Ladins. The cheerful people of the Ladins An excerpt characterizing the Ladins

Several peoples are united under the name “Romans”. These are the Romanshis, Ladins and Friuls. In terms of language and culture, all three Romansh peoples are close to each other, but there is no common written language.

The Rumanshis and part of the Ladins live in Switzerland^ in the valley of the Inn River in the canton of Graubünden (about them, see the chapter “Peoples of Switzerland,” p. 305).

In Italy, the Ladins (14 thousand people) inhabit several valleys of the Dolomites around the Sella massif (Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige). They are gradually assimilated by the surrounding Italian and Tyrolean populations. Nowadays, only the areas located along the valleys of the Gadera, Gardena, Avisio, Boite rivers and in the upper valley of the Cordevole river remain purely Ladin, but a few decades ago the Ladins also retained their dialect in the Sol and Non valleys along the Noce river, in the upper valley of the river Piave and in some other areas. The vast majority of Italian Ladins are bilingual and speak their language only at home. Their dialect has several dialects.

The ancient Alpine tribes of the Rets are considered the ancestors of the Italian Ladins. Based on the limited evidence about this people from ancient authors, as well as from epigraphic materials, many scientists came to the conclusion that the language of the Rhets was close to Etruscan. The Rhaetian tribes occupied several isolated Alpine valleys. The Rhaeta were a warlike and freedom-loving people and stubbornly resisted Roman expansion. Rome managed to subjugate them only in 15 BC. e., after which the province of Raetia was founded here, but the rets for a long time retained their language and customs. Romanization of the areas inhabited by the Rets occurred only in the 5th century. n. e.

At the end of the 5th century. Raetia was conquered by the Ostrogoths, and in the 6th century by the Bavarians and Lombards. The Germanization of the area continued in subsequent centuries, but the population still retained many Rhaetian elements in their language. In the 16th century Rhaetian writing was created.

The Ladins have preserved their fairy tales and sagas to this day, the characters of which are the ancient rets.

Most Italian Ladins live in rural areas.

Mountain Ladins are mainly engaged in grazing livestock. Agriculture is less developed. A significant role in the economy of the population is played by trades related to serving tourists who are attracted by the beauty of the Dolomites: many Ladins work as Alpine guides, keep small hotels, rent out rooms to tourists, etc.

The artistic processing of wood has centuries-old traditions. Carvers from the Gardena River Valley use alpine chembro pine for their work, the trunks of which reach a height of 15 m. Since the Middle Ages, large sculptures have been made from them, most often statues of saints, small figurines and toys in the form of human figures and animals.

The Ladins have a common variant of the Alpine house, which consists of a stone residential building and a log building closely attached to it for household needs. A common roof was erected over them.

The most numerous Romansh people are the Friuls (about 400 thousand people in 1960). They live in northeastern Italy in the province of Udine (region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia). This province covers the area between the River Livenza and the upper reaches of the Piave River in the west, the Carnic and northwestern part of the Julian Alps in the north, the eastern parts of the Isonzo River basin in the east and the Adriatic Sea in the south.

The ethnic history of the Friuls is complex. The first inhabitants of their region mentioned in history were the Euganaean tribes, whose ethnicity is unclear; they have probably lived here since the Neolithic era. One of the cultures is associated with this people Bronze Age, known as the Casteller culture. Castellers are fortified sites, most often located on hilltops. The Euganei surrounded their settlements with two or three stone walls, dry-built from erratic stones. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. Veneti appeared on the northern shore of the Adriatic Sea, whose language was close to the Illyrians. They conquered and assimilated some of the Euganeans. Another part of this people was driven out by the Veneti from the Friulian plain to the Alps, where they mixed with the Rhaetian tribes. At the beginning of the 4th century. BC e. to the territory modern area Friuli was invaded by the Celtic Carn tribe. They crossed the Alps in several waves and pushed the Veneti to the sea. In 183 BC. e. The Romans founded Aquileia here, which later became not only their military stronghold, but also the center of Roman culture. By the 1st century BC e. this entire area was conquered by the Romans. The Romanization of its population (IV-V centuries AD) was an important milestone in the formation of the Friuls.

