At the beginning of the 13th century, the population of the mountain valleys of Uri decided that a bridge over the river Reuss would be a fine thing, as it would provide merchants with a direct route to connect the markets of Germany with those of Italy. But they couldn’t figure out how to bridge the gap of Schöllenen with the means at their disposal. In disgust, the bailiwick exclaimed ‘The Devil shall build it!’ And the Devil appeared to the people of Uri and proposed them a deal: He would build them the bridge but in turn, the first soul to pass the bridge would be his for keeps.
The people all agreed on that and the pact was sworn, and the Devil built the bridge. Now he people had the bridge, but they wouldn’t ask anybody to pay the price. Instead, a farmer took his goat to the bridge and drove it to cross over to the other side. The Devil erupted in rage at the deception and took up a large boulder to smash the bridge down into the gap. But an old crone scratched a cross into the boulder and he missed the bridge. The boulder landed near Göschenen.
With the bridge in place, merchants were now able to travel from Germany to Italy by a much more direct route than hitherto when they had to go either by way of France or Austria. The bridge and the pass provided a steady income to the mountain people. The pass crossed the St. Gotthard into the Ticino, what is today the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.
Today you still may see two bridges crossing the Reuss near to where the original bridge had been built, and all three bridges are called Devil’s Bridge. The original bridge built in the 13th century was destroyed in 1799, when the Russians under General Suvorov and the French under Napoleon had a particularly pointed discussion over it. The destruction of the bridge meant abject poverty for the region, as trade routes now ran by way of the Grisons.
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian Tsar wanted to commemorate the heroes of the Napoleonic Wars, and Switzerland ceded some territory to the Russian state (not the crown) to erect a monument just beside the meanwhile newly built bridge. The memorial is dedicated to ‘The Heroic Combatants a the side of General Field-marshal Count Suvorov, Prince of Italy, who lost their lives during the retreat through the Alps’. The visit of this monument was one of the stops for President Medvedev during his visit in Switzerland in September.
If you use the motorway connecting the German speaking part of Switzerland with the Ticino, you pass over the newest of the Devil’s Bridges. Underneath it, and not to be seen from the motorway, is the replacement bridge, and nearby the remains of the original bridge may still be seen.
What I find particularly interesting about the myth of the bridge is for one that our forebears obviously believed that animals had souls, and second that advanced technology was quite obviously associated with the Devil.
Further reading
History in The Alps: Bernina Pass
The Queen Astrid Chapel
Good Queen Berta in Switzerland
No comments:
Post a Comment