The Atlantis of Zermatt
Folklore from the year
1
8
7
2
Adapted from
Kaplan Moser
Walliser Sagen (pp. 60-61)
Rarity Level
UNCOMMON (1/500)
The Full Story
Whoever lifts their gaze from Zermatt today, to where the glacier bridges between the Matterhorn and the Breithorn support the sky, sees only a white desert of ice and stone. It is the St. Theodul, the highest historic pass crossing of the Alps. True, wanderers and occasional herds of cattle still cross the ridges in summer, and once pack animals brought wine and grain up from the south – but today the barren silence of the high Alps reigns there.
But the elders know that a secret sleeps beneath the eternal ice. It is called the Atlantis of Zermatt. The legend tells of a golden age when the sun warmed the rock and the ice had retreated far back. On the vast plain of the pass height stood not a lonely rest house, but a proud, idyllic village. Its stone houses were numerous, its squares filled with the noise of merchants and the laughter of children. It was a stronghold in the clouds, rich and safe, built in a time when nature seemed benevolent to man.
But the times changed. The breath of the world grew colder. A year came when the autumn was not golden, but gray. Winds, sharp as razor blades, whipped across the plain, and a snowfall began that was so dense it swallowed heaven and earth. It was an unnatural cold that penetrated to the marrow of the bones.
In one of the parlors, huddled close to the tiled stove, sat the eldest of the village. His eyes had long since extinguished, but his inner sight saw further than that of the sighted. While the storm raged outside, he lifted his head and asked a single question of his grandsons with a brittle voice: "Tell me... what color is the snow that buries us? Does it still bear that reddish shimmer of life we know from before? Or is it white?".
The young ones looked out into the roaring gray and answered trembling: "It is white, Grandfather. White as death."
Then the blind man lowered his head and spoke the judgment over his homeland: "Then there is no staying here anymore. The red snow brought blessing, but the white brings the end. We must leave this highland and flee into the valleys before the sky closes.".
He had spoken the truth. Those who listened to him fled into the valley. But the vibrant village on the height was swallowed. The snow never melted again. It compacted into blue ice that buried everything beneath it like a shroud. And so it rests there still today, preserved deep in the glacier – the sunken city, the Atlantis of the Alps, waiting for a sun that may never return.
