There are places that, by their very nature, are affected—both for better and for worse—by the constant presence of the forest.

A forest that, for the inhabitants of these lands, becomes home, workshop, road, imagination, and folklore.

There are places where culture itself cannot be told without reference to what the forest, the pasture, and the mountain are and once were.

There are places where people have made this forest not only their wealth but also their fortune and, ultimately, their very life.

Stories, peoples, borders: a “middle land” whose deep cultural legacy endures to this day.

THE CIMBRI OF THE UPLANDS

There is a territory between Veneto and Trentino where the population known as the Cimbri has shaped not only the landscape but also the traditions, the toponymy, and the intrinsic traits of the families that still inhabit these valleys today.

Southern Trentino valleys, Southern Trentino uplands, the Altopiano dei Sette Comuni, Val Brenta, Valdastico, Val Posina, Val Leogra, Valle Agno, the Vicentine Hills, Val Chiampo, and the Lessini Mountains: a total of about 110 municipalities and hamlets, and a census of over 720 surnames of Cimbrian origin (including my own) [1]. Not to mention the toponymy: in the municipality of Valli del Pasubio (Vicenza) alone, more than 2,500 place names of direct Cimbrian derivation have been recorded [2].

But who are these Cimbri? And why are they so deeply connected to the forests?

Today, the “Cimbri” can be clearly defined as “[…] the result of the fusion between the ancient German settlers and the equally ancient Venetian mountain dwellers” [1].

And their very name already tells much of their story. Arriving around the year 1000 from Bavaria, Tyrol, and German-speaking Switzerland, these immigrants—who naturally spoke a Germanic language—began to call themselves “Tzìmber,” meaning “carpenters,” as they indeed worked in logging and woodcraft. The term “Tzìmber” was soon Latinized into what we now know as “Cimbri.”

Moreover, the folklore associated with these Germanic peoples endured for many centuries, centered on the myth of the good, blond, woodcutter Cimbrian—so much so that it found its way into equally folkloric local nursery rhymes [1]:

The forest is the Cimbrian’s home
the roof is the sky
the windows are the spaces between the leaves
and the doors
were stolen by the wind

In short, an indissoluble bond between people and land, between forest and folk, between language and territory.

A bond that, however, most often arose from these peoples’ urgent need to feed themselves and survive, resulting in an archaic yet effective reclamation and colonization of a territory that had until then been almost uninhabited.

Starting from the year 1000, a significant process of colonization began, carried out by Germanic peoples and promoted by the then landowners—bishops, monasteries, or lords, themselves often of Germanic origin. It was common practice for the landowner to make agreements with representatives of the Germanic groups, allowing them to migrate toward the Veneto-Trentino area and granting them a portion of land—in the form of a maso (farmstead) of twenty-five campi—with the sole obligation to work it and make it arable, leaving part of it as communal land for public use [1].

The result? To put it simply, the present-day—and variously named in the Alpine context—”collective properties” be they Regole, Usi Civici, Reggenze, or Magnifiche Comunità [3]. These forms of ownership, truly unique and hybrid between private and public property, are the most tangible legacy inherited from the ancient systems of land management established by the settlers.

Figure 1: Boundary stone dated 1754 between the Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia and Tyrol. Present-day border between Veneto and Trentino near Rifugio Castelberto, Erbezzo (Lessini Mountains, Verona, Italy). Photo. Author. 22.07.2025