Landscape mythology and anthropology of landscape (Landschaftsmythologie, Landschaftsethnologie) are terms for a field of study advocated since about 1990 by Kurt Derungs (born 1962 in St. Gallen, Switzerland). Derungs describes the field as an interdisciplinary approach to landscape combining archaeology, ethnology and mythology.
St. Gallen or traditionally St Gall, in German sometimes Sankt Gallen is a Swiss town and the capital of the canton of St. Gallen. It evolved from the hermitage of Saint Gall, founded in the 7th century. Today, it is a large urban agglomeration and represents the center of eastern Switzerland. Its economy consists mainly of the service sector. Internationally, the town is known as the home of the University of St. Gallen, one of world's leading business schools.
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a country situated in western, central, and southern Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The sovereign state is a federal republic bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning a total area of 41,285 km2 (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8.5 million people is concentrated mostly on the plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global cities and economic centres Zürich and Geneva.
A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features. A landscape includes the physical elements of geophysically defined landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings, and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect a living synthesis of people and place that is vital to local and national identity.
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Derungs interprets landscape features in terms of "totemism, shamanism and matriarchal mythology", claiming that his approach qualifies as neither esotericism nor as positivism but as a "sound alternative" to both. His interpretations are strongly influenced by the hypothesis of a matriarchal structure of society and a cult of the Great Goddess in Neolithic Europe, and he associates megalithic monuments and elements of traditional fairy tales with these ideas.
Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.
Matriarchy is a social system in which females hold the primary power positions in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property at the specific exclusion of males — at least to a large degree.
Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that certain ("positive") knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge. Positivism holds that valid knowledge is found only in this a posteriori knowledge.
Since 1994, Derungs manages the edition amalia publishing house, where his books appear besides publications on related topics (matriarchy, Great Goddess) by other authors. Derungs is popular in German Neopagan circles, but has received little attention in academic literature. [1]
