covered with the skins of beasts.

They eat game, live in deep caves and caverns in the woods and often leave their homes to go down and visit the valley inhabitants, with whom they live togheter peacefully. They gladly and gratefully accept the gifts offered to them by charitable hands without bothering anyone with any kind of prayer, on the contrary, they prefer to suffer hunger rather than pray for anything. They come down from the cliffs and crags mainly in winter, because of the lack of clothes, they can no longer cope with the intensity of the cold. What really makes them pity is to warm themselves. They are, as has been said before, people who do not offend anyone, and take revenge only if they are provoked, but in that case they will reveal their gigantic strength.

It is also to be observed, that the ganes show themselves more than the salvans, that are more hairy and of a more evil nature than their wives. Therefore, they rarely come into contact woods, which they abandon a few times. The gangs, on the other hand, are gentler and more reliable. They show themselves outside their refuges and even assist people in their housework, in which they prove to be very skillful and able.

They are very afraid of thunder, and their predilection for sheep is remarkable. Many times they are very beautiful, so that often the young Collfoscani (people from Colfosco) fell in love with them.Alton then adds that “initially the salvans and the ganes were considered more and venerated by the Romans, as benign protectors of the trees of the woods. The superhuman strength of the salvans can therefore be compared to that of the fauns and wild monsters, while the ganes, for the dexterity and skill they show in their various jobs, are closer to the wise women of the Germans.

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Ganes de Fanes Test de Roland Verra

La portes dl ciastel fova daviertes, deguna verdies sul’auta muredes, degun strions stemiëusc sui jëufes, deguna sëites de mitel y spedes …

L rëni vivova tla pesc, sula montes vërdes de Fanes, ntlëuta stajovi adum cun la muntanioles liegres y l’eguia julova alauta a vardé si sëides …

Deguni ne univa adalerch tl chiet dla montes y scunesciù fova l lujer traditëur dl or juinsom l’Aurona che cunteniva la mort …

Dai crëps arjentei rundeniva la cianties dla Ganes, pundudes sula rives di lec stramudënc a ngiané i jëuni che les criva …

La portes dl ciastel fova daviertes, deguna verdies sul’auta muredes, degun strions stemiëusc sui jëufes, deguna sëites de mitel y spedes …

L’eguia alaut tl brum de n ciel massa dalonc, si cich strandlà, La portes dl ciastel fova daviertes, deguna verdies sul’auta muredes, degun strions stemiëusc sui jëufes, deguna sëites de mitel y spedes…

L’eguia alaut tl brum de n ciel massa dalonc, si cich strandlà,

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The birth of Fanes In the meantime, much more horrible times are unleashed in the Dolomites. The Great War, the tragedy of the war fought between the rocks and the glaciers of the high mountains, is struck with unprecedented violence on the world of the Pale Mountains, which in this apocalypse are almost in danger of losing their Ladin soul. Hugo de Rossi, called to arms already in 1914, immediately after the outbreak of the war, was seriously did not return from the front, and Wolff himself, who was spared until 1917 because of his poor condition, helplessly witnessed in the last year of the war in the Val di Fassa, almost completely evacuated to facilitate the war operations, he tried to save the oral traditions which were threatened with total collapse, but unfortunately he lost his notes in a tragic moment of confusion during the retreat of the front.

At the end of the war Wolff was on the threshold of forty integration, the South Tyrolean part of the Tyrolean county passes to Italy, alpine tourism is completely stopped, Wolff has lost almost all the contact with the German press, which before the war guaranteed him a fair amount of success as an author and journalist. However, between 1918 and 1919 he published a second expanded version of the Fanes legidently contains all the news collected during the war years.

