Walser people

The Walser people are the speakers of the Walser German dialects, a variety of Highest Alemannic. They inhabit the region of the Alps of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as well as 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. Starting in 1962, every three years a meeting of Walser people called ''Walsertreffen'' occurs in a Walser inhabited area. Provided by Wikipedia