Heroics That Never Took Place
The most famous William Tell statue is in Altdorf, where his heroics reportedly took place. It is the first stop in a pilgrimage of Swiss fathers and sons, and is visited by thousands of non-Swiss tourists. Next is a chapel on the site of Tell’s home, the lakeside pier where he was placed on a boat headed to a dungeon, and a ledge where Tell freed himself during a storm, sprang from the boat to safety, and drowned the baddie Gessler and his goons. Unfortunately, all the statues, monuments, and sites on the William Tell pilgrimage circuit commemorate heroic deeds that never occurred, and a man who never was.
Today, historians and scholars agree that neither Tell nor the Hapsburg agent, Albrecht Gessler, had ever existed. Indeed, the whole story was cribbed from a tenth century Viking legend about a man named Toko. He was forced to shoot an apple off his son’s head, and reserved a second arrow for the baddie who had made him do it. However, the Swiss were quite attached to the Tell tale. When an eighteenth century historian wrote a book detailing the legend’s Viking origins, they burned his book in public. They would have burned him, too, if he had not apologized.