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La morta vara Test de Roland Verra

Ulache n iede fova l rëni dla lijënda iel mé na morta vara danter montes scherpëntes L vërt di prei s’ à delegà ti lec, cësa d’Aganes spevies tl plu sot de l’eghes Les cunedësc i tëmps che vën, zënza che deguni ntënde l sonn de si paroles Sëura l ciastel desdrù jola i crutons cruvei cui spirc di morc dla vieres pierses Mé sota i crëps smarìi vif mò l record perdù dl popul muciadif dla muntanioles…

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The Fanes cycle The cycle begins with the legend of the Aurona and continues with the story of the Silver Lake, set in the Val di Fassa, whose mysterious treasures come, according to tradition, from the king of the Fanes, greedy for treasures, who has come to the shores of the mysterious silver lake just to get his hands on the lake is not revealed to the king, but only to his daughter, the young Princess Dolasíla, who receives as a gift the infallible silver arrows, made from the reeds of the lake, as well as the inviolable armour of white ermine fur. The third magical gift gives the maiden the silver bow that will be an invincible weapon in the hands of the future warrior. In Dolasíla, however, a prophecy is also made: she will be a great warrior and her glory will be sung to the farthest lands, but her divine powers will only last until her wedding day. Losing the virginal state, she’ll lose her warrior strength.

In the third story, Dolasíla is presented now fully armed, the rise of the kingdom can begin. The maiden, however, is of a sweet nature, and although she wins battle after battle thanks to her deadly arrows, she has no love for the craft of war, to which she is forced by her father, the king. With a heavy heart Dolasíla looks at the dead warriors that she killed and in the

“Of candid splendour will be its armor, but if the white gown like the eternal snows of the Marmolada will get dark, like the black rocks of the Padón, then the gloom will be near”.

night she is troubled by black nightmares that warn her not to abuse the magic weapons she received as a gift. One day she is seriously wounded by an enemy arrow capable of violating her white armour. That arrow is endowed with dark forces, say the wise men of Fanes, and to protect the princess from enchantments the armor would not be enough. Against the evil powers only a special shield, forged of silver by the Saváns of Latemar can protect the princess. The king immediately orders the creation of the shield, but when the masters take it to the court of Fanes, no one is able to raise it, till a foreign warrior shows up proving not only to be able to raise the shield, but to hold it effortlessly. He offers himself as the princess’ squire, and he will become Dolasíla’s inseparable companion: his name is Ey de Net, Eye of the Night. Now, the king’s boundless eagerness knows no more limits and the unequalled race from victory to victory of the kingdom of the fanes is narreted. Nothing and no one succeeds in opposing Dolasíla, protected by the shield of Ey de Net, a warrior of reckless courage. At a certain point, however, Dolasíla, in love with her comrade-in-arms, intends to marry him and, as predicted by the prophecy, she will have to withdraw from the war .

54

however, is furious and leaves no stone unturned to prevent his daughter from getting married. When he realizes that he will have to surrender to Dolasíla’s will, he begins to weave a wicked plot. He lacks a single undertaking to become the richest king in the world: the conquest of the Aurona’s treasures. He thinks it is not Dolasíla’s arrows, but thousands of slaves forced to shovel debris in search of the golden door sealed by the rocks of the Padón. And so the King of Fanes offers in great secret to the enemy peoples his kingdom, in exchange for many arms at his service. His duty will be to keep tDolasìla and her squire No one is aware of the wicked pact made between the traitor king and Fanes’ enemies, and everyone is appalled when the king order Ey de Net to leave the court immediately, without even saying goodbye to Dolasíla. The fate of the kingdom is sealed. Punctually comes the declaration of war by the enemy jured king has secretly left the palace, to wait on the Lagazuoi for things to evolve, the queen is desperate, Ey de Net, exiled, is not reachable, only Dolasíla, tormented by tragic presages,

of her own magic arrows stolen by the enemy. After the defeat of Dolasíla, the battle is lost, the warriors of Fanes have been defeated, the kingdom is invaded and destroyed. Only a few survived, including the queen, rescued by taking refuge in the caves of the Croda Rossa meanwhile the perjured king was waiting on Lagazuoi for the allies, that after taking over the kingdom, they had to keep the wicked pact and provide him imprisons the king forever in the rocks of Lagazuoi, where you can see until today “el fauzo rego”, the false king with the beard and crown. And in perennial memory, the legend says, the pass of Falzárego would have taken this name.

