Tradition: Swiss Mythology
Alternative Names: The Snow-Covered Woman, The Cursed Mountain of Frau
Category: Ghost
The Myth
The Snowed Woman is a legendary mountain in the Frutigen valley of the Bernese Oberland, Switzerland, whose peaks rise more than 11,000 feet and remain covered in eternal snow. According to local tradition, the mountain was once a lush alpine pasture filled with excellent grasses and herbs, including a plant known as Mutern, described as resembling carrot tops. The vegetation was so abundant that the cattle grazing there had to be milked three times a day. The mountain belonged to a blind woman who, every spring, brought her son, servants, and herd of cattle up to the high pasture.
The woman’s son lived a life of excess and engaged in a forbidden relationship with a maiden. He ignored his mother’s warnings and treated her cruelly, despite her blindness. Grieved and angered by her son’s behavior, the mother finally pronounced a curse: the mountain would be covered in ice, and both her son and the finest cow in the herd would be banished there forever. Her curse came to pass, transforming the fertile pasture into a frozen, desolate mountain. The son and the cow were condemned to remain there, and their presence can still be sensed through the cow’s bellowing and the son’s mournful cries, which are said to echo across the mountain.
The curse can supposedly be broken if someone manages to milk the cow on Good Friday before sunrise. If the task is completed in time, the mountain will regain its former beauty and fertility. However, no one has ever succeeded, because the sun invariably rises before the milking is finished. Those who attempt the dangerous task and fail are said to fall victim to a monster. The legend thus explains the mountain’s perpetual snow as the consequence of a mother’s curse and preserves the hope that its lost alpine abundance might one day be restored.
Sources
“Die beschneite Frau.” SAGEN.at – Sagen aus Vernaleken. Reproduced by SAGEN.at. https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/vernaleken/beschneite_frau.html