Background jokes, in the Asterix albums, are often just as carefully constructed as the main plot. One striking example appears in the fairground scene in the original French album of Asterix and the Big Fight, featuring a wooden roller coaster with the sign “Montagnes Slaves.” To fully appreciate the joke, it helps to understand what the normal French term for a roller coaster actually means.

The Literal Meaning of Montagnes Russes

In French, a roller coaster is called montagnes russes. Translated literally, this means “Russian mountains.”

This is not metaphorical language or poetic exaggeration. The expression refers directly to the historical origins of the attraction.

Why “Russian Mountains”?

The name goes back to 17th- and 18th-century Russia, where winter amusement rides were built using large wooden frameworks covered in ice. These artificial hills were especially popular around Saint Petersburg.

People would slide down the frozen slopes on sleds, reaching considerable speeds. These constructions were literally man-made mountains designed for entertainment. When similar attractions appeared in Western Europe—especially in France—they were identified by their place of origin and became known as montagnes russes.

Over time, the technology evolved. Ice was replaced by rails, sleds by wheeled carts, and gravity-driven slides became the roller coasters we recognize today. The name, however, remained unchanged in French.

A Linguistic Irony: American Hills in Russia

There is an ironic twist to this story. In Russian, roller coasters are not called “Russian mountains” at all. Instead, they are known as:американские горки (amerikanskiye gorki) Literally: “American hills.”

The reason is similar: modern roller coasters were popularized and industrialized in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Russians named the ride after its perceived place of origin, just as the French had done earlier. The result is a linguistic mirror: French speakers ride “Russian mountains,” while Russians ride “American hills.”

The Asterix Twist: Montagnes Slaves

In the scene that Goscinny and Uderzo came up with, the Romans present their own version of the attraction, labeled Montagnes Slaves(“Slave Mountains”). You might think, and probably there is some truth in it, that slaves translates directly to the English word for slaves. But … slaves in French is esclaves … Slaves here should be read as Slavic. And since Russian is a Slavic word, this probably makes more sense.

Etymologically the words slaves and esclaves share the same Latin root, slav. Sclavus, which originally meant “Slav.” This is because, during the early Middle Ages, many Slavic people from Eastern Europe were captured and sold into slavery in the Roman/Byzantine world.

A Small Sign with a Long History

What looks like a throwaway gag is actually rooted in centuries of cultural exchange and linguistic evolution. From frozen hills in imperial Russia, to American steel coasters, to a Roman fairground powered by slaves, Asterix compresses the entire journey into one perfectly chosen phrase. Or I might be over analysing this …