Anniviers

Anniviers is a municipality in the district of Sierre in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It was formed through the merger of six municipalities in Val d'Anniviers: Ayer, Chandolin, Grimentz, Saint-Jean, Saint-Luc and Vissoie. The merger became effective 1 January 2009, creating the third largest municipality of Switzerland by area. Human settlement dates from the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The region was later occupied by Gaulish tribes, who were conquered by the Roman Empire during the first century. Under Rome the valley was incorporated into the province of Helvetia and became known as Annivesium. The present inhabitants of Anniviers are claimed to be descendants of Huns or a related people, who migrated to Europe from Central Asia, during or after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. An extinct and unrecorded language formerly spoken in the area is reported to have had similarities to Hungarian. The inhabitants of Val d'Anniviers generally became Christian much later than their neighbours; the Swiss travel writer Marc-Théodore Bourrit, in Description des Alpes Pennines et Rhetiennes (1781) writes of how the Bishopric of Sion struggled to convert the people of the valley, who long adhered to a pagan religion. A century later, the Hungarian cleric and historian Mihály Horváth says of the inhabitants: "They say they are the descendants of the old Huns.