Landscapes of Zinal, Shelter of Ancient Legends, Bridge to the Spirit of the Ancestors

For centuries, the people of Anniviers have adapted to this harsh and isolated environment, living modestly from the land, according to the rhythms of the seasons and transhumance. Today, tourism development and modernization have transformed the way of life of its inhabitants. While these changes have helped to overcome poverty, they have also weakened the ancestral connection with nature, once imbued with beliefs in an invisible world, passed down through tales and legends. Although these ancient stories no longer occupy our daily lives as they once did, they continue to inhabit the land.

Here are the words of Bernard Crettaz, a sociologist from Anniviers, about the legends and Robert Rouvinez, a former storyteller of Anniviers: "The earth is the link where the sensible, the visible, and the tangible translate the intelligible and the meaningful. The human enigma precisely lies in this materiality in its historicity, becoming meaning, intelligibility, symbol, and depth. Tales allow us to reawaken this initial experience. Through them, there is not a corner of the old land that is not inhabited by memory, signs, and characters, traces of which Rouvinez, as others, has preserved. These are elusive and present characters that inhabit this land and play the cycle of time and its end, of life and death, of good and evil, of desire and its prohibition. Even if they are only chimeras, the old peasant land becomes, through these chimeras, profoundly ‘fantastic’. To enter the tales, you have to lie down on the grass or on a stone, or take the good earth in your hands. And you have to breathe life into it through the words of the old Rouvinez.

To dive into a territory is to draw closer to the very essence of a people. The land is a living witness to a history and an ancestral way of life, provided one listens to it.