IN early middle ages the Friuli region was subject to invasions by Germanic and other tribes (Visigoths, Huns, Ostrogoths, Lombards), in the 7th-8th centuries. The Slavs penetrated here and partially mixed with the Friuli. Subsequently, especially in modern times, the Friuls were subjected to strong Italian influence. Now they have almost none national literature in your own language. The literary and school language is Italian.

By type of economy, the Friuli are close to the Italians of the neighboring regions of Northern Italy. Cattle are raised both in the mountains and on the plains; waste from milk processing and corn are used to raise pigs. But the main occupations of the Friuls on the plains are agriculture (wheat, corn, vegetables, flax, hemp), as well as viticulture, horticulture and sericulture.

Peasant women themselves process flax and sheep's wool. Stockings, sweaters and hats are knitted from the wool. Main severity peasant labor falls on the shoulders of women. Many men go to work in other parts of Italy or abroad - in construction and Men at work stonemasons, masons.

The types of development of the estate and dwellings of the Friuls are quite diverse. Most ancient type represented by the so-called casoni . These are huts made of straw and marsh reeds. In plan they form a rectangle measuring 3 X 4 square meters. m. Sometimes there are round caskets. Their walls, woven from reeds and reeds, reach a height of 2 m. The roof is hipped and very steep. Smoke comes out through a hole in the roof or through a door. There are no windows in the zones. Nowadays, the cazons serve as the home of the fishermen of the Grado Lagoon, where they live for a significant part of the year and store their fishing equipment all year round.

In some lowland areas of Friuli, a type of estate development reminiscent of corte other regions of Italy (see page 560). The courtyard is usually connected to the street by a long closed corridor passing through one of the buildings. Due to frequent rains, the threshing floor is not placed in the middle of the yard (as, for example, in Central Italy), but in a special enclosed room. One of the walls of the fence is, as a rule, common to two neighboring courtyards.

In some mountainous and foothill areas of the region (Carnic Alps), the so-called Carnic house is common ( casa carnica ). This is one of the options for an Alpine house, which, however, has a number of features. This house (usually two or three storeys) has extensive galleries and arched porticoes, making it similar to the town houses of some northern regions of Italy. The staircase is often internal. Adjacent to one of the kitchen walls is a special extension in which the fireplace is located. From the kitchen you enter the annex through a wide opening. The fire is lit on a low stone platform in the middle of this room. There are high benches along three walls. A huge exhaust hood (pair) is built into the ceiling above the fireplace. Its frame is a wire lattice on which gypsum plaster is layered. In winter, the families of Friulian peasants spend most of the day in these hearth-like outbuildings. Gatherings are held here, accompanied by singing. folk songs etc. The word “pare” became a symbol of the traditional life of the Friuls. There is even a magazine published in Friuli called “Sot la pare” (“Under the Chimney”).

An integral part of Friulian cuisine is the so-called hearth tagan. It is a U-shaped iron frame, in the middle of the upper bar of which a thick chain ending with a hook is attached. A copper pot is hung on it to prepare polenta. Near the hearth, on the wall shelves, the rest of the kitchen utensils are placed - bronze vessels of various capacities, ceramic dishes, etc. A very archaic stone vessel for storing ghee, called piere da ont . In the past, such vessels were widely used in many alpine regions of Italy, as well as in the Swiss canton of Ticino, which borders it.

Before late XIX V. Friulian dwellings retained a traditional interior. In the middle of the dining room there was usually a dining table, often decorated with fine carvings, and around it elegant chairs made of walnut. An indispensable accessory to the dining room was a large chest for storing grain and beans, the shape and carving motifs of which varied from location to location, and a buffet. The dining rooms of wealthy Friuls had a desk and a wall clock with wooden wheels. In the bedroom there was a wide wooden bed, decorated with carvings or intarsia. The mattress was usually stuffed with corncob wrappers. It was customary to decorate pillowcases and sheets with cutwork embroidery and red threads. A baby rocking cradle was placed next to the bed. In the bedroom there was a wedding chest decorated with carvings.

The ornamental motifs of the carvings decorating Friulian furniture had much in common with both the carvings of Carinthia and Tyrol, and with the carvings of the Venetian regions. Nowadays, only the traditional furnishings of a Friulian home remain individual elements, such as buffet, wedding stall, wooden beds. The rest of the furniture was replaced with modern furniture, generally accepted in Italy.