55

Interview to Roland Verra is the collaboration of three Ladin artists: Susy Rottonara (co-writer of the screenplay, author of the soundtrack, singer - soprano soloist and actress), Roland Verra (co-author and director) and Hans Peter on the events of the Kingdom of Fanes, certainly the most extenreceived several international awards and recognitions.

56

era “before the history�.

The idea had already matured a long time ago, due to my speWhat means did you use to evoke as faithfully as possible the legendary and supernatural atmosphere? with the producer Hans Peter Karbon and myself.

The connection between landscape, images and scenes from the mythical story is certainly an important means of creating a

legendary materials of the Dolomite Ladin tradition, the

mysterious environments such as caves, wild forests or ruined

Kingdom of Fanes. Why among all the legends was this

-

the one chosen?

ronments. A focused use of lights and some interventions in

The choice of the Fanes legend was dictated by its central

the post-production were further means used for this purpose.

importance among the Ladin myths, making it a kind of epic of

In writing the screenplay, which key to the legend do you

the Ladin people ante litteram.

I wanted to maintain, as far as possible, a faithful adherence to During and after the realization what were the unforeseen

the ancient core of the legend. In addition to this you can also

events that struck you the most?

deduce the central reason for the curse of greed and thirst for

Numerous unexpected events marked the realisation of the

power especially with reference to the King of Fanes.

one another and the constantly changing climate in the high

The collaboration between you and Susy Rottonara in the

mountains.

realization of the soundtrack sees as protagonist a union

What were the obstacles encountered in the implementation ?

to achieve such a high level result? What inspired you to write the lyrics?

forced us to make considerable savings in the making of the

I think it was the meeting of similar sensibilities in the union

were largely overcome.

least I think. The inspiration in the writing of the lyrics comes both from Wolff and from the interpretation of the Ladin Angel Morlang, as well as from the personal poetic creation.

variants, since each protagonist used his or her own Ladin

Do you think that a national diffusion for the vision of the

est strengths.

a tourist level?

A wider diffusion can certainly encourage a greater interest in

The Dolomites, Unesco World Heritage Site since 2009,

the Ladin reality and its original culture. The tourist implications

-

should not be underestimated, but they should not prevail over

hance the landscapes?

the cultural ones.

The Dolomites with their unique landscapes are one of the How is it possible for you to keep the interest in Ladin scenes: in some of them they are even decisive in creating legendary atmospheres; for example in the scenery of the Fanes

it to those belonging to other realities?

In order to keep the interest of the younger generations alive, it is necessary to encourage their free creativity in this regard and

How did you deal with the anachronistic problem of the

not to encase Ladin myths in an immutable canon. Compared

setting?

to other cultures it is necessary to emphasize the value and

Great care had to be taken in the choice of both costumes and

originality of these myths and not to make them decline to the

settings so as not to run into anachronistic medievalism. In

folkloristic or kitsch level of mass products.

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Primordial legend From a typological point of view, the legend has a simple aetiological structure that explains the striking red colour of the great mountain, a surprising phenomenon in the middle of the Pale Mountains.

The tradition undoubtedly comes from the lands of Ampezzo, as can easily be seen from the presence of the anguana, the water name and functions in every valley: in Fassa they are called vivane, in Val Gardena they are called gane, while in Cortina d’Ampezzo they are called anguane, to turn towards the east, passing through Friuli, into aganis.

The most shocking news concerns the mysterious origin of the kingdom, founded by an orphan girl adopted by an anguana.

