Christian dragons embody the sins of wrath, greed and gluttony, just like Smaug in The Hobbit. Furthermore, in Norse mythology the concept of wyrm is embodied by Níðhöggr in the Prose Edda which “gnaws at the roots of Yggdrasil” (Reed, slide 4). Visual depictions of wyrm are dragon-like but vermiform, resembling an insect-like monster that can devour your buried corpse, and they’re seen on the backsides of Anglo-Saxon memorial crosses and other Christian structures. Wyrm is an Old English umbrella-term for all that which slithers on the earth, including maggots, worms and snakes, and it stands as a symbol for death and the decay of corpses in their graves (Reed, slide 3). Much like Smaug the cave-dwelling dragon in Tolkien’s The Hobbit which takes a mountain as its habitat, the ancient Greek dragon Python which lived in the caves of Mount Parnassus was also slain by a mighty hero, Apollo (Bulfinch 43).Īlthough the “Western” dragon tradition may be Greek in origin, if not then Babylonian or a much older civilization for the “Eastern” dragon tradition is much older, dragons in medieval England derived from a much different concept, wyrm. Both medieval European dragons and modern fantasy dragons are more lizard-like than snake-like overall, with early Anglo-Saxon dragons even being vermiform. Admittedly, there are more two-legged dragons in medieval heraldry and more four-legged dragons in modern fantasy, but the two-legged dragons of medieval heraldry could arguably be called wyverns rather than dragons, even though they meet all the criteria for what a dragon should be, including the ability to breathe fire, and medieval bestiaries show four-legged dragons as well (Barnet 5). Seven-headed dragon from the Muslim world in the Middle Agesĭragons shown in monastic bestiaries and described in epic poetry throughout the Middle Ages all agree that a dragon can breathe fire, and, in a world without guns, a giant fire-breathing beast must have been terrifying to imagine. We’ll conclude by taking a look at a few modern fantasy dragons in popular entertainment and nitpick their differences from the dragons of the past. Then, we’ll have to remove ourselves from Europe to observe the majestic dragons of the East because it could potentially be argued that the dragons that swam and flew from Chinese, Persian and Turkish cultures did more to influence what we think of when we say “dragon” today than the dragons of ancient Greece and Rome. Anyone can tell you what a modern fantasy dragon looks like, but do dragons in our society have the same function as dragons in the Middle Ages? What are the different magical and physical characteristics of dragons throughout history? In order to give these questions justice we’re forced to learn a lot about dragons as they were depicted in medieval Europe-learn how to tame them if you will. The medieval dragon existed in such things as heraldry, aquamanilia, architecture and folklore. Dragons in the Middle Ages, too, were everywhere, but not on cotton T-shirts, video games and plastic cups from the dollar store. Let’s talk about dragons! Today, dragons are everywhere. Welcome to the blog all about depicting the Middle Ages realistically in fantasy. The Difference Twixt Real Historical Dragons & Dragons From Modern Fantasy Mediums
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