Šútovo stands on the Váh in the gorge where the river cuts between the Malá Fatra and the Veľká Fatra — the corridor that everything travelling through northern Slovakia has always had to use. The village has no castle and no monument; its history is the history of a place people pass through, first by raft and cart, then by railway, then by motorway. What made its name known is the side valley behind it and the waterfall at the head of it.Šútovo leží pri Váhu v tiesňave, kde si rieka prerezáva cestu medzi Malou a Veľkou Fatrou — v koridore, ktorým muselo prejsť všetko, čo sa pohybovalo severným Slovenskom. Obec nemá hrad ani pamiatku; jej dejiny sú dejinami miesta, cez ktoré sa prechádza — najprv na pltiach a na vozoch, potom po železnici, dnes po diaľnici. Známou ju urobila bočná dolina za dedinou a vodopád na jej konci.
Drag the bar, or pick a year, to see what was happening here then.Potiahnite lištu alebo vyberte rok a uvidíte, čo sa tu vtedy dialo.
Castles and lordsHrady a páni
Šútovo is first mentioned in writing in 1403, spelled Suto; later records give Sutowo, and the Hungarian form was Suttó. That is a fact about a document — the valley mouth and the river crossing were useful long before a clerk wrote the name down. The village belonged to the estate of Sklabiňa, the castle from which the Révay family governed Turiec county, so its people were tenants of the same lords as neighbouring Blatnica. A tenant village on a main road paid its dues in grain, labour and, when the estate needed it, timber.Šútovo sa prvýkrát písomne spomína roku 1403 v podobe Suto; neskoršie zápisy uvádzajú Sutowo, po maďarsky Suttó. Je to údaj o listine — ústie doliny aj brod cez rieku boli užitočné dávno predtým, než niekto zapísal meno. Obec patrila k panstvu Sklabiňa, k hradu, z ktorého Révaiovci spravovali Turčiansku stolicu, takže jej ľudia boli poddanými tých istých pánov ako susedná Blatnica. Poddanská dedina pri hlavnej ceste odvádzala povinnosti v obilí, v robote a — keď to panstvo potrebovalo — v dreve.
In 1620 there were fourteen households in Šútovo. That is a small number, and it is the point: the fields on the flat by the river are thin and narrow, and the mountain wall starts immediately behind the houses. During the Ottoman century the fighting itself stayed far to the south — no Turkish army came up the Váh gorge — but the wars were paid for by taxes on villages exactly like this one, and by men taken for the county's levies. A place with fourteen households notices when two of them are gone.Roku 1620 malo Šútovo štrnásť domácností. Je to malé číslo a práve o to ide: polia na rovine pri rieke sú úzke a chudobné a hneď za domami sa dvíha horská stena. Počas osmanského storočia zostali boje ďaleko na juhu — turecké vojsko sa Váhom nikdy nedostalo sem —, no tie vojny sa platili z daní práve takýchto dedín a z mužov braných do stoličných hotovostí. Obec so štrnástimi domácnosťami si všimne, keď z nej dvaja chýbajú.
The eighteenth century is where the village records start to show detail. Sixteen households in 1715; thirty-two households and a mill by 1720; by 1785 fifty-three dwellings and 320 people. Alongside farming there were mills on the stream, forges — smithies working iron — and a well-developed basket-making trade, which is what a village does when it has more willow and more winter than it has arable land. None of this made anyone rich; it made it possible to stay.V 18. storočí sa v zápisoch o obci začínajú objavovať podrobnosti. Roku 1715 šestnásť domácností, roku 1720 už tridsaťdva domácností a mlyn, roku 1785 päťdesiattri domov a 320 obyvateľov. Popri poľnohospodárstve tu boli mlyny na potoku, vyhne — teda kováčske dielne — a rozvinuté košikárstvo, čo je presne to, čo dedina robí, keď má viac vŕbového prútia a viac zimy než ornej pôdy. Nikoho to nezbohatlo; umožnilo to zostať.
In 1828 Šútovo had 61 houses and 337 inhabitants. Twenty years later the revolution of 1848 abolished serfdom throughout the Kingdom of Hungary, and the tenants of the Sklabiňa estate became owners of the strips they worked. In a village like this the freedom was real and the land was not enough. From then on the way to make a living was the river and the forest: floating timber down the Váh on rafts, cutting in the valley behind, and hiring out for wages.Roku 1828 malo Šútovo 61 domov a 337 obyvateľov. O dvadsať rokov zrušila revolúcia roku 1848 v celom Uhorsku poddanstvo a poddaní sklabinského panstva sa stali vlastníkmi políčok, ktoré obrábali. V takejto dedine bola sloboda skutočná a pôdy bolo málo. Od tej chvíle sa žilo z rieky a z lesa: z pltníctva a plavenia dreva po Váhu, z ťažby v doline za dedinou a z nádenníckej práce.
