Dragons in Norse, Chinese, and European mythologies. How?

Factual Questions
1

There are dragons in Norse mythology. I think Fafnhrd killed one. Or maybe he was one. But there were large lizard-y creatures that were supernatural.

There were dragons in Chinese mythology. They effected the rains, luck, war, life, and death. They were mostly benevolent supernatural lizard-like creatures.

There were also dragons in European mythology. Knights killed them. I think one saint was noted for taking one out. They were feared all over medieval Germany. Lizards sent from the Devil.

My question is: Why do they all look and sound mostly the same? Were the legends carried throughout trade routes or something like it? Or was it a conicidence?

My bro says it’s because they unearthed dinosaur bones, and likened them to dragons. Any help from the teeming millions?

Thanks!

2

The dino bone theory always worked for me. Are there any better theories?

3

Lots of possibilities for dragons. But before I go into them, allow me to rcommend an excellent book – “The First Fossil Hunters” by Adrienn Mayor, just publishede by Princeton University Press. (I’d hoped to cover the history of the griffin, but found she’d beaten me to it. Grr… But she probably did a better job than I would have.) Mayor does a lot on fossil bones influencing Greek Mythology. She’s now off working on fossil bones influencing other mythologies (including North American Indian). Keep an eye out for papers by her in “Archaeology” and other journals.
As for Dragons, I have to point out what has ben pointed out innumerable times by others – that Greek “Draco” really means “snake”, albeit a large one, and that a lot of dragons are really stylized snakes. See T.H. White’s wonderful book “The Bestiary” for further particulars. I’m sure that a lot of “dragon” mythology and imagery derives from snakes.

That said, your thought about bones is correct. IIRC, the Chinese called many fossil bones “Dragon Bones”. If you look in Mayor’s book, you’ll see on p. 35 a statue of a drago from Klagenfurt, Austria that has a head demonstrably modeled on a skull of a wooly rhinoceros. The essays of Willy ey See for instance, the collection “Willy Ley’s Exotic Zoology”) are filled ith examples of fossil bones being mistaken for other creatures. Please note that the bones rarely seem to be dinosaur bones in all of these cases – more recent fossils seem to be more prevalent and more likely to form the basis of mythological claims.

Finally, it has been suggested that lightning was seen as a flying golden “heavenly serpent”. I suspect that this was a common thread in Chinese dragons and in Hebrew myths, and possibly in others.

4

Keep in mind, Chinese dragons were very different, both in symbolic meaning and in form, from European ones. I’d elaborate but my spacebar has just broken.

–John

5

AFAIK, no one has ever actually disproved the “scary fire breathing lizardy things that slip through the gateways from other dimensions which form as a consequence of certain rare planetary and celestial alignments”. theory. The fossil theory only leads because the available evidence points to it. :smiley:

6

Yes, I don’t think dragons are really alike in all cultures-- Asian dragons are more like giant catfish than like the winged gila monster Euro type.

7

I have no argument with the fossil bone theory as an origin for some mythological beasts, but we should note that the only connection between European and Chinese dragons is that they are large mythological beasts that are vaguely serpentine. The idea that European and Chinese dragons ore in any way related is simply due to the “reconciling impulse” of some imaginative European.

Once the vaguely serpentine shapes of the beasts have been acknowldged, there is almost no relationship between European and Chinese dragons. The Chinese critter is only called “dragon” because that is the name that western culture assigns.

8

Marilyn Vos Savant was once asked this question. Her theory: When people are swapping stories around a campfire, they tend to make up tales about the hero encountering beasts. These beasts tend to be similar to everyday critters, but giant-sized. Take a snake or a lizard, blow it up a lot larger than life, and you have a dragon. As time goes on, the story gets embellished, adding wings, fire-breathing, hoards of treasure, damsels in distress, etc.

Snakes also tend to be supernatural in a lot of mythologies. A snake’s shedding its skin becomes a metaphor for resurrection; venom becomes a metaphor for plague; etc. If your tribe’s chief god has serpentine attributes, the neighboring tribes will tell stories of heros who slay serpents.

9

More thoughts on Why do dragons appear in cultures all over the world?

10

I’ll gladly acknowledge that Chinese dragons are very different from European dragons in powers and temperament. But it seems perverse to deny the very evident similarities. A European confronted with a Chinese dragon has no difficulty at all in identifying the creature as a Dragon. This is not invariably the case with mythological creatures that have a similar origin. (If you want proof, look at what happened in the case of the Western and Eastern versions of the Unicorn.)It seems pretty obvious to me that Chinese and European dragons share a common ancestry, and it seems likely that the “Monstrous Snake/ Lightning/(maybe) fossil bones” explanations can account for the similarities.

11

The dragons in Norse mythology were more serpent-like - the term is “lindorm” - today, “orm” means worm, but back in those days it would mean “snake” as well.

Regnar Lodbrog killed one to win the hand of a beautiful woman (sounds familiar, doesn’t it ?). The nordic variant didn’t fly and didn’t breathe fire, but it did spit venom - and it’s blood was poisonous. (Regnar took the precaution of wearing furs, treated with tar, to ward off the venom. He got his name, “Lodbrog”, from this protective suit.)

The archetypical lindorm is, of course “Midgaardsormen”, the serpent that is curled around the world. Thor once went fishing for it, using his ship’s anchor as hook and an ox’s head as bait. It got away, but it made for a good fishing story.

Fafner was a dwarf who got turned into a dragon - complex story, involving Odin, Loke, some gold under a curse etc. etc. He/it was eventually killed by Sigurd, hence Sigurd Fafnersbane. Fafner has a role somewhere in Wagner’s “Ring”, but I can’t remember exactly what or where.

