Chamois VS
| VS is the abbreviation for the canton of Valais in Switzerland and is used to avoid confusion with other entries of the name Gamsen . |
Map with all coordinates: | Chamois | ||
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| State : |
 Switzerland
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| Canton : |
 Valais (VS)
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| District : | Brig | |
| Municipal municipality : | Brig-Glis | |
| Postal code : | 3900 | |
| Coordinates : | 639484 / 128 162 | |
| Height : | 679 m above sea level M. | |
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Gamsen is a town in the Brig district in the German-speaking part of the canton of Valais in Switzerland . The village is part of the Brig-Glis municipality , which has a total of 12,056 inhabitants. Gamsen itself has around 550 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2008) . It is 3 km from Brig.
coat of arms
Blazon : In blue, on a red shield base, a silver ruined wall with an open gate, raised by three six-pointed golden stars next to each other.
history
The Gamsen area has been inhabited almost continuously for around 3000 years. Today's Upper Valais was inhabited by the Uberern , a tribe of the Celts. They maintained close contacts with the neighboring and related lepontiers . The Uberians became 15 BC. Incorporated into the Roman Empire, but only marginally belonged to Roman culture, as the excavations in Gamsen Waldmatte showed. The Gamsen Waldmatte area is of particular importance for research into settlement structures in the Western Alps , as the evaluations of the excavations carried out from 1988 to 1999 showed. The 12-year archaeological excavations were the largest in the canton of Valais to date.
The first well-documented finds date from the early Iron Age (600-450 BC). Village settlements range from the Bronze Age to the Roman Age (1st to 3rd centuries AD). From the 4th to the 11th century there were regular resettlements, as evidenced by graves and plaster ovens. Several hundred residential, agricultural and commercial buildings (workshops, warehouses) laid out on terraces and connected with earth paths were excavated. The construction (wood, clay with straw, dry stone walls) and the activities (farmers and shepherds) of its residents remained almost unchanged over the centuries and was hardly influenced by the Romans. They grew millet, barley, legumes and orchards, picked berries and kept goats and sheep. There were local handicrafts (stone objects, bronze jewelry, ceramics) and products imported via the Alpine passes (to the south and north).
The civic community of Gamsen was founded in 1290 and merged with Glis in 1690 .
In order to protect the village of Gamsen from flooding by the Gamsa, the villagers founded the “Stöckengeteilschaft” (work collective). First an earth dam was built, which was breached by the Gamsa in the 13th century, after which a wall was built, which was destroyed by the Gamsa in 1301. After that, a strong wall, the Ifang, was built between the land wall and the present-day wall of sticks. When the Ifang was filled with debris in 1698, the three meter thick wall was built. In 1897, a decree of the Grand Council revoked its participation in the sticks.
The village of Nanz ( Celtic : valley) in the Nanztal was buried by the Gamsa in 1301 . The residents had to leave their valley and settled in the Gamsen area. There they were called Nanzer and their village became Nanzerdorf, the oldest part of Gamsen. Between 1352 and 1355, the Gamsen land wall was built as a defensive wall on top of older walls that served against flooding of the Gamsa. The Federal Commission for the Preservation of Monuments (EKD) classified it in 1984 as a monument of national importance.
The chapel of Saint Sebastian was built between 1620 and 1640 as thanks for the mild course of the plague epidemic at that time in honor of the plague saint. There used to be a pagan cult and sacrificial stone in front of the chapel and a linden tree mentioned in a document in 1652 probably served as a meeting place.
In the years 1686 and 1757 to 1764, dams were built in the uppermost part of the Gamsa rubble cone, which led the Gamsa away from the land wall. The first industrial plant in Upper Valais began producing dynamite on July 20, 1895. The explosives factory Société Suisse des Explosifs (SSE) is located at the exit of the Nanz Valley on the banks of the Gamsa.
In 1950 Gamsen tried to become an independent parish again, but this was rejected by the Grand Council. The interests of the village have been safeguarded since 1954 by the "Commission for the payment of lime sludge compensation" (carbide sludge deposits from the Lonza works ), from which the community of interests of the village of Gamsen emerged in the 1970s.
