The pastoral communities of Zasip and Podhom
In summer the plateaus and hills around Vintgar Gorge were always full of livestock and herdsmen, part of two pastoral communities – Zasip and Podhom. The people of Podhom tell how every year it was the responsibility of one of the community’s ten farmers to provide a herdsman. If they were unable to find a herdsman in a given year, the farmer whose turn it was would tend the herd himself. As well as a čednik – a chief herdsman – he had to find a tretjinek – a younger assistant, usually responsible for a third of the cows.
Bell-making tradition
In order to find their livestock more easily, herdsmen would hang bells around their necks. Each herdsman knew the sound of his own herd and could tell from a distance where it was grazing. The sound of the bells also kept snakes away. The traditions of pastoralism and bell-making have long been closely intertwined in the villages of the Gorje district. The various sizes of bells forged here were recognised for their high quality throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and even beyond.
The Gorje bell-making tradition is held to have begun in Višelnica in 1752, at the house of Jakob Jan, known locally as Rebrovec. Bell-making later spread to as many as eight different workshops. Bells were sold by weight. In Austria-Hungary a kilogram’s worth of bells cost 70 kreutzers. The bell-making tradition has survived to the present day. The Bled-based company Šobrle still makes Gorje bells today, using a more modern method that nevertheless retains elements of the traditional forging technique.
Discovery of a bronze bell on Hom
In 2019 a local man came across a small bronze livestock bell dating from between the 1st and 4th centuries AD while walking on the summit of Hom. This means that people were pasturing sheep and goats here almost 2,000 years ago. On the basis of this discovery, it may be supposed that Hom was originally a large pasture that was only later overgrown by forest. Did herdsmen buy this bell at a market 2,000 years ago? Or did they perhaps make it themselves, which would mean that the bell-making tradition of this area dates back to antiquity?