Aggstein Castle © Hannelore Tik
Aggstein Castle © Hannelore Tik
“Discovering Austria through Legends” contains a selection of Austria's most famous
legends retold in English. It takes you to the legendary sites of the country where you
can see reminders of these past legendary events for yourself. Footnotes also provide you
with directions of how to get to those places by car from Vienna or the nearest provincial
capital city relevant to the particular chapter. In the Vienna chapter these directions include
the Underground lines and stations near to the legendary sites. The Vienna chapter takes you on a
walking tour through the “City” (the first district) from legend to legend, starting at its principal
landmark St. Stephen's Cathedral.
Since legends originate from certain places or countries, they also tell a lot about their history.
Although legends are just stories handed down verbally over centuries and they might not always be
correct in respect to the historical facts, they still give interesting insights into the past. For
instance, they often explain the origin of strange house signs, statues, street names, pictures, plaques
and maybe even sayings related to certain places. They always originate from events occurring at certain
places and times which distinguish them from fairy tales. The history given is only meant to provide a
background supporting particular stories and is therefore only a partial overview of Austria's long and
complex history.
Austria consists of 9 different provinces: Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, the Tyrol,
Vorarlberg, Carinthia, Styria and Burgenland. Each chapter relates to the legends originating from its
specific province and includes full colour picture reminders of the legendary sites that I have found in
its cities, villages or castles.
Since printing a book is no longer the thing to do in our modern times, I have decided to publish my favourite
legends retold in English on the web to make them available to everybody interested in legends. Since the legends
are retold and not just translated they have their origin in the various German versions published by Austria
publishers which I mention in the footnotes and would like to thank especially for their support.
Austrian Legends is a partnersite of aegis-gui-test.com, we-save-energy.org and hupfmuehle.at
These are the websites of my sons Marcus Tik and Thomas Tik and the Hutterer family all from Austria.