Studies and sketches
Although it might seem that the indigenous inhabitants of the mountain, i.e. highlanders, have the greatest right to “appropriate” them, they cannot be treated as a monolith, as men and women function differently in that space. They are assigned various social roles: men — those associated with exploration, women — those to do mainly with the home and household. This determines the two group’s place in Podhale and outside it.
The article is an analysis of literary portraits of highland men and women from works written in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The authors of the works are often people who became part of the highlander community, got to know it thoroughly and on the basis of their observations described the relations governing it — relations in which an important role was played by land.
The analysis of literary portraits of representatives of the highlander community has been carried out primarily by means of cultural anthropology tools, but it also takes into account women’s studies. This has made it possible to define the links between the highlanders and space, and to answer the question formulated in the title: do the Tatras belong to highland men or women?