The Heavy Package: How Two Granite Stones Changed Swiss Winter

Shortly before Christmas in 1880, the postman delivered an unusually heavy parcel to Mr Johannes Badrutt, founder of the Kulm Hotel. It had travelled a long way from a British guest whom Badrutt knew from the previous winter season. Inside were two polished granite stones fitted with iron handles: curling stones, as his British guests had taught him, used to play their beloved game on perfectly smooth ice.

Badrutt grasped the unspoken message immediately. His British guests were hoping for a new pastime, and disappointing them would hardly benefit his fledgling hospitality business. He promptly commissioned the production of additional stones in the Engadin, modelled on the English (most likely Scottish) originals.

From Scottish Lochs to Alpine Lakes

Curling’s origins lie in late medieval Scotland, where the game was played on frozen lochs as early as the 16th century. The earliest known reference dates to 1541, while paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder suggest that similar ice games were also enjoyed across parts of continental Europe.

In St. Moritz, the first documented game on a frozen lake took place in 1883. Britons versus Britons, naturally. They soon founded the St Moritz Curling Club, with Davos following shortly thereafter. In 1898, the two clubs faced each other for the first time, competing for the Jackson Cup, donated by St Moritz guest N. Lane Jackson. That trophy is still awarded today.

For decades, the Jackson Cup was regarded as Switzerland’s most prestigious curling tournament, effectively an unofficial national championship. The cup travelled between the Bernese Oberland, Graubünden, and the Vaud Alps, with victories in the 1920s carrying particular renown.

Around the turn of the century, a British curler enthused in the Alpine Post: “In St Moritz, we are surely in one of the best places in the world to further develop this ancient sport.” He praised the Engadin winter as “a time of absolute tranquillity, cloudless blue skies and radiant, warming sunshine.”

A British Pastime Becomes Swiss Tradition

What began as British leisure became one of Switzerland’s enduring winter traditions following the founding of the Swiss Curling Association in 1942. Whether the unknown sender who dispatched those stones to the Kulm Hotel in 1880 lived to see curling take root in Switzerland remains uncertain. Yet the special bond between the British and their “winter hotel” endures — not least on the curling ice of the Kulm.