You have chosen the short tour. As soon as you see a bench on the left side of the street, we invite you to sit down and take a look at a couple of houses in the village. Most of the houses are built in the traditional style with cellar walls built of natural stone, and upper walls made of massive common spruce wood. They have already survived many generations. The facades are blackened by the sun; they have not been painted, as one might assume. Most houses were built for two families. One lived in the left and the other in the right half. In the past, the roofs were all made of wooden shingles, on which lay heavy rocks to protect the roof against damage in strong winds and snowstorms. The winds in particular can be very strong in this area. On several occasions, roofs have been blown away and houses have been seriously damaged. Building a house required a lot of time and energy, because the wood had to be cut and sawn by hand and often carried here by the local men. The oldest extant house was built in 1658.
Only nine years later the Black Death raged in the village. Within about four months, 60 per cent of the inhabitants had died. It is known that one house went without a roof for two years, because the men who had been working on it had died. There were two factions. The authorities in Interlaken believed that the plague was contagious, and ordered the sick people to isolate themselves. The more stubborn and conservative inhabitants of the valleys opposed the authorities and called themselves "Anticontagonists". They were convinced that the Black Death was God's penalty and didn't isolate themselves; quite the contrary, they visited each other on purpose. Needless to say that the consequences were fatal. But not only the Black Death shrank the number of people living in the village. Around the middle of the 19th century the people in the mountain valleys in this area were so poor that many of them decided to emigrate to Carolina in the USA. In 1873, only 75 people lived in Gimmelwald. In the 1930s, the village had the highest number of inhabitants, with about 230 people. Due to the economic crisis in those days, it was not easy to find work elsewhere. So the families stayed at home and worked on the farms. Now, less than 100 people live here. Just like in the rest of Europe, young couples have fewer children than in the past. Life in the countryside, away from consumption and entertainment, doesn't look attractive any more to many people. And, unfortunately, like in many other tourist villages there is not enough living space the young locals can afford. Now take a look at the Rottal glacier on the other side of the valley. Imagine you had to climb up with heavy tools and wooden ramps to break rocks out of the mountain side and pull them down into the valley! - An incredibly hard job! But this is what it was like in the 17th century, when iron oolite was mined from a narrow strip containing iron ore to the right below the glacier. The ore was smelted in a furnace, parts of which still exist, close to Zweilütschinen between Lauterbrunnen und Interlaken. The transport to the furnace took at least eleven to twelve hours. At the back of the valley, galena and zinc ore were quarried and smelted on site. If you want to find out more, visit the Valley Museum in Lauterbrunnen we mentioned before. Entry is free with your guest card. The subjects of the exhibition include: living and working in the past, bobbin lace, alpine cuisine, working with wood, alpinism and tourism, as well as the extraction of iron, galena and limestone. The two-volume book "Journey into the Bernese Oberland" by the English poet Lord Byron was decisive in attracting tourism to this area. Rich people from other regions came here; and sometimes rich hoteliers from Mürren travelled to the Italian Riviera and even to Naples. There, the trade in white laced textiles flourished, which gave workers at home an enormous upswing. Now women, girls and boys started producing white bobbin lace in their free time in winter. An association that was created especially for this purpose organized the sale and procurement of the designs and yarns. The legal protection of the design ensured that only the members of the lace-making association were entitled to use these sought-after filigree patterns. The pieces were not only sold by the association, they were also offered for sale directly on the street. The lace-making association still exists today, and especially elderly women living in the village are experts in this art. If you’re visiting us on a warm summer day, it may be difficult for you to understand that the winter here is long and bitterly cold. Most houses are still heated with wood, which is stacked along the house walls to dry out. On the new house to the right side you can see some solar panels. In all of Switzerland the change to heating facilities using renewable energies is promoted by offering financial incentives to improve climate protection. Let's continue our tour and follow the street until you can see the cable car station. On your right you will see a few benches. Take a seat and we will tell you more about farming in the mountains.
