The Walser hamlet of Bürstegg above Lech, with the Biberkopf (2600m) in the background

This poetically situated all-year inhabited alpine hamlet on 1718 meters height was built about 300 years ago by the Walser, a migrating people from the German-speaking part of what is nowadays the Swiss canton of Wallis (Valais). Less than a century ago, there were more buildings and many more people living up here - up to 15 families before the times of "mountain flight" (Bergflucht) began. There used to be a school for the children as well. To this day, the direct descendants of these people live there as well as in many other places in the Austrian Vorarlberg, and while otherwise the alemannic German dialect is becoming more and more diluted in Vorarlberg, the Walser have preserved their purely alemannic dialect (what most people refer to as "Swiss German") over the centuries.