There is no easy way to define a mountain. According to the OED, a mountain is a “large and natural elevation of the earth’s surface,esp. one high and steep in form” – a relative notion, “larger and higher than a hill.”1 Likewise,Duden defines a mountain through contrast: a “Berg” is “[eine] größere Erhebung im Gelände,” and the collective “Gebirge” describes a “zusammenhängende, durch Täler gegliederte Gruppe von hohen Bergen.”2 In the opening chapters of Martin F. Price’sMountains. A Very Short Introduction, he states that, whilst altitude is not always a clear marker of when a mountain is a mountain, a steepness of sides often is.3 He continues to state that all definitions of mountains are, however, both “subjective” and that “perceptions change over time.”4
There is no question that the Alps are mountainous. One of the European continent’s most prominent topographical features, the Alps cover an area of approximately 180,000km2 and stretch for some 1200km, rising in the west on the Mediterranean coast of France and Monaco, before arcing through Italian, Swiss, German, and Austrian territory, and reaching their eastern terminus in Slovenia. The highest peaks in the chain soar to over four-thousand meters: the snow-capped Mont Blanc, Matterhorn and Mönch, to name but three. At the fringes of the chain, however, the limits of the mountains are not always clear-cut: the Alps variously give way to low-lying land (as in Germany’s Allgäu region) or link to other chains of lesser, but still prominent, hills (the French and Swiss Jura, for example). What is notable, however, is that the massive stone structures of the Alps rise in the heart of the European continent, looming out of the relatively flat landscapes surrounding them in a truly impressive way. Indeed, this barrier is so prominent that it has served as a cultural and linguistic dividing line between northern and southern Europe, the surmounting of which required great efforts well into the modern era.
When considering the Alps, however, it is not just these general topographical facts that come to mind. In the popular imagination, Alpine territory has a specific and instantly recognizable look: snow-topped, craggy peaks rise above verdant valleys, dotted with wooden chalets, and populated primarily by cows, their bells clanging as they lazily chew the cud. The human inhabitants of the Alpine region are similarly idealized and are cast in roles that range from plucky, mythologized freedom-fighters such as Wilhelm Tell through to resourceful, steadfast characters like Johanna Spyri’s heroine Heidi (1881) and the morally righteous population of Albrecht Haller’sDie Alpen (The Alps, 1729), blessed by the divinity through their Alpine home.
The idealized, popular view of Alpine space belies a complex political, socio-economic, and aesthetic history. This broad range of Alpine imaginations cannot, however, be fully separated from the geographical understandings of the mountains. Mountains are both a geological concept and an anthropological construct.<