Montina was raised with marmots on the vast prairies between the Croda Rossa and the Fanes alp. The child not only made a close alliance with the marmots but also she was able to take their appearance. She created a strong bond with the crode of the great mountain where they lived and when she grow up she married the Prince of Landro. One day she was offended because of her unknown origin, but here an unprecgirl: the great mountain on the edge of Val di Landro changed the colour of the rocks, originally pale like all the mountains of the Dolomites and became red, taking on a majestic appearance. In the general confusion caused by the miracle, Moltina ran away from the court and returned on her mountain, since prince, determined to leave his father’s court for love of his the Fanes, protected by marmots and based on their sacred secret alliance, they founded the most powerful and famous kingdom in all the lands of the Pale Mountains.

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Moltina, the maiden-marmot, is not ashamed because she does not belong to the courtly world of the medieval period, but to the much more august lineage of the gods, whose roots are born from the mythological thought of remote civilizations. Moltina has made a secret pact with divine powers, which are under the teriomorphic aspect of marmots. They will be the guardian gods of the nascent Kingdom of the Fanes, offering protection and magical help, keeping alive the relationship between the living and the Underworld, and they will guard the memory when the kingdom will sink into the oblivion, until the arrival of the that bond imposes on Moltina a strict commandment.

The archaic structure of the relationship between mortals taboo, in order to protect the human being from the deadly power of the numinous sphere, because no one can come into direct contact with the divine without adequate protection, he

balance between earth and heaven, the consequences for the mortal disgraced are lethal. The human being cannot reveal divine secrets, the penalty is the immediate loss of numinous grace.

Wolff is certainly a careful lover of the subject, but he is not a consummate scholar of mythological structures. He did not grasp the importance of the bond between the girl and the marmots, because it is not a simple association, but a totemic structure that marked the fate of the future Kingdom of Fanes, with Moltina as ancestor. Totemic structures belong to the thought of archaic cultures, to the world of peoples on the threshold of protohistory, when hunting slowly gave way to breeding still primitive forms of agriculture. The whole Eurasian area knew sacred systems based on totemic imaginations. Moltina is in the girl: it lights up red, the color of the bride destined for the sacred wedding. Having revealed her numinous nature, the divinity cannot continue to dwell alongside mortal beings and so Moltina takes on her teriomorphic appearance, transforms into a marmot and retires to the mountain.The colour red belongs to the full moon, symbol of the goddess in her appearance as bride and future mother, but it is only one side of the numinous horizon on which the sacred mythological system of Fanes’ tales is projected. This aspect, linked to the story of the origins, then gives way to the appearance of the white virgin, symbol of the rising moon, whose function is the government, the protection of the earth and the maintenance of the sacred order.

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among various other legends included in the second volume of Wolff’s collection, still without further implications of the future cycle dedicated to the myth of Fanes. Wolff, however was convinced that he had all the elements he needed for the story, and began to assemble patiently, individual pieces from various lines of tradition eventhough they were very different from each other. On the contrary, several times the author expresses his itself, of only wanting to give back to the fragmentary tradition the epic completeness that it must have had originally, when Ladin poetry was at the height of his creativity. In 1929 the reconstruction work was completed, and Wolff published the in 1932 the Italian translation was published, and since then the stories of the Kingdom of the Fanes are considered an integral part of the legends of The Pale Mountains. There is no doubt that the “painting” presented by Wolff certainly does not correspond to a hypothetical poem to which the author refers in the extensive introductory note commenting on the Fanes’ tales included in 1941 in the collection “Dolomitensagen”.

“In the thirteenth century, Ladin poetry bears its most beautiful fruits, since new motifs elaborated in the context of courtly and chivalrous literature experience of the Crusades are mixed with ancient traditions from the Rhaetian era...”.