Oh, the point: There’s not much of a parallel between these and the chinese dragons, except for size and ferocity.

S. Norman

12

The Pheonix is another mythical creature that appears across cultures Greek & Egyptian,Hindu,Chinese and maybe Aztech?- any ideas on where this bird born out of ashes comes from?

13

Yet, by naming the Quetzlcoatl as “feathered serpent” we have managed to keep that creature outside (most) European lists of dragons. It would be interesting to discover whether someone from China (with limited experience of Western art) would reciprocally recognize a European dragon as related to the Chinese creature that we call dragon. As noted by Spiny Norman, the Norse variants are markedly different from the Mediterranean versions, and we have lumped them together. Rather than seeing them as physically related, I wonder if we are responding to other factors (calling Dr. Jung!) that have been gathered together in European parlance depending on who first described them and when their images were brought to Europe.

14

Thanks everyone!

Spiny, you are right. In the cold light of day I remembered that Sigurd the Volsung killed Fafnir. Thanks for confirming it!

15

In “Das Rheingold” (opera 1 of the 4 by Wagner on the “Niebelungenlied”), Fasolt and Fafner/Fafnir (giants, IIRC in the opera) were brothers who built the residence of the gods.

[Long story of how Odin didn’t have the complete payment, so the brothers threatened to take Fricka (or Freya - can’t remember offhand), without whose golden apples the gods would wither and die, so Odin stole the lump of magic gold now made into a powerful ring from Alberich (who in turn stole it from the Rheinmaidens after they wouldn’t put out) and that lump of gold/powerful ring was just enough to make the proper payment, and the two brothers got to squabbling over the ring instead of Fricka/Freya (the apple goodess), and Fafnir killed Fasolt and disappeared with the magic gold/powerful ring presumably turning into a dragon and taking a nap/cigarette break during “Die Walkuere” [sorry, can’t figure out the umlauts], until he had to take the stage and die in “Siegfried” deleted for lack of space.]

Anyway, Fafnir dies when Siegfired kills him, having been egged on to the task by Alberich (remember Alberich?) who had assumed that Siegfired would be killed by Fafnir, and I have no idea how Alberich would get the gold/ring from Fafnir, he (Alberich) being the dwarf and Fafnir being the giant and all, what with Siegfried (strong and dumb, all that inbreeding does that) going to be dead. But Siegfried lives, Fafnir dies, Alberich dies, and we move on to Brunnhilde.

But that’s a whole 'nuther story right there.

[Check out Anna Russell’s take on the Wagner opera in her 18 minute monologue on “The Anna Russell Album?”. She says it better than I can, and she plays piano, to boot!]

16

The Native American dragon was Piasa. Long snake-like tail with wings. Killed by a hero.

As for the Celts, there is a dragon legend which is central to the legend of King Arthur (who was Celtic British, remember). It goes like this:

King Vortigern, a Celtic usurper who had made the fatal mistake of inviting the Saxon tribes to Britain, was trying to build a castle, but the foundations wouldn’t stay built–the work would be undone every night. His wise men told him, “sacrifice a boy who was born without a father.” The king’s messengers rode around, heard a kid insult another kid with the no-father thing, kidnapped the insulted kid and brought him before the King.

The kid, named Merlin, once told he was to be sacrificed, decided to prove what fools the king’s advisers were. He told the King to search below the foundations. The King did, found an underground cave with an underground pool, drained the pool and found two sleeping dragons, one red, one white. The dragons woke up and started fighting. IIRC the white dragon representing the Saxons was winning at first, but then the red dragon, representing the Britons/Celts/Welsh/Cymry gained the upper hand and chased Whitey off into the night sky.

The kid Merlin prophesized: the foundations were wrecked every night because the dragons would wake up and fight. Now you can finish it, but you, King Vortigern, will be burnt inside it by Ambrosius (a rival British chieftain). At first the Saxons will win, but a king will come who will chase them away for a time.

So Vortigern gets crisped, Ambrosius takes over the anti-Saxon resistance and dies, his lieutenant Uther Pendragon takes over, Uther commits some sneaky adultery to conceive King Arthur, Arthur takes the shiv out of the stone and is revealed as rightful king, Merlin (all grown up now) helps Arthur, etc. etc.

There’s also something about Merlin moving Stonehenge from Ireland to Britain using amazing engines, and the death of Ambrosius being foretold by a star in the shape of a dragon. I don’t know if the red and white dragons ever reappear in the legend, but you know eventually Arthur died and the Anglo-Saxons (the white dragon) eventually won for good and turned Britain into England. Except Wales, Scotland and Ireland remained Celtic.

So the Celts did have dragons. And that’s why there’s a red dragon on the flag of Wales.

17

I seem to recall reading somewhere that one theory of the dragon (certainly in medieval Europe) may have originated with the crocodile. This may seem far fetched at first, but just think of travellers tales, think of the croc surfacing and blowing the water from it’s snout (seen from a distance and thought to be smoke?)and there is a superficial resemblance to some of the earlier illustrations (especially with the fantastic creatures that some animals seem to mutate into on the parchment).

Just my two penn’orth

Walrus

18

Dragons out the wazoo!

19

Can someone answer that, I just wanted to quote this because have big lizards or fossil explain dragons is one thing but to have a pheonix in most cultures is crazy

20

When I was in college, one of my roommates as from Korea. One afternoon, I sketched out a little scene of the archangel Michael battling Satan in his form of a multi-headed dragon. Peering at what I had drawn, Bada (the roommate’s name) asked what the thing was. I told him it was a dragon and his next question was “Why does it have wings?”