Sports history | December 31, 2023
The British writer Arthur Conan Doyle learned to ski during his stays in Switzerland. He helped to popularize skiing and even claimed ownership of skiing in Switzerland. A sports historian sees the whole thing in a more nuanced way.
The legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in Meiringen. Photos: Keystone
Doyle, who was in Davos in 1894 because his wife was suffering from tuberculosis, ordered skis from Norway and trained on the hill opposite the hotel in Davos, the Jakobshorn, as can be read in Vincent Delay’s “Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Switzerland”. . Inspired by his success, the writer set off on a ski tour from Davos to Arosa with his skis. “When we got there, we felt the pride of pioneers.”
Doyle wrote a report about this expedition in the “Strand Magazine”, the London newspaper in which he also published the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This may have played a role in the English’s enthusiasm for Switzerland. Delay claims in his book that Conan Doyle is credited with introducing skiing to Switzerland.
Even in 1970, skiing was already a popular leisure activity.
“We probably don’t just owe it to the author of Sherlock Holmes,” nuanced sports historian Grégory Quin from the University of Lausanne to the Keystone-SDA news agency. Together with Laurent Tissot, Jean-Philippe Leresche and Daniel Yule, the historian Quin wrote the recently published book “Skiland Schweiz”.
A Scandinavian practice
“The first ski club in Glarus registered in Switzerland dates back to 1893,” explained Quin. So a year before Doyle stayed in Davos. “So there is actually already a chronological problem.” Scandinavians who came to Switzerland to trade in northern Switzerland brought skis with them in the 1880s and 1890s.
In Saas Fee, people were already queuing for the lift in 1994.
Doyle became interested in skiing when he read a newspaper report by Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen about his crossing of Greenland in 1888. He was not alone in either Europe or Switzerland: young people from Glarus not only founded Switzerland’s first ski club, but also encouraged local craftsmen to make skis – copying the Norwegians before developing their own expertise – and competitions organize, explains Quin in his book.
Skiing was initially a sport for students. “And the first ski club in Glarus, like the later ones in the rest of Switzerland, were initially clubs of wealthy city dwellers,” says Quin.
Always better material
It wasn’t just Conan Doyle who was impressed by skiing in Switzerland. Three decades later, the French writer Collette also reported on her skiing experiences in Switzerland. When she was in Gstaad or St. Moritz in the 1920s, she explained in an exchange of letters that she kept falling.
By this time, skiers already had better equipment – “like skis with edges” – and began to venture onto the slopes. Conan Doyle still had to “more or less” tie the skis to his boots. However, it would take several decades before skiing actually became established in Switzerland.
Skiing is a new field of research for historians
The history of skiing in Switzerland is a new area of research. Sports departments at universities have so far hardly dealt with the humanities and social sciences, history or sociology, says historian Grégory Quin. And sport is not a very popular topic in history departments.
However, historians in Switzerland have exceptional archive holdings, emphasized Quin in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency. Because Switzerland, unlike its neighboring countries, did not experience war in the 20th century, the documents were therefore not destroyed.
The St. Moritz Ski Club minutes, for example, have been kept since the ski club was founded. According to Quin, historians in Switzerland have sources that could not be found in either Chamonix (F) or Garmisch (D).
2023-12-31 15:06:37
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