The Alpine Dragons of Switzerland
Image credit: Photo by Ali Müftüoğulları
We don’t have many (any?) local dragon lore in my home country of the United States of America, so I love hearing dragon tales when traveling through Europe.
The dragons of Switzerland, naturally, are dragons of the Alps.
No little cave tucked into a hill for Swiss dragons. No settling for taking over a castle, either, like the dragon Graouilly in Metz.
Swiss dragons have the Alps as their playground.
The Swiss have told dragon stories for centuries. I couldn’t even begin to cover them all here. I have found, however, a few famous Swiss dragons worthwhile for every Alps lover to know.
The Savior Dragons of Mont Pilatus
The most famous Swiss dragons live on Mount Pilatus in central Switzerland, near Lucerne. (Side note, your best bet for a dragon sighting in Switzerland is in the Lucerne area.)
Purportedly, the Mont Pilatus dragons are benevolent creatures, so fear them not. They even once sheltered a lost young man in their cave all winter, according to legend.
He had fallen into a steep pit when trying to find his way down the mountain toward home and the dragons rescued him and brought them to their cave, where he ate dragon food (which doesn’t sound particularly appetizing: “oozy liquid,” anyone?) until he could ride out of the cave on a dragon’s tail.
Six months of dragon food ruined his stomach, though, and he didn’t live long after he made it home.
So maybe, if ever you get rescued by a dragon, don’t eat the dragon food.
But hey. Nice dragons. Who doesn’t like that?
The Vicious Dragon of the Saint Beatus Caves
Okay, not everyone wants nice dragons.
So I’ve got a scary one for you: Overlooking Lake Thun, also in central Switzerland, the St. Beatus caves housed a vicious dragon that persecuted the local population by—wait for it—shooting lasers from its eyes.
Now how is that for a dragon, eh?
Fortunately for the locals, a monk showed up. The future Saint Beatus braved a face-off with the eye-laser-shooting beast, holding a cross in one hand and making the form of the cross across his head and torso with the other.
The traumatized dragon threw himself into the lake, never to reemerge.
I guess Saint Beatus then moved into the cave and set up house as a hermit, which is another story entirely.
Could Be Some Truth Behind the Legends
Researchers in Bern published an article in the Swiss Journal of Geoscience in 2023 that they had found fossilized remains of giant lizards in the Emmenthal region, proving that monitor lizards lived in the area some 17 million years ago.
Could be there’s some truth to the popular belief that Switzerland once swarmed with farmer- and livestock-eating snakes, worms, and dragons.
That the creatures of Swiss legend most often had feet—and therefore wouldn’t count as snakes and serpents and worms—the legends indeed align with monitor lizards as we know them today, which is far more like enormous iguanas (although, yeah, very, very poisonous).
Want to See a Dragon?
As far as my research can tell me, no one has spotted a dragon in Switzerland in quite some time, but no one has said they’re no longer here, either.
Maybe you should come for a visit, see if you can spot a dragon for yourself? (If you do see one, I’d better hear the tale!)