Apart from the fact that the Ladin community of the Dolomites did not develop any written tradition until the early nineteenth century, not to mention remarkable compositions of beautiful or the Ladin minority of Friuli, which have documents dating can boast of having given Europe evidence of medieval popoem composed of thirteen parts was born, whose entire acting seems to have required a whole day in the middle of summer...”.

We are on the scale of the Carme of the Nibelungen, if not of Wagnerian tetralogy, and the conjecture that the legends of Fanes were the result of a cross between ancient myths and motifs dating back to medieval times perfectly follows the theories formulated about the origin of Germanic heroic poetry.

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Nosc amor Test de Roland Verra

à vivù na sëula sajon dla prima ansciuda, canche la nëif delëiga plan y mé spéresc cuca sù ciofs bunerives tló y iló, ancontra al surëdl lëis che sciauda puech…

Nosc amor mei madurì, fat de sëmiesc y paroles lesieres che desfantea riesc ala lum dl di y contra la ridà di granc che fej damat cun nosc destin, bele senià tla lijënda…

Nosc amor perdù per for.

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Dolasíla After Moltina, the founder, follows Dolasíla, the white-wrapped archer, the silver scythe of the rising moon in her hand, whose shape alludes both to the horns of the heavenly ox at the service of the Lady of the cosmic order and to the cornucopia from which all good springs for the maintenance of the community.

on Nordic mythology, as a warrior and Valkyrie, corresponds instead according to the Mediterranean matrix of the Mater Magna to the structure of sidereal Artemis: she appears under the clothes of the huntress, because she protects the fertility of wild nature, and being a healing deity, both life and death are in her hands. In the function of the Eyleithyiacorre in aid of women giving birth, but against the impious she hurls her infallible arrows, sowing terror and death. The thin bow of the ing of nature, is not an instrument of war, as are the arrows of Dolasíla, made from silver canes grown on the shore of a fairy the Great Goddesses of ancient civilizations, because life was born from the muddy waters of the great rivers of Mesopotamia, of which the moon gods are the dispensers. It is always an aspect of the same goddess to complete the cycle and it is the black star of the new moon that welcomes the dead souls in the darkness of the Underworld, Persephone during the winter period, when the plant cycle is stopped. It is Dolasíla herself, the candid white virgin, who transforms herself into the dark Fanes’ tales, however, is probably the Tsicuta, the sorceress who resides in the dark underground caverns of the Megón de megóies, among the dark spires of the Padón, where the mysterious Aurona, the land of gold and light, the Hades of Ladin tradition, has sunk. Haughty and wicked, it appears announced by the blossoming of red poppies that give oblivion, to melt into mute ashes after the funeral rite, when the Lady of Darkness, under the teriomorphic appearance of the crow, leads souls to the Afterlife. The three sacred colors, white, red and black, correspond to the three phases of the moon, a measure of time and destiny, the pivot of the cult of the Great Goddess, probably the oldest substratum of mythological thought. The myth of Fanes is therefore, after all, nothing but the Ladin variant of that thought, that is, of the cycle of eternal return, of the sacred rhythm of rising and perishing, living and dying, becoming and vanishing.

It is the red tale of the origins and the black song of the fall.

62

Wolff was informed, certainly by a local informer of Ampezzo

of the goddess Rheitia, the most venerated and widespread deity among the pre-Roman Alpine peoples, whose functions

Dolasíla in Doresíla) of the key role of the warrior in the context

certainly included the appearance of the healing deity, pro-

of the lost kingdom of Fanes. The etymology of the name is

tector of the saving waters and advocate of primeval fertility.