Like the inhabitants of other regions of Italy, the Friuli eat mainly plant foods. It is distinguished by great variety and careful preparation. There are also dishes unknown in other areas, in particular from turnips. A typical Friul dish is brovade : turnips soaked in grape pomace are rubbed on a special grater, after which they turn into threads similar to thin pasta. Soup is made from turnips fermented in grape marc. A favorite dish is dumplings stuffed with cottage cheese and raisins and seasoned with cow butter.

The Friuls stopped wearing the traditional festive costume already at the beginning of our century.

Currently, in Friulian villages there is only an everyday women's costume, consisting of a coarse linen shirt ( camicia ), corsage ( corpetto ) And a long, wide skirt, sewn so that it can be rolled up and tied in a knot while working. Friulians continue to wear a headscarf and local traditional shoes. Even old people do not wear men's traditional everyday clothes. For footwear, the most typical are wooden toe shoes, hollowed out of maple wood. ( dalminis ). In the Friulian mountain villages, as in other mountainous regions of Italy, France and Switzerland, the soles of such boots have 6-9 steel spikes so that they do not slip on the stones.

The peculiarities of the mountainous areas influenced the originality of many Friulian tools and utensils, which are made so that they remain hands free when carrying them. For example, there are several types of back stretchers for hay and other weights, wooden back vessels for milk, etc.

Friuli is rich in forests, and therefore peasants make many household items and tools from wood (barrels, mortars, buckets, rolling pins, flax mills). Craftsmen use reeds and wood to make baskets, furniture, and carts used to transport hay from the mountains in winter; carts with two self-tipping baskets and four-wheeled hand carts, usually pulled by several women.

Friul folk art is represented mainly by artistic woodworking. The richest collections of Friulian utensils, household items and works folk art collected in ethnographic museums in the cities of Udine and Tolmezzo.

From family rituals The best preserved wedding rituals are in many ways similar to Italian ones.

In some Friulian villages, girls planning to get married tell fortunes on Christmas night to find out who their groom will be. It is a common belief that the girl who gets up before everyone else in the house on Christmas Day and combs her hair at dawn will get married that year. Friuls certainly commit solemn ceremony transporting the dowry from the bride's house to the groom's house with strict adherence to the established rules: the transfer always takes place two days before the wedding, in the evening; on the plain, the chest is loaded onto a cart drawn by oxen and driven by the groom's younger brother or younger cousin. In the mountains, dowries are carried in baskets. At the moment the cart leaves, the bride breaks the rod and throws its fragments over her shoulder in order to destroy in this way any witchcraft that could bewitch her. After the arrival of the dowry, a marriage bed is laid out for the groom, on which, on the eve of the wedding, he must sleep in the company of his closest friend.

In some places, during a wedding, the groom kneels on the edge of the bride’s skirt, thereby recognizing her power over herself; the bride tries to put on wedding ring without the help of the groom, in order to emphasize her independence from the will of her future husband. In Carnia, upon leaving the church after the wedding, the groom pays a “ransom” to the youth of the village where the bride is from.

Many Friul ceremonies are accompanied by the performance of traditional songs - villots.

According to the official religion, Friuls are Catholics. But among the peasants, folk beliefs are very stable, reflected in legends and traditions dating back to pre-Christian times.

They never had their own state - the border of their world is the rocky Alps. The Ladins are protected from foreign influence by the language barrier, and from everything else by their women.

Hero
Diego Clara

Journalist, TV presenter. Born in 1971 in the village of Marebbe (autonomous province of Bolzano - South Tyrol). From 1985 to 1990 he studied to become an accountant at the Brunico Commercial Technical Institute. From 1991 to 1999 he studied economics at the Leopold-Franz University Innsbruck, where he received his doctorate. After graduating from university, he returned to his native village. He hosts original programs about sports, tourism and economics on public television in Italy. Married, two children. Speaks Ladin, Italian, German and French.

Native people
Ladins

The Romansh people, numbering about 35,000 people, live in northeast Italy, mainly in the province of Bolzano - South Tyrol (about 20,000 people), as well as in Trento and Belluno. They speak the Ladin language, which arose as a result of the transformation of folk Latin under the influence of Rhaetian (the Romans conquered the Dolomites region - Raetia - in 15 BC). The main occupations of the Ladins are still cattle breeding, agriculture, wood carving and lace weaving.