The single biggest change in the village's history arrived on rails. The Košice–Bohumín railway opened its Žilina–Poprad section on 8 December 1871, and the only way to build it through this country was along the Váh — past Kraľovany, past Šútovo, through the gorge. Suddenly the village was on a line that ran from Silesia to eastern Slovakia, its timber could go anywhere, and a man could take a job that had nothing to do with land. That is why, a generation later, the village's recorded occupations include railway workers.Najväčšia zmena v dejinách obce prišla po koľajniciach. Košicko-bohumínska železnica otvorila úsek Žilina – Poprad 8. decembra 1871 a jediná možná trasa cez tento kraj viedla popri Váhu — cez Kraľovany, cez Šútovo, tiesňavou. Obec sa zrazu ocitla na trati, ktorá viedla zo Sliezska na východné Slovensko, drevo z nej mohlo ísť kamkoľvek a človek si mohol nájsť prácu, ktorá s pôdou nemala nič spoločné. Preto sa o generáciu neskôr medzi zamestnaniami obyvateľov uvádzajú aj železničiari.
Under the first Czechoslovak Republic the village's people are described exactly three ways: farmers, forest labourers and railway workers. That short list is an accurate portrait of a mountain village on a main line between the wars. The fields fed the household, the forest and the railway paid the cash, and anyone who could not fit into those three categories left — for Ostrava, for Prague, or across the Atlantic, as tens of thousands of northern Slovaks did.Za prvej Československej republiky sa obyvatelia obce opisujú presne tromi slovami: roľníci, lesní a železniční robotníci. Ten krátky zoznam je presným portrétom horskej dediny na hlavnej trati v medzivojnovom období. Polia uživili domácnosť, les a železnica priniesli hotovosť a kto sa do týchto troch kategórií nezmestil, odišiel — do Ostravy, do Prahy alebo za oceán, ako desaťtisíce ľudí zo severného Slovenska.
Turiec was one of the districts where the Slovak National Uprising began: on 27 August 1944 partisans stopped a German military mission at Turčiansky Svätý Martin, twenty kilometres downstream from Šútovo, and German troops crossed into Slovakia on 29 August. The people of Šútovo took part in the Uprising, and when it was crushed at the end of October the fighting and the reprisals moved into these valleys. Martin was liberated on 11 April 1945 by the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps with Romanian troops.Turiec bol jedným z okresov, kde sa Slovenské národné povstanie začalo: 27. augusta 1944 zadržali partizáni v Turčianskom Svätom Martine, dvadsať kilometrov po prúde od Šútova, nemeckú vojenskú misiu a 29. augusta vstúpili na Slovensko nemecké vojská. Obyvatelia Šútova sa do Povstania zapojili a keď ho koncom októbra potlačili, boje aj odplata sa presunuli do týchto dolín. Martin oslobodil 11. apríla 1945 1. československý armádny zbor spolu s rumunskými jednotkami.
After 1948 the land went into a collective farm and the Váh itself was rebuilt: the river below the village became a managed chain of dams, canals and hydroelectric plants rather than a wild stream, and the rafts were gone for good. Stone was quarried at the mouth of the valley, and the old flooded workings behind the village are now a bathing lake. Meanwhile the mountains were being fenced off in the other direction: the Malá Fatra was declared a protected landscape area on 3 January 1967 and raised to a national park on 1 April 1988. So the valley that had been a place of work became a place of rules.Po roku 1948 skončila pôda v družstve a prestavali aj samotný Váh: rieka pod dedinou sa zmenila na riadenú sústavu priehrad, kanálov a vodných elektrární namiesto divokého toku a plte zmizli nadobro. Pri ústí doliny sa lámal kameň a zatopený starý lom za obcou je dnes kúpacím jazerom. Hory sa medzitým ohradzovali z opačnej strany: Malá Fatra bola 3. januára 1967 vyhlásená za chránenú krajinnú oblasť a 1. apríla 1988 povýšená na národný park. Dolina, ktorá bola miestom práce, sa tak stala miestom pravidiel.
In independent Slovakia Šútovo is an ordinary working village with a road, a railway, a quarry and nothing to tour. What people come for is up the side valley: the Šútovský vodopád, at about thirty-eight metres the highest waterfall in the Malá Fatra, reached by a half-day walk that starts past the quarry and ends on wet rock. It is free and unstaffed, so the constraints are the parking, which fills early on summer weekends, and the national park rules — marked paths only, no fires, no camping. The fall is at its fullest in the spring snowmelt and thins to almost nothing in a dry August, which is worth knowing before the drive.V samostatnom Slovensku je Šútovo bežná pracujúca dedina s cestou, železnicou, lomom a bez pamiatky na prehliadku. Chodí sa sem za tým, čo je hore v bočnej doline: za Šútovským vodopádom, ktorý má asi tridsaťosem metrov a je najvyšší v Malej Fatre. Vedie k nemu poldňová túra, ktorá sa začína popri lome a končí na mokrej skale. Je zadarmo a bez obsluhy, takže obmedzením je parkovisko, ktoré sa cez letné víkendy plní zavčasu, a pravidlá národného parku — len po značkovaných chodníkoch, žiadny oheň, žiadne stanovanie. Vodopád má najviac vody pri jarnom topení snehu a v suchom auguste sa stenčí takmer na nič, čo je dobré vedieť ešte pred cestou.
Sources consulted while researching this page. Follow them to read further — and to check us.Zdroje, z ktorých sme pri príprave tejto stránky vychádzali. Kliknite a čítajte ďalej — aj si nás overte.
Sixteen videos for this chapter.Šestnásť videí k tejto kapitole.