somewhat uncertain, but it seems to be composed of two etyis not an instrument of war, the same as the silver arrows, but it pronounces an oracular prophecy that will determine the mythical ruler of the valley, and also appears in geographical names, for example Mount Dolada. The second root perhaps

is dressed, is made, according to tradition, from a magic fur of ermine, ancient symbol of virgin purity and sacred sovereign

origin, with the meaning of gushing water, spring, small water-

majesty. It could also perhaps be a white marmot fur, in honour

fall. Certainly it is, instead, that Wolff has totally misunderstood given their habit of retreating into underground dens, are to focused on Nordic mythology, as a kind of Valkyrie, of which

be considered ktonian animals, meaning in close contact with the gods of the Underworld. Inviolable is the shining dress, to

example. The Valkyries of the Nordic tradition are the daugh-

indicate the powerful sacred protection given by the goddess to

ters of Odin, god of war and lord of the runes. The Valkyries,

her lands, whose boundaries will be inviolable, until the archer

imagined as beautiful maidens protected by armor and armed

holds in her hand a bundle of arrows one of the symbols of the

with long lances, do not participate directly in the battle. Fierce

Great Goddesses of ancient civilizations. Once the rite of con-

and unapproachable, they reveal themselves only to the warrior

secration has been completed, the rayéta, the magical stone

chosen and destined to succumb according to the fate thrown

with a thousand remote meanings, will now shine on the virgin’s head, delivered to Dolasíla according to tradition by Ey de Net,

assuming the teriomorphic appearance of wild swans, in the

the predestined bridegroom. Dolasíla will have to reign for a

presence of Odin. The structure of the Valkyrie is therefore,

well-established period, keeping the cosmic order in perfect

comparable to the image of the Mediterranean sirens, originally

balance, so that the glory of the kingdom of Fanes will never

numinous presences in the shape of birds of prey, equipped with

-

frightening claws with which to tear the victims to pieces, minor

ister premonitory signs announce the beginning of the sunset.

spirits in the wake of Persephone, the lady of the Underworld.

Dolasíla is troubled, but it seems that she does not understand

Questionable and misleading readings of Nordic mythology

the messages sent by the gods. What will have happened?

have during the nineteenth century, transformed the Valkyries

Why can’t the virgin understand the voice of the gods? In the

into battalion amazons, deadly symbols of the presumed war-

language of myth, the misunderstanding of the oracle is the

time superiority of the ancient Germanic tribes.

Wolff at his time was not completely detached from the ideology

because a very grave sacrilege has been committed. At this

of Pan-Germanism: for him, therefore, the warrior nature of the

point, either the memory of the crucial event that could have

Ladin heroine was taken for granted, without even realizing that

explained, in a coherent mythological key, the obscure spell has

the descent from the peaceful lineage of marmots should be

been lost, or the traditions, no longer understood, have changed

quite incompatible with the role of warrior. In reality, the Wolff

into different variants, even very distant from each other

had some doubts: in fact, the princess was not born a warrior, but was destined to this role by mysterious emissaries, and then forced, against her will, to continue the job of war by her father, the wicked traitorous king, blinded by the eagerness for reveals, instead, many other functions, coming not from Nordic mythology, but from the Mediterranean tradition. Dolasíla, surrounded by an inviolable armour of white fur, holding the silver bow from which the infallible arrows shoot, is none other than the lunar virgin, a kind of Ladin Artemis, perhaps a local variant

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Interview to Susy Rottonara Susy Rottonara is a musical artist, cultural ambassador and lecturer. Winner of numerous international awards as a musician -soprano, pianist and author of experimental music- she is the author of multimedia projects to realize the dream of a better world through music and art and to enhance the cultural and artistic heritage in an innovative way. She is known as Dolasila, the protagonist of a famous Ladin legend of the Dolomites which she plays in numerous promotion of the indigenous culture of the Dolomites.

values did he or she transmit to you?

My parents have been reading and telling me Ladin legends since I was a child, and they also passed on their passion for the mountains to me. They taught me respect for the environment and the wild nature together with a love for the culture, the language and the native traditions associated with them. In addition, I have always been surrounded by many of my father’s works of art depicting characters from Ladin legends, through which I have been conveyed the importance of artistic creation to express a deep bond with the culture of the area.

