I'm an American, so I had no clue about its significance

Shawne Fielding Swiss ambassador's wife

But the much-respected Unspunnen Stone disappeared from the Interlaken museum in 1984, having been stolen by a group of activists called the Beliers.

The Beliers campaign to achieve the political reunification of the Jura canton, which they claim still has much territory left behind in the canton of Bern.

Hostage

They want to establish a separate state of Jura, which, unlike the rest of Switzerland, would be a member of the European Union.

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And so the Unspunnen Stone was taken as a political hostage.

Mystery and rumour surrounded the whereabouts of the boulder over the next 15 years, and many people wondered if it had been broken up and destroyed.

But then in 1999 a photographer, Michael von Graffenried, was invited to Belgium where he was led, blindfolded, to a cellar somewhere in Brussels.

He was able to photograph the stone, and its images reassured Switzerland that Unspunnen lived on.

Sweetie

Then after a further two years of silence, the stone turned up at a horse show in Saignelegier.

A young girl appeared from the middle of the crowd and approached Shawne Fielding, the wife of the Swiss ambassador to Berlin.

The girl pointed to a huge gift-wrapped object sitting on a trolley beside her and said to Mrs Fielding: "We hereby present you with a big sweetie from the Swiss Alps. We hope you will be able to digest it better than we digested the separation of Jura."

The paper was unravelled to reveal the Unspunnen Stone.

Mrs Fielding said she had no idea at first at what she'd been given.

" I'm from Texas, I'm an American, so I had no clue about its significance," she said.

"Then I noticed the crowd had gone absolutely silent and the police officers came running."

The girl disappeared back into the crowd and was not found again.

Interlaken will play host to the Alpine games

As this month's annual Swiss Alpine Games and wrestling festival got under way at Nyon, it was hoped that the Unspunnen Stone would be able to reclaim its place of honour from the impostor boulder that has been representing it during its 17 years in captivity.

No competition

But sadly, it looks as though the Unspunnen boulder has had its hurling heyday.

The Beliers' political cause has left its mark - beautifully engraved all over the stone are the 12 yellow stars of the European Union.

And Unspunnen now no longer weighs enough to qualify as a competition stone.