We are a small people. Only 18 villages have survived, scattered in the Alps tens of kilometers apart. And almost every village has its own dialect. I speak Mareo. In the Alta Badia valley they speak the Badiot dialect, in Val di Fassa they speak Fasciana. But all this is one language - Ladin. Despite historical vicissitudes, we still speak, write and teach children in our language. And we are proud of it.

A red vest and frock coat trimmed with green brocade, a wide-brimmed hat, a scarf around the neck - the costume of a Ladin man is beautiful in every way

Mussolini tried to destroy our language, for this he even developed a whole state program. In 1927, we were dispersed across three provinces far from each other. When the fascists ruled here, not only Ladin place names were replaced by Italian and German ones, but even the names were Germanized. So, traditional Ladin male name Costa turned into the German Costner, Murad into Moroder, Raugaudia into Rungaldir. Today we have achieved that our villages and cities have returned their historical names.

I named my daughters in honor of the princesses from our ancient epic - Luyanta and Dolasilla. I only have two children so far, but my mother’s family had six, and my grandmother’s had 15. The Ladins historically had large families. To feed them, men often left in winter to work in neighboring provinces, and in summer they went high into the mountains with cows. The economy and community were entirely dependent on women. It is thanks to women that our people are still alive.

Women even dress much more modestly on holidays

The Ladin community has always been ruled by men, but at home behind closed doors a woman's word is law. My opinion is asked fourth in the family - after my mother, wife and daughters. It was the same in my parents’ family: my mother had the final say. My mother ran a tavern and bakery where my father worked as a pastry chef. These are the ways of our community.

Married ladies always wear a forged silver wallet on their belt, in which symbols of female power are hidden - a knife and fork. Married ladies wear dark clothes. The decoration - a lace crown - can only be afforded by a little girl. Our men dress brightly and attractively. For example, in Val Gardena the men's national costume is leather pants and a bright tailcoat with a top hat. So in nature, for example among birds, the duck is gray and inconspicuous, but the drake is bright and elegant.

The Ladins managed to maintain a cozy world beyond the rocky Alps

In Val Gardena there is a tradition: if a girl wants to get married, then in the fall she gives her chosen one three pears. In Val Badia there is a similar custom, but the girl shows her location with the help of easter eggs. If a young man receives one egg on Easter, this means that he will not be a suitor; two eggs - the girl sees only a friend in him. But they give three eggs to their loved one. After this, the guy can go to the girl’s parents to ask for her hand in marriage.

The bride's mother is preparing furtaes - a deep-fried omelette dough pie. She puts the pie in a separate room to cool, and the groom's friends try to steal it. If the mother is distracted and lets the thieves through, then this is a great shame for the whole family. The pie symbolizes that the girl’s chastity was preserved by her strict mother until the wedding.

Our kitchen is very rich, almost all dishes are prepared in large quantities oils Hard work, cold winters require a lot of energy. The basis of the diet is bread. If it gets stale, they don’t throw it away: they crumble it, pour it with milk and prepare dumplings. IN Good times Both meat and game appear on the table. Every housewife knows how to cook dozens of types of sausages.

Whatever the Ladins do today, the basis of their life is agriculture

We believe that vivens live in mountain rivers - good female spirits. After all, water, like a woman, gives life and prosperity. The Vivens sit by the shore in the evenings and rinse their clothes. If you see a vivena, wish her well - and it will return to you a hundredfold. But if you offend the vivena, her anger will fall on you like a swift mountain stream, and then even the bravest and strongest man will be in trouble.

Our legends and tales existed only orally, passed on from mother to daughter. In the Ladin epic, the main characters are always women. They are the ones who make decisions, rule the destinies of the people, and even take to the battlefield. In all fairy tales and legends it is read the main idea - the balance of the Ladin world is disrupted as soon as a man tries to influence the course of events.

On ski resorts In South Tyrol, inscriptions in Ladin can be seen as often as in German and Italian

Ladins are a peaceful people, we have never fought against anyone. But we were sent to the front during wars because we accurate arrows and we know the surrounding mountains like the back of our hands. First World War left a big imprint on the consciousness of people, because it was its events that led to the fact that our lands were transferred from Austria-Hungary to the Italians in 1919. For us, the First World War is the main thing historical event. We have not yet experienced this war.

