A mix of death and cheese

December 18, 2023 2:04 AM

Devotion to dairy has taken different forms throughout the Alps’s secluded valleys. “A popular culture of the cow … traverses all moments, objects, and events of the mountain peasant,” wrote Preiswerk. In Grimentz, it manifested in elaborate funerals. After a death, the bells of the deceased’s cows were removed, so that the animals, too, could mourn. Families added a “picnic of the dead” to the casket, which included a bottle of wine, bread, and cheese (as well as sturdy boots, as ghosts were rumored to wander the glaciers after dark). from The Valley of the Cheese of the Dead
posted by chavenet (2 comments total)

oh this is fantastic
posted by lokta at 9:00 AM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

It is a continual disappointment to me as a (reluctant) Wisconsonite that Wisconsin dairy farmers are mostly of Plattdeutsche/Scandinavian descent and not of the Deeply Creepy Alpine Cow-Herding Stock. The ways Wisconsinites are nuts about cows and cheese are so much more shallow and tacky than the way the Swiss are.

I guess the Alps were too nice to live in in the 19th century and nobody thought to emigrate.
posted by BrashTech at 2:21 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]