The Ice Giant of Schellenberg

High in the Untersberg, just under the north face, lies a cave that summer and winter holds minus five degrees. The walls are of pure blue ice, formed from thousands of years of rain seeping through the limestone. The cave runs three kilometres into the mountain, with vast ice columns, ice falls, and even an underground ice lake. The Schellenbergers called it the Eishöhle — the ice cave.

The peasants of Marktschellenberg, at the foot of the Untersberg, never went inside. «The ice giant sleeps there,» the mothers told the children. «Don’t wake him, or summer will never come again.» The cave was the bedroom of a giant who brought winter; while he slept, summer could come. Once he wakes — then summer ends in Bavaria forever.

In the winter of 1842 the young shepherd Veit Aufschnaiter of Marktschellenberg lost his way on the Untersberg. He had been with his sheep on the Geiereck pasture; a snowstorm came up, and he could no longer find the descent. For twelve hours he wandered in the storm. When at last he found an opening in the rock face, he crept in to escape the wind. Exhausted, he fell asleep.

When Veit woke, the storm was over. He stood in an ice cave, blue-lit by the light falling from outside on the ice walls. Before him stood — no small man, not even a tall man, but a giant of three metres, with an ice beard down to the ground. The giant slowly opened one eye. Veit, terrified, crept back. The giant spoke with a voice like thunder: «Who wakes me?»

Veit said: «A shepherd from Schellenberg. Lost in the storm. Forgive me, I did not know …» The giant thought. «You are a man. Men do not wake me without consequence. You must choose: either you leave here and from today eternal winter comes to Bavaria, or you stay here and sleep in my place, and I go out into the world to see how it is.»

Veit thought of his father, his mother, his three sisters. He thought of summer. He said: «I stay.» The ice giant rose, shook his beard, walked out of the cave. Veit lay down where the giant had lain. He fell asleep at once. Since then Veit Aufschnaiter still lies there, in the Schellenberger Eishöhle, and summer comes each year anew in Bavaria. Whoever visits the cave and looks closely may, in one particular ice column at the end of the gallery — the guides say — still see the sleeping figure of Veit, with his shepherd’s coat and his sheep-shoe. The ice giant now walks in the world; who he is, no one knows. Perhaps somewhere he is your neighbour.