Fences in South Tyrol

Fences have always been a part of the rural landscape, serving as a border between fields and farmland, hemming hedge paths and tracks and encircling mountain pastures. Nowadays though, for various reasons, you come across these witnesses to alpine culture less often than before and the different names for fence shapes, individual parts and equipment are starting to fade into oblivion. However, the rural fence is thankfully still in existence and in some places great efforts are being made to protect it from ‚dying out’ and secure its future. In the Eisack valley there is a type of wooden fence with an artistically woven structure - the so-called woven ‚speltenzaun’, where upright sticks of wood are skillfully and carefully woven to diagonal poles by means of bendy twigs. Due to the rather labour-intensive nature of the work, this type of fence is quite a rare sight.

The so-called ‚scharzaun’ is made without any nails, wire or other fixing devices. It is simply composed of pieces of crossed wood that form a shear (‚schar’ in local dialect) and sticks are laid over and under it. This is one of the simplest and oldest forms of alpine wooden fence.
A particularly sturdy fence can be found mainly in the Wipptal valley, but also in other places – the Sterzing ‚ringzaun’. With this fence, wooden sticks or ‚spelten’ are simply laid on top of each other between the upright wooden poles, which have woven rings of bendy twigs or ‚widen’ wound around them to fix them together. Here you can see that the lifestyle and working practices of mountain farmers have always been in close harmony with nature and follow the philosophy: ‚make use of nature, without destroying it’.