Not a single Ladin festival is complete without folk music

On November 1 and 2 we celebrate the Feast of the Dead, we remember all the fallen. For this holiday, our women prepare kazunze. This is a special type of ravioli, square or crescent shaped, filled with spinach (green) or beets (red). They are fried in oil and left to cool in a bowl overnight. It is believed that deceased relatives come to feast on them at night. The next morning, the family eats the “leftovers” and thanks the dead for their generosity.

We are calm about death. Our cemeteries are always located in the center of the village, around the church. Now expensive hotels have appeared in the villages, and they are also being built in the center. Tourists wonder why the windows best number invariably go to the cemetery.

The Ladin Carnival traditionally begins on January 17th. Handmade wooden masks add a special flavor to the holiday.

All major Ladin holidays are religious. Until 1905, the Ladins did not celebrate Christmas. The Italians imposed it on us. Our holiday is the Day of the Heart of Christ. We celebrate it on the first Sunday in June. On this day, fires are lit on all mountain peaks. The holiday arose during the war with Napoleon. Then our people promised Jesus in their prayers that they would light bonfires in his honor every year if he helped the Ladins survive the war. Since then, young people have climbed the mountain every year to make a fire. And families with children light a fire just in the backyard.

In our traditional Viles villages, it is now forbidden to erect new buildings. We don't want Ladin architecture to be wiped off the face of the earth. Viles is a series of paired peasant farmsteads, perfectly integrated into nature. Our houses are like mountains - stone below, wood above. The first, stone, floor is a hay barn, cattle stalls and a workshop, the second is built from logs, and the family lives there.

In the traditional Ladin settlements of Viles, new buildings are no longer built

Today Ladins master all professions, but before we were only engaged in agriculture. Until the 60s they lived poorly. And even now you can’t make money from farming. When ski tourism began to develop, the situation improved a little. Early in the morning you are a peasant, in the afternoon you are a ski lift supervisor. In the evening you are a peasant again - you go down from the mountains back to your village, where your wife is waiting for you, and you go to milk the cows. Like your grandfather and father.

Location orientation
Italy, Autonomous Province of Bolzano - South Tyrol

Capital: Bolzano
official languages : Italian (23.4% of the population) and German (62.3%). 4.1% of the population speaks Ladin
Square: 7400 km 2
Population: 521,000 people
Population density: 70.4 people/km 2
GDP per capita: ~$40,000 (one of the richest provinces in Italy. For comparison: GDP per capita in the country is $30,540)

Attractions: Messner Mountain Museum on Mount Kronplatz, Museum of Archeology, where the mummy of Ötzi (5300 years old) is exhibited, Museion Museum of Contemporary Art.
Traditional dishes: gröstl - potatoes stewed with cabbage and meat, smakafam - buckwheat flour pie with pieces of pork sausage, gray Ladin cheese, kazunzei.
Traditional drink: strong fruit and herbal tincture of desgrop.
Souvenirs: traditional Ladin wood carvings, lace.

DISTANCE from Moscow ~2090 km (from 3 hours flight excluding transfers)
TIME lags behind Moscow by 2 hours in winter, by one hour in summer
VISA"Schengen"
CURRENCY Euro

Photo: Sime / Vostock Photo (x2), Getty Images (x3), Diomedia, Sime / Vostock Photo (x2), iStock, Image Broker / Legion-Media

In Mountain henpecked: traditions of the Alpine people

They never had their own state - the border of their world is the rocky Alps. The Ladins are protected from foreign influence by the language barrier, and from everything else by their women.