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What fascinated you the most about the world of Ladin

You converted a personal cultural passion into an international success with your album “Dreaming of Fanes�, participating in the 53rd Grammy Awards. Can you reveal

-

the secret of this important achievement?

dial elements of nature. They inspired me deeply in my global

I worked on the recording of the album with the intention of

formation through deep emotions experienced in contemplating

transmitting my passion for the world of Ladin legends to an

the landscapes of the mountains and following itineraries in the

international audience. On that occasion the combination of

places where legends took place.

natural sounds, including the voice and electronic sounds closer to a crossover production turned out to be effective.

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perience such as yours affected the achievement of your

Dolasila has always been your source of inspiration. How

success?

did you manage to constantly cooperate with her in all

I believe it is what distinguishes me most and the fundamental

aspects of your personal journey?

requirement for the development of all my artistic and cultural activities.

of a little girl in the clothes of a princess in constant symbio-

Your music is the result of important studies and predominantly of classical orientation. You have succeeded in a completely original innovation: creating a combination of

can be compared to the protagonists of the opera, a victim of

classical music and Ladin legends with a modern reinter-

the plots of the power but determined to live her own feelings

pretation. How much for you can this association make

and assume responsibility for the decisions taken. In my most

the public aware of the interest and preservation of the

recent productions I propose the combination of Dolasila with

Ladin heritage?

In regarding to this, I believe it is essential to address to the public through innovative means, both to contribute to the preservation of the Ladin cultural heritage and to arouse interest in content characterized by classical themes and therefore

are women characterized by a strong, independent and in

always current, such as those of Ladin legends. I also consider

many ways modern soul. How much do you relate to these

it important to maintain the Ladin as the original language of

character aspects?

the content.

In the female characters of the legend of the Kingdom of Fanes I recognize different functions, including the function of preserv-

How did you manage to bring such a varied audience clos-

ing the balance with nature and the link with the underworld and

er to your musical art?

My work focuses on the creation of emotions through a mul-

in which I recognize functions attributed to women both in the

timedia artistic language that actively involves the public. I

ancient tradition and in the current context. Personally, I also

believe it is fundamental to be able to convey the enthusiasm

associate the character aspects with the different elements that characterize the natural environment of the mountain.

Singing, music and theatrical performance are the three

Legends are the oldest heritage of Ladin culture, how do

elements that contribute to the formation of your artistic

you keep this interest alive and make them relevant in a

production, in which of these talents do you feel that you

modern society?

Ladin legends are inextricably linked to the mountains to which

Singing is the voice of the soul and undoubtedly the primary

they belong. My intention is to present them as the soul of the

nucleus through which I concretize the musical and artistic idea,

mountains and to arouse deep emotions by revealing the topi-

which I subsequently develop on a multimedia level.

cality of their contents in an artistic way and drawing the public’s attention to their cultural value through the deep meaning of the themes that characterize them.

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Cedits Caption Text Faculty of Design and Art

Courier New

Course: Project Visual Communication

Title Text

Course title: Order & Eccentricity

Helvetica Medium

Summer Semester 2020 Subtitle Text Design by:

Helvetica regular

Lijendes aldidancuei

Layout Grid: 6 Column Grid

Supervision: Module proportion: Graphic Design: Prof. a.c. Emilio Grazzi

1.421 : 1

Theories and languages of visual communication: Prof.

Emanuela De Cecco 63 characters including spaces Photography: Valdemaras p.7 Joam Oger p.9

Saddle stitch binding

Johnny Chen p.9 Samuel Clara p.11

Printed:

Wilhelm Gunkel p.12 Leslie Cross p.14 Samuel Clara p.20 Noemi Clara p.22 Wilhelm Gunkel p.31 Cristoph Jorda pp. 46,49 Roland Verra p.56 Susy Rottonara pp.52,61,64 Paper:

Format: 200 x 265 mm Fonts | Font Sizes & Leading: Helvetica regular

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