Druid Stone (Morschach)
The Druidenstein is a large erratic block above Morschach in the canton of Schwyz .
description
The stone lies at an altitude of 758 m above sea level. M. northeast above the village on a hilltop of the Grossegg. The stone with the dimensions of 7.5 × 6 meters on its surface and a volume of around 56 cubic meters rests almost horizontally on a smaller block of lime. On its surface it is partly overgrown with grass and moss. The depressions are of natural origin. An ash tree grows on its edge, and at the opposite end the distance to the ground is almost three meters.
The Druidenstein is surrounded by other smaller boulders and by the lawn of the Axenstein Golf Club, whose restaurant is barely a hundred meters from the stone. From the “Schwyzerhaus” bus stop, it can be easily reached in around a quarter of an hour via a marked hiking trail.
View from the southeast
surface
Support on the lime block
Well for the inscription
history
When it retreated to the Alps after the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, the Reuss glacier coming from the Gotthard Pass left several boulders in the Morschach area. The most striking of them is the druid stone.
The fact that the gate, formed from three boulders, could have been a sacrificial altar by Celtic druids or a portal dolmen is more likely to be attributed to imaginative romantic ideas than to historical facts; No Celtic settlements have been found in that area.
Ambros Eberle, the owner of the Grand Hotel Axenstein, built in 1869, had a path to the Druidenstein laid out for hotel guests. In an oval recess two meters wide and one meter high, he had an inscription painted on it, which is no longer legible today. «The stone is old! / Made by the force of nature / Or human power / As a sacrificial table / Or as a throne / During the great liquidation / From Olympias Höh'n / Assaulted by Mercury Föhn / He is a throne and an altar / Like nobody is and nobody was. »
The Schwyz writer Meinrad Inglin , the great-grandfather of the hotelier Ambros Eberle, described the boulders from Morschach in his novel Werner Amberg : «There have been granite blocks here where they basically don't belong for millennia, they were on a mighty glacier from the higher southern primeval mountains Hiked here and remained lying as strange boulders down to the lake on the limestone cliffs of this mountain foot. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Swiss inventory of stone monuments
- ↑ morschach.ch
- ↑ Luzern.com
- ↑ ancestor name coat of arms and more
Coordinates: 46 ° 59 ′ 17.2 " N , 8 ° 37 ′ 21" E ; CH1903: 690,058 / 204796