So, - said Che-Che addressing the audience - this is called a stick.
- Wow! - said the amazed audience.
- At one end of the stick there is a strap, at the other there is a zipper. It's made of pobedite alloy, it's all so hard, so you can poke it at each other and you'll get a great piercing.
This was followed by a tedious monologue about how to walk correctly, swinging sticks, and how to breathe.
- The straps of Nordic walking poles are fastened on the hand like gloves, this is so that it can be released by opening the palms. This way the blood pumps better and circulates more actively in the organs.
- What is the difference between trekking poles and Nordic walking poles? - asked someone from the audience.
- Philosophy. Trekking is a leisure activity for pensioners. They can walk with such sticks all day long. And a real Nordic walker walks in an aggressive style for an hour.
- Then he lies there all day, having fun...
On Che-Che's shin there was an elegant tattoo depicting allegories of the serene life of an epicurean - a half-naked girl, wine, cards, dice. And the marvelous, enchanting landscapes of the alpine pastoral tuned the mind to complete hedonism. In a sporty style, which is remarkable.
Moving in sporty style, accompanied by the rustle of the wind, the fragrance of alpine meadows and the soundtrack of Livio, we arrived in a cozy mountain valley in the Dolomites amphitheater, which is, in fact, something more than a place for Nordic walkers to walk. Here the worlds of the traditional economy of the Ladin people, the indigenous population of the province of Trentino, and modern ecotourism intersect. In a meditative state of harmony with global trends, cows move across the meadows; Nordic walkers traverse them perpendicularly, controlling the degree of merging of their sneakers with wildlife by high jumping through cattle excrement. The marmots look at this vanity of vanities from their holes. Each of them is like a Buddha.
“This is how we live,” Che-Che began to talk. - Modern sports, traditional farming, healthy life, healthy nature, healthy history... In general, we are all very proud of the fact that we are Ladins.
A man with a wooden rake appeared on the horizon. He moved across rough terrain with the speed and grace of an alpine animal, and Che-Che, cranking the “fifth gear” with a stick, rushed towards him, making a gesture to us, they say, “catch up.” For some time the guys ran almost synchronously, symbolizing with their combination the union of two post-historical harmonies - Conservation and Modernization: our cool Che-Che with his high-tech sticks and the mysterious Apollo with a deeply authentic rake. At the end of the clearing they froze in a composition “yin-yang of tradition and innovation”, worthy of Mukhina’s sculpture. And rakes and sticks crossed, a tree and carbon fiber embraced... Coming closer, everyone present saw in detail the Ladinian Apollo, a simple rural guy, Alberto, a guy, and our girls experienced catharsis. Alberto was beautiful, as if Dionysus himself had emerged from the forest to the excitement of the bacchantes. In fact, he was just running after his cows.
- Albe-e-erto, a-a-and you’re a wife? - the chorus of Ma-a-Askov bacchantes bleated playfully.
“No, he’s not married,” Che-Che, our Virgil Nordic-walking-Val di Fassa, translated his silent smile from Ladin to English.
- Albe-e-erto! Take me! - Lyuba could not stand it.
“He won’t take you, oh, Lyuba,” the chorus of bacchantes answered her. - You don't know how to follow cows.
- I don't need to go after the cows! I will simply love you, oh Alberto!
“I can just love myself, but who will go after the cows,” someone from the male part of the choir translated the silent smile of the shepherd from Ladin to Russian.
Alberto clearly didn’t know what was going on here, but he felt that everyone here loved him, and he wanted to do something nice in return, and he invited us to run another ten kilometers along the mountain to see the cows. The girls were ready to run away with him for ages, but Che-Che looked like a man who would prefer to have something to drink and eat in this nice restaurant, because he had already seen Alberto’s cows. Therefore, the Ladinian either Apollo or Dionysus said goodbye and disappeared from sight faster than a doe, and did the right thing. Dionysian mysteries with visiting bacchantes usually do no good for men.

Hay Festival

It’s good to wake up at the point of two mountain streams at dawn, watch how the stars are slowly fading away, and a new day falls to the ground from an already bright sky, shimmering with pale light to the point of materiality along the paws of the huge fir trees under which I pitched my tent. And in the opening along the riverbed, the flaming Dolomites had already flared up in the first ray of sunrise. There's nothing to compare it to.
There was really no need to pitch a tent in the forest. Just outside the town of Pozza Fassa there is the Vidor campsite, known far beyond Italy as the best campsite in the world. It contains all the benefits of civilization, immodest for camping, one of which is wi-fi, yesterday I used it until the evening. However, the Fassa campsites may seem too civilized, like full-fledged mini-resorts with all sorts of Jacuzzis and restaurants.

