Legends and fairy tales from Western Dolomites

Introduction

In the Sella Group and in Marmolada Massif are located many legends... From the left you can see: Piz Boè (3152m), Sass Pordoi (2950m), Piz Ciavàzes (2831m), Punta Penìa (3342m), Gran Vernèl (3205m), Cima Uomo (3003m), Collac' (2713m)

Dolomites aren’t only a wonderful range of mountains: they are also an interesting land of legends, where the mediterranean culture meets nordic... Here ancient Romans and Raetian populations mixed themselves giving life to an unique culture: the Ladins, a people who inhabited the most of central-eastern Alps, but which remained only in few lonely valley after the germanic invasions dued to the Roman empire fall. This ancient culure remained isolated and keeps until last century some ancient legends and traditions that get lost to the night of the times...

It’s thanks to the work of Karl Felix Wolff , an anthropologist from Bozen/Bolzano, which in the 20ies of 20th century collected this fairy tales from old people of Dolomites, before they were forgotten forever!

In this album you can see pictures that show some locations of Val di Fassa’s ancient legends. In the caption I made a little summary of the tale. The beautiness of the places make understand why ancient Ladins found a kind of magic in these mountains...

External Links

A page from the Innsbruck University website about Karl Felix Wolff, the most important studious of Dolomites Legends (in German)

Some legends and fairy tales from Trentino-Alto Adige Dolomites (in Italian)

Some legends from Dolomites (in English)

Images

View Legends and fairy tales from Western Dolomites Image Gallery - 18 Images