The Penguin Book of Dragons

by The Penguin Book of Dragons (retail) (epub)

  Finding in words fit things to say

  About their prince in praise of bold deeds,

  Adjudging his glory. So it is just

  That a man should laud his lord and friend,

  Hold love in heart when hence he must

  From bodily life be led away.

  Thus the tribe of Geats their grief expressed,

  His close companions, for their dear king’s death,

  Said he was of all the world’s kings,

  Of men the mildest and most gracious,

  Kindest to his people and keenest for praise.

  SIGURD, THE SLAYER OF FÁFNIR1

  The most famous Old Norse dragon-slayer was the hero Sigurd (Sigurðr), who slew the dragon Fáfnir. The story of their battle was ubiquitous in Scandinavian literature and art. The version presented here was part of the Völsunga saga, a poetic story about the fortunes of the Völsung clan composed around 1275. As a boy, Sigurd was fostered by a dwarf named Reginn, who told him about a great treasure guarded by his brother, a giant named Fáfnir, who had turned into a dragon because of his excessive greed. To aid Sigurd in the battle, Reginn forged a formidable sword named Wrath (gramr in Old Norse). The Sigurd legend is unusual because it depicted a dragon that had once had the form of a man. Like the monster in the Beowulf poem, Fáfnir lusted after gold and other treasure, but he did not fly or breathe fire. Instead, reminiscent of the giant serpents of Roman antiquity, he slithered along the ground and emitted clouds of venom, while the weight of his vast coils caused the earth to tremble when he moved.

  Now Sigurd and Reginn ride up onto the heath. They come to the path where Fáfnir was accustomed to slither when he went to get water. And it is said that the crag was thirty fathoms high where he lay near the water when he drank.

  Then Sigurd said, “You told me, Reginn, that this dragon was no bigger than a heath-snake, but his tracks look very big to me.”

  Reginn said, “Dig a pit and sit in it. And when the wyrm slithers to the water, stab him in the heart and kill him dead. For that you will win great fame.”

  Sigurd said, “What happens if I am hit by the serpent’s blood?”

  Reginn replies, “I can’t give you any advice if you are afraid of everything. You are unlike your kinsmen in courage.”

  Now Sigurd rides along the heath but Reginn turned and rode off in great fear. Sigurd dug a pit. And while he was doing this work, an old man with a long beard came up to him and asked what he was doing there. Sigurd told him.

  Then the old man replied, “That is ill-advised. Dig more pits and let the blood run into them, but sit in one and stab the wyrm in the heart.” Then the man turned away and vanished. Sigurd dug the pits as he had been told.

  And when the wyrm slithered to the water, there was a big earthquake such that all the land nearby trembled and shook. He snorted forth poison all over the path in front of him, but Sigurd was not afraid nor frightened by the din. And when the wyrm slithered over the pit, Sigurd thrust with his sword under the left shoulder, all the way up to the hilts. Then Sigurd leapt up out of the pit and pulled the sword out and his whole arm was bloody up to the shoulder. And when the huge wyrm felt its death-wound, he lashed about with head and tail so that everything burst asunder that was in his way. And when Fáfnir received his death-wound, he asked,

  “Who are you, and who is your father, and who is your kin, that you are so bold that you dare wield weapons against me?”

  Sigurd answers, “My kin is unknown to men. I am called Noble Beast and I have no father nor mother, and I always go alone.”

  Fáfnir replies, “If you have no father nor mother, from what wondrous being were you born? And even though you do not tell me your name on my death-day, you know that you are lying.”

  He answers, “I am called Sigurd, and my father Sigmund.”

  Fáfnir asks, “Who urged you on to do this deed, and why did you yield to his urging? Had you not heard, that all folk are afraid of me and of my Helm of Terror? Young man with flashing eyes, you had a brave father.”

  Sigurd answers, “A brave heart urged me to do it and I was helped to get it done by a strong arm and sharp sword that you have now felt. Few are strong in old age if they are weak in their youth.”

  Fáfnir says, “I know that if you grew up among your kinsmen, you would know how to fight when angry. But it is more