Walser

The Walser are the speakers of the Walser German dialects, a variety of Highest Alemannic. They inhabit the Alps of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as well as on the fringes of Italy and Austria. The Walser people are named after the Wallis (Valais), the uppermost Rhône valley, where they settled from roughly the 10th century in the late phase of the migration of the Alamanni, crossing from the Bernese Oberland; because of linguistic differences among the Walser dialects, it is supposed that there were two independent immigration routes.

From the upper Wallis, they began to spread south, west and east between the 12th and 13th centuries, in the so-called Walser migrations (Walserwanderungen). The causes of these further population movements, the last wave of settlement in the higher valleys of the Alps, are not entirely clear. Some think that the large Walser migrations took place because of conflicts with the valley's feudal lords. Other theories contend it was because of overpopulation and yet others that they were reinforced by the respective local authorities in order to settle previously unpopulated regions. A provocative series of events not too far from the Walser settlements may have precipitated the migration. In 1307, Knights Templar in France, under severe persecution, were arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France. The Alps provided an ideal and easily defended refuge, a place already settled by other Templars in a town named after Jerusalem: Sion, Switzerland, the capital of Valais, the namesake region of the Walser. This wholesale evacuation of Templars likely had the effect of displacing localized Walser settlements. Walser legend asserts that the migration and subsequent "free man" status was granted expressly because of their association with Templar resettlement.

Walser (surname)

People

See also