Was Grindelwald Switzerland named after a medieval dinosaur?

CLAIM: The town of Grindelwald, Switzerland (est. 1146 CE) is named after the dinosaur or pterosaur that once lived there. (Thomas, 2013, p. 18)

RESPONSE: While there is dragon mythology associated with the Klein Schreckhorn, a mountain south of Grindelwald, the creature described in the story not only has no dinosaur-identifying features at all, but is not associated with the name of the town either.

THE SCHRECKHORN LEGEND

A descriptive version of the myth is recorded by linguist Emanuel Friedli in his comprehensive 1908 Bärndütsch als Spiegel bernischen Volkstums: Grindelwald, which focused on the local folk life and history of the area, including the history of place names, farming habits, weather sayings, architecture, etc. This was the earliest and fullest printed version I was able to locate. According to Friedli, a "terrible dragon" once devastated the Grindelwald region, devouring herds of animals and killing people. A brave villager confronted the creature, binding and banishing it with a type of magic spell, forced it to follow him to the rocks of the Kleine Schreckhorn, drove it into a deep cave, and then sealed the cave entrance shut with an iron peg. (Friedli, 1980, Ch. 22; Mutabor Marchenstiftung, n.d.)

Nowhere in the myth do we get the impression that the creature being described is any kind of known dinosaur. Other than being vaguely reptilian (with Freidli noting drache, lind, and lindwurm in the local material function as terms connected with schlange, i.e. "snake/serpent"), we do not get the number of legs the creature has, limb posture or position relative to the body, distinctive gait, tail description, scales, wings, a reptilian or bird-like head, skull shape, teeth, or any other types of taxonomic diagnostic criteria. What's more, Freidli includes the story in a chapter on "mysterious/paranormal powers" and frames it as fantasy and fairy tale, not history or zoology. The story revolves around the danger encountered by those in the valley, a magical hero's conquest, a slaying or sealing away of the chaos that brought about the danger, and place-name explanation. It doesn't give any indication that it's describing a real flesh-and-blood organism, and as such shouldn't be used as "proof" that dragon stories are actually describing dinosaurs purely because no dinosaurian description can be gleaned from the text.

THE ETYMOLOGY OF GRINDELWALD

Friedli describes the name of the place that the dragon inhabited and was defeated as Wurmbärgli/Wurmer, not Grindelwald. What's more, the Bernese place-name dictionary records Grindelwald as derived from the Old High German grintil, meaning "a bar, crossbar, gate-bar, stakework, or palisade", plus walt/wald, meaning "forest". (Zinsli, 1987) This is likely a reference to the surrounding geography, with the name translating to "forest by a barrier or palisade". So why then does Thomas claim that the town was named after the dinosaur or pterosaur that lived there? 

While he doesn't cite a specific source for this claim, the most likely one is Bill Cooper's claims regarding Grendel, the monster in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, in his 1995 After the Flood, since Thomas mentions Cooper in the very next paragraph. (2013, p. 18) Cooper argues that Grindelwald should be read as "Grendelwood" (i.e., "Grendel's Wood), apparently taking the similarity between "Grindel" and "Grendel" as evidence that the town's name preserved the memory of a Grendel-like creature that once lived there, specifically a predatory late-surviving tyrannosaurid-type dinosaur. (1995, ch. 11) But this interpretation is not supported by the place-name evidence, since Grindelwald is better explained from the Old High German source names as already discussed. 

This creates two separate problems for Thomas' claim: not only is Grindelwald not best explained as a reference to Grendel, but Cooper's further attempt to identify Grendel himself as a dinosaur (or rather, an individual member of a population of similar creatures) does not hold up. In the actual poem, Grendel is depicted as a large, deformed humanoid descendant of the biblical Cain, meaning that Cooper has to reshape much of the poem to fit his hypothesis. For example, he interprets Grendel's inability to be harmed by ordinary weapons because he is protected by spells and enchantments as actually describing an impenetrable scaly hide that one might expect to find on a dinosaur. He attempts to portray Grendel's arms as weak and small, despite the poem's emphasis on his terrifying grip and overwhelming strength. Cooper's case as been carefully examined by Dr. Eve Siebert, an English literature scholar specializing in Old and Middle English, who walks through the argument in detail and shows how Cooper repeatedly injects dinosaurian features into the poem rather than deriving them from it. (Siebert, 2013)

CONCLUSION

Cases like this illustrate why creation-evolution dialogue needs careful and high-quality scholarship as opposed to shortcuts that try to inattentively collapse folklore, etymology, poetry and zoology into the same category of evidence. If young-Earth creationists want their arguments to be taken seriously, especially by those who embrace evolution, they must maintain the integrity to check sources carefully and represent them accurately. The idea that Grindelwald was named after Grendel, who was a member of a species of late-surviving dinosaurs that once lived in the area in the Middle Ages, should not be used as an argument by young-Earth creationists.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Cooper, B. (1995) After the Flood: The early post-flood history of Europe traced back to Noah. New Wine Press.

Friedli, E. (1908) Burnese German as a Reflection of Bernese Folk Culture (Vol. 2: Grindelwald). Projekt Gutenburg.

Thomas, B. (2013) Dinosaurs and the Bible. Harvest House Publishers.

Mutabor Marchenstiftung (n.d.) The Dragon in the Schreckhorn.

Zinsli, P. (1987) Place-name book of the Canton of Bern. A. Francke AG Verlag Bern.