Blade grooving
The Kufenstechen ( Slovenian : štehvanje ) is a Carinthian Reiter custom that in locations in the lower Gailtal respectively to Kirchtag is maintained. Well-known such events take place on Whit Monday in Feistritz an der Gail and at the end of July in Nötsch in the Gailtal .
history
The blade piercing was mentioned for the first time in the "Memories" of Archduke Johann , who observed the custom in 1804 in St. Stefan an der Gail in the Gail Valley. Others observed the custom around Villach .
The origin of blade grooving is not exactly known. There are many legends about this equestrian game, but the blade stabbing is likely to have originated as a copy of knightly games , which in turn have their model in the Roman Quintana , a soldier exercise carried out in a camp on a man-high wooden stake. The courtly tournament of the Middle Ages knows this competition in a modified form as a quintaine. We find such "tournaments" until the Baroque era . In ring and carousel games, targets that are movable or arranged in a circle should be hit. There were such events, apart from court life, but mostly confined to cities, until the 19th century in northern Italy and Istria .
In the Gailtal, the local tradition of horse breeding and framing will probably have adopted and modified this model of equestrian games, which became accessible to broader circles of the population in the late Middle Ages. Fertility rites, such as the introduction of the young man into the world of adults, as it still marks his admission to the fraternity , the Konta, may have been the inspiration, as well as the desire to be able to prove his courage in dealing with horses, especially you are dealing with a population whose economic basis was the breeding of Noriker horses . At a time when all goods had to be laboriously transported by carts, pack horses or porters, a lucrative source of income opened up for the Untergailtalers, who are known for their courage, but also for their commercial skill, which gradually became the main income of most of the population.
procedure
Young men, dressed in Gailtal costume , ride bareback horses. While riding, they hit a wooden barrel with iron clubs (Količ) .
Then the girls, the so-called “Gailtalerinnen”, are led to the linden dance ( Slovenian : Rej pod lipo ) in their colorful and precious costumes .
literature
- Gerhard Heindl: Gailtaler Kufenstechen and Lindentanz . In: Folk Art Today . No. 2, 15 (1996) 3-5.
- Niko Kuret: Ziljsko š tehvanje in njegov europski okvir . (La Quintaine des Slovènes da la vallèe de la Zilia (Gailtal) et son cadre européen), Ljubljana 1963.
- Leopold Kretzenbacher: Ring riding, Rolandspiel and runners. Sporty equestrian customs of today as a legacy from western cultural history . Klagenfurt 1966.
- Herbert Michor: History of the village Feistritz an der Gail . Feistritz-Nötsch 1959/1951.
- Oskar Moser: The Gailtaler Kufenstechen. According to new research and historical sources . In: Carinthia I 156 (1966), pp. 48-95.
- Wilhelm Neumann: On the history of Carinthian runners. An early testimony from the "area" north of Villach . In: Carinthia I 168 (1978), pp. 195-205.
- Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund (Ed.): Festivals in the Alpine region . Migros-Presse, Zurich, 1997. ISBN 3-9521210-0-2 , page 161.
