MONSTERS OF THE ALPS
dates from 1892, though the tradition is believed
to have started long before then. ‘Nothing older is
left,’ says Ruth. ‘People were poor here, and it was
cold, so they burned them afterwards.’
The Rieder family has been more responsible
than most for keeping Tschäggättä alive in the
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female mask-carver in the Lötschental, and her
husband Heinrich is now the most celebrated,
famed for his fantastical and macabre creations.
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participant in the climax of this year’s festival
in a few days’ time – the daytime parade of
monsters, in which prizes are awarded for the
best. She gives nothing away about their plans.
‘No-one should know who the Tschäggä is,’ she
says as we leave the museum. ‘Only the families
will know what the costumes are and who’s
wearing them. You will only know that if you see
one, you will be afraid.’A
fat slug of cloud sits over the village
of Kippel. A postwoman makes her
deliveries on foot, navigating a path
hacked through the snow. She stops
to chat to a dog-walker carrying a
basket of logs, the Jack Russell at his
feet impatient to get moving. I enter
a rambling cluster of outhouses and barns,
the air sweet with the smell of manure. Joining
the burbling of chickens and bleating of sheep is
another sound: the tapping of chisel on wood.
Albert Ebener is busy in his workshop. Leaning
over a lump of local Arvenholz (Swiss pine) held
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the air around him. With his gnarled face, he
looks carved from a piece of wood himself.
Albert has been working with wood for most of
his seventy years. ‘My grandpa carved masks,’ he
1 71Ơ.3$̭,%-, .'.#2& 20 0#*7*# 4#1&'1mouth. ‘In this valley, if the grandfather carves,
the father carves, and the son will also carve.’
Among boxes of screws and deer antlers, and
racks of drills and planers, are masks made by his
father, uncle and grandfather – hideous things
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permanently howling beneath moustaches of
rabbit fur. I try one on and am surprised by how
heavy it is, my head pushed into my neck under
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tiny spots of the eyeholes. The masks are made
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much by Hollywood horrors as Swiss folklore
and the individual imagination. ‘They are still
horrible though,’ says Albert with a laugh.
He reckons to have made six thousand masks
for Tschäggättä, and to have joined countless
parades – though those days are now behind
him. With the costumes weighing 7kg, this is a
young-person’s game. Traditionally, the monstersA new mask for the year’s festival,
worked on by Albert Ebener (above).
Right: A Tschäggä on parade in
the village of Wiler