Sausal

The Sausal is a small mountain range in the southwestern parts of Austria's state Styria. It thrusts up from the northern banks of the Sulm valley, west of the district town of Leibnitz. Its highest point, the summit of the Demmerkogel, rises 671 m above the level of the Adriatic Sea. Large parts of the Sausal have a mediterranean-type microclimate. Together with the rich soil this is the basis of its extensive vineyards, which are the cornerstone of the local economy. Tourism flourishes as well.

Although the privileged climatic situation would have suggested early human habitation in the Sausal mountain range, archeological finds were spurious until late 2004 when preparatory work for a new vineyard on a terrace at the Spiegelkogel mountain near St. Nikolai im Sausal uncovered the remains of an urnfield culture village, and much better preserved late neolithic construction traces below it. Archaeologists now associate this older Copper age settlement with the Lasinja culture.

The name Sausal first appeared as Susil in 970, when emperor Otto I assigned a strip of territory between the Sulm and the Laßnitz rivers to the Archbishop of Salzburg. This is supposed to be derived from Latin (silva Solva, i.e., the "forest at the Sulm river"). During these early medieval times the steep hills were completely forested, awash with deer and boar, and ideal for hunting.

The Bavarian immigrants colonizing the area had found the mountain range almost uninhabited, as it perhaps had been throughout Roman times, only with small Slavic settlements scattered in its larger valleys. They immediately began to convert much of the dense forests to cultured land, and started to grow wine. By the 12th century, peasants routinely paid large parts of their taxes in various viniculture products. Salzburg nobility founded a number of estates (some of which exist even today) to exert some control over the wildlife and the hunting operations.

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