On January 1, 1972, the municipal community of Glis-Gamsen merged with the town of Brig. The three independent civic communities Brig, Glis and Brigerbad were forcibly merged as the civic community of Brig-Glis. Today Gamsen is mainly considered an industrial area of Brig, whereby only the part on the Rhone is used by industry. The village itself is 200 meters away.
traffic
Gamsen can be easily reached from Brig and Visp using the following means of transport:
- Postbus ( Saas-Fee -Visp-Brigerbad-Brig)
- Train to Brig or Visp (change to a bus required)
- Easily accessible by car via the cantonal road from Brig or Visp. (not A9 motorway)
From 1951 to 1984 a cable car connected Gamsen with Mund , which until 1978 could only be reached via a mule track. The former Gamsen stop of the Brig-Visp-Zermatt-Bahn BVZ (now Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn MGB) was abandoned in the early 1990s after the cable car to Mund that began there was shut down.
school
Gamsen has its own school house, but only the 5th / 6th grade. Class. The kindergarten is located in Brigerbad. The students are picked up from the school bus in the morning and brought back home after school. The orientation school and the grammar school are located in Brig. Since the school year 2010/2011, the 1st to 6th grade pupils from the villages of Gamsen and Brigerbad are going to Glis in the lower grades, so the school in Gamsen has been closed.
Attractions
In addition to the old chapel, Gamsen has a number of historical residential and utility buildings in the house type of the Obergommerhaus , which can be visited as part of the village tour:
- St. Sebastian chapel in the center of the village (Alte Landstrasse) ⊙
- Barn with barn leg and mouse plate, Aspengasse, 16./17. Century (building inventory Brig-Glis 1991, object no. 51) ⊙
- Oldest, former residential building with an economic part, Nanzerdorf from 1350 (object no. 47) ⊙
- Storage tank without substructure, plug-in path (item no. 36) ⊙
- Barn with barn leg and mouse plate on Steckweg ⊙
- Barn and stable for cattle, Steckweg ⊙
- Barn for reed stalks, 18th century (object no. 37) ⊙
- Barn with granary and substructure for vehicle fleet, Steckweg, 18th century (property no. 38) ⊙
- Barn with granary and stable for small cattle, Steckweg, 18th century (object no. 39) ⊙
- Old mill / tannery, Steckweg 46 from 1520 ⊙
- oldest inhabited house from 1460, Sandweg ⊙
- House with barn and stable, Wuhrgasse 26 from 1750 (object no. 28) ⊙
- House Landstrasse 5 from 1670 (property no. 16) ⊙
- Wall of sticks against the Gamsa from 1698, in the Stöcken area ⊙
- Country Wall chamois , a medieval Letzi which served as a defense against the Savoy ⊙
literature
- Pro Historia Glis: chamois. Pro Historia Glis newsletter No. 11, April 2005 ( digital version PDF; 14.7 MB).
- Tour of the historic village . Castle printing company Truffer and Schmidhalter, Brig-Glis 2004.
- Building inventory of the municipality of Brig-Glis . Brig-Glis 1991.
- Paul Martone: The St. Sebastian Chapel in Gamsen. Letterpress and offset printing Simplon, Brig-Glis 1989.
- Walter Ruppen: The art monuments of the canton of Valais, Volume ll: The Untergoms. Basel 1979.
- Philippe Curdy et al .: Brig-Glis / Waldmatte, un habitat alpin de l'âge du Fer . In: ArS 16, 1993, pp. 138-151.
- Pro Historia Glis: A village forgotten for 1500 years, Glis 1995
- Olivier Paccolat: Le village gallo-romain de Brig-Glis / Waldmatte . In: ArS 20, 1997, pages 25-36.
- Olivier Paccolat: L'agglomération de Waldmatte près de Brigue . In: Vallis Poenina, exhibition catalog, Sitten 1998, pages 204–208.
- Olivier Paccolat, Pascal Taillard: Une industrie du Moyen Age Plâtrière skin près de Gamsen VS . In: Yearbook of the Swiss Society for Prehistory and Early History, Volume 84 2001, pages 87-108, illustrated.
- Hans Steffen: Die Mauer von Gamsen , In: Blätter aus der Walliser Geschichte, XLII. Volume, 2010 ( digitized PDF; 7.67 MB).
- Matthias Schmidhalter: «Waldmatte». "Pro Historia Glis" series, publication no. 19, Brig-Glis 2013, ISBN 978-3-9523795-2-3
Web links
- François Wiblé: Gamsen. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Gamsen VS on the ETHorama platform
- Gamsen sports club
Individual evidence
- ^ Matthias Schmidhalter: "Forest mat". "Pro Historia Glis" series, publication no. 19, Brig-Glis 2013, ISBN 978-3-9523795-2-3 . ( Digitized PDF; 14.7 MB).
- ^ History of the citizenship of Brig-Glis
- ^ Pro Historia Glis: Gamsen. Pro Historia Glis newsletter No. 11, April 2005 ( digital version PDF; 14.7 MB)
- ↑ Gamsen and the Gamsa: Stöckemauer
- ↑ The country wall of Gamsen