Those who want to penetrate into the bosom of nature, so to speak, with immersion, can drink their cappuccino at Vidor and move on, along a steep road, as if going into the sky, with the name “Road of Christ” suitable for such a relief. On the approaches to the pass, the side of the road is accompanied every hundred meters by micro-chapels with reproductions on the theme of the passion of Christ, so that the trekker, under his hundred-liter backpack, would immodestly associate himself with one of those ascending to Calvary... Here is the Garden of Gethsemane... Here is the scene arrest... Here is Pilate's trial... Here, in fact, they have come...
The pass is crowned by the small Cathedral of Christ of the Valley of St. Nicholas with an interesting altar part, next to a nice restaurant. Then the road turns into a picturesque descent on all four sides into the valley of St. Nicholas, in which today, on the second of August, the Ladins of Val di Fassa celebrate their folk holiday, in honor of successful haymaking. The Valley of St. Nicholas is a traditional place of alpage, where even today excellent mowing is now adjacent to a folk festival, which, however, is arranged without unnecessary folklore tension. People dressed up National costumes there was almost no holiday fun, and the festive fun was also mostly “cosmopolitan”, with the exception of the traditional jumping into a haystack, reminiscent of the occasion for the holiday. And it was a real national holiday - a holiday for ourselves. Yes, the bulk of Ladins did not come in national clothes, but all these people gathered here not to look like Ladins, but because they are. So they came in what is more convenient for them to jump into the hay, or slide down the mown grass on such roof-blowing devices as alpine skis on caterpillar tracks. Well, the ancient Ladins didn’t invent them, so what does it matter if modern people have so much fun with them? This is what distinguishes a living ethnic group from a museum one, that even those dressed in jeans never cease to enjoy life. However, they have national costumes, and what kind of ones!..

carnival time

Anyone who doubts that the harsh mountaineers can organize carnivals no worse than the Brazilian ones can come to the Ladins for a holiday. The Ladina people are the indigenous inhabitants of the Italian province of Trentino, the Fassa Valley, - funny people. However, it's not all about fun. Carnival, along with Christmas, is an important ritual event marking the seasonal cycles of the year.
January 16th, the eve of St. Anthony Abbot, groups of young people dressed in costumes with cow bells attached to them stage a procession from house to house, dancing and playing musical instruments. In certain elements of the holiday, there are echoes of ancient rituals of trying on after quarrels, ancient wedding ceremonies, or even such mysterious procedures reminiscent of sacrifices as the “Old Woman’s Mill” - “devils” tighten a mummered “grandmother” on a rope, as if as a sign of retribution for sins .
In the masquerade processions of the carnival, masks of two types are presented, often in pairs - male and female characters: bel, “beautiful” masks representing the ideals of beauty and burt, “ugly” masks, ridiculing devils and similar “comrades”.
Some masks personify the demonic principle: these are Harlequin, Lonc and Piso, the unpacified souls of the dead.
The masquerade procession is opened by Laché, who acts as a guide. He is accompanied by Marascons, "big masks" and Bufon, personifying human madness. The Marracons hold their masks in their left hands, while the Buffons wear them on their faces. Once upon a time, rites of passage of a teenager into adult life, in which they should be lucky. Therefore, the hats of the “Lakhs” and “Marracons” are decorated with feathers from the tail of the black grouse - a symbol of hunting success and masculinity.
So the masquerade went from house to house through the village, and the flames of the fire shot up into the night sky. It is necessary to light fires so that in these winter days, when all thoughts are already about the coming spring, to support the Sun in its eternal confrontation between light and darkness, heat and frost, which is what life, in general, consists of.
That is summer holiday on the eve of autumn - symmetrical to winter on the eve of spring. In the town of Pozza Fassa there is wonderful museum Ladin culture, whose extensive collections contain objects of both labor and fun of this ancient people with old photographs, mannequins, audio recordings. But it’s better to visit it tomorrow, since the Ladin theater is waiting for us tonight. The people, having eaten their fill of all sorts of gastronomic delights traditional cuisine, and having drunk magnificent wines, Trentino gradually returns from the valley of St. Nicholas to the pass already familiar to us, and sits down right on the grass of a spacious clearing. Those who do not want to sit down fall apart under the sky, on which the first stars have already poured out. It quickly got dark, as happens in the mountains in August, and then a performance began based on traditional Ladin legends, in the Ladin language, not understandable even to the local Italians, to the accompaniment of some wonderful, hitherto unseen musical instruments. No stage - just a boardwalk. The “scenery” in this performance was all living things - a living forest, disturbingly rustling in tune with the dramatic plot, a living river, murmuring in unison with the speeches of the storytellers, stars falling from the sky at the climax of the action. August in the Dolomites... The whole sky is filled with stars.