Ladins Erotic

Ladins are the people who kept a Latin-born language alive in the high valleys of the Dolomites, with German to the north and Italian to the south. Their homeland, Ladinia, is a ring of valleys around the Sella massif. Gherdëina (Val Gardena) and Badia are in South Tyrol, Fascia (Val di Fassa) is in Trentino, and Fodom (Livinallongo) and Anpezo (Cortina d'Ampezzo) are in the province of Belluno. For centuries these valleys were part of Tyrol and the Habsburg world. In the First World War the front line ran across their own peaks, and Ladin men fought in Austrian uniform. Italy took the region after the war, and in the 1920s the Fascist state split Ladinia among three provinces. That split still decides how well the language is protected, and the answer can change from one side of a mountain pass to the other.

Ladin is a Rhaeto-Romance language, related to Romansh in Switzerland and to Friulian further east. Linguists have argued for more than a century about whether the three really form one family. Each valley has its own variety, and you can hear the differences within a short drive. The language is on its firmest legal footing in South Tyrol, where most Ladins grow up speaking three languages. Village schools in Gherdëina and Badia split lessons between German and Italian and teach Ladin as well. Protections are weaker in the other valleys and Italian dominates more, and the Ladin of Anpezo shows strong Venetian influence.

Nearly all Ladins are Roman Catholic, and the parish still shapes much of the year with feast days, processions and village bands in traditional dress. Hard mountain farming once pushed the valleys into crafts and trade. Gherdëina built a woodcarving industry making saints, altar figures and wooden toys, which peddlers carried across Europe. In Anpezo, groups of old local families called the Regole have owned and managed the forests and pastures together for centuries. In Badia, farmhouses sit in small clusters called viles, where neighbors shared ovens, fountains and work. The valleys also have their own cycle of legends about the Kingdom of Fanes, a lost mountain people said to have made a pact with the marmots.

Ski lifts and the Sella Ronda circuit have turned these old farming valleys into some of the busiest mountain resorts in Europe. That brings money, and also heavy pressure on a language with only a few tens of thousands of speakers. Ladins have pushed back with cultural institutes, a weekly newspaper, La Usc di Ladins, and families who still speak Ladin at home.