Sport transfer over the channel: elitist migration and the advent of football and ice hockey in Switzerland

Abstract

This article analyses the early cultural transfer of British sports to Switzerland by the example of football and ice hockey. After an assessment of Anglo-Swiss political, economic and cultural relations during the Victorian period, it identifies four main channels, all of which linked to elitist migration, through which football and ice hockey were transferred to Switzerland: British student and merchant communities in Switzerland, Swiss migrants returning from Britain, boarding schools in Western and Eastern Switzerland (from which the games were also transferred to other continental European countries) and British tourism to the Swiss Alps. A final section assesses the pattern of popularization of the two games in Switzerland. Both football and ice hockey were considered national sports by the end of the interwar period at the very latest. This process of appropriation included cultural, social, economic, geographical and gender issues. Players became role models of masculine heroes – footballers rather of an urban and working-class type, ice hockey players rather of a rural and alpine type, whilst their elitist character of the pioneering period largely disappeared. Nevertheless, the two games’ Anglo-Saxon roots were never forgotten, and unlike in many other countries, English sport terminology remained predominant in Switzerland.