The Walser are the speakers of the Walser German dialects, a variety of Highest Alemannic.

They inhabit the Alps of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as well as on the fringes of Italy and Austria.

The Walser people are named after the Wallis (Valais), the uppermost Rhône River valley, where they settle from roughly the tenth century in the late phase of the migration of the Alamanni, crossing from the Bernese Oberland; because of linguistic differences among the Walser dialects, it is supposed that there were two independent immigration routes.From the upper Wallis, they begin to spread south, west and east between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the so-called Walser migrations (Walserwanderungen).

The causes of these further population movements, the last wave of settlement in the higher valleys of the Alps, are not entirely clear.

A provocative series of events not too far from the Walser settlements may have precipitated the migration.

In 1307, Knights Templar in France, under severe persecution, are arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France.

The Alps provide an ideal and easily defended refuge, a place already settled by other Templars in a town named after Jerusalem: Sion, Switzerland, the capital of Valais, the namesake region of the Walser.

This wholesale evacuation of Templars likely has the effect of displacing localized Walser settlements.

Walser legend asserts that the migration and subsequent "free man" status was granted expressly because of their association with Templar resettlement.