The salt pirates of Lake Traunsee
An adventure story and historical documentary
It sounds adventurous: until the 11th century, pirates were up to mischief on the idyllic Lake Traunsee in the Austrian Alps. The pirates were after the most valuable commodity of their time: Salt.
Pirates in the Alps? At the turn of the first millennium AD, a small tribe of pirates lurked around Lake Traunsee in Austria, waiting for salt shipments from Hallstatt. However, these people were not only fighting for the most valuable commodity of their time, but also for their freedom and their rights.
A TV documentary commissioned by Servus TV and produced by Metafilm GmbH sets off on a search for traces of these unique Alpine pirates and thus on a journey back to a time when salt was considered white gold.
The existence of the Traunsee salt pirates remains a mystery to this day. An inscription plaque on the outer wall of St John's Chapel at the highest point of the Traunkirchen peninsula is the starting point for the search for clues. Director Fritz Kalteis combines mystery, adventure story and historical documentary. Using historical re-enactments, computer animations and high-quality documentary footage, his film constructs a lost world piece by piece. Did the salt pirates really exist? How did they live and rob?
The Traun, one of the most beautiful rivers in the Alps, leads the viewer not only through the incomparable mountain and lake landscape of the Salzkammergut, from the once insurmountable Traun Falls to the fjord-like Lake Hallstatt, but also back into the history of salt mining and trade. The Salzkammergut is world-famous for its spectacular finds from the oldest salt mine in the world and the Hallstatt burial ground. This region is so important that an entire cultural period was named after it: the Hallstatt period (850 - 500 BC). The salt trade still characterises this region of Austria today.
This episode of the region's millennia-old history, which is now being shown on television for the first time, is hardly known until now and the premiere of the film is eagerly awaited. At the same time, the film also offers an overview of the development of the salt region - a story of man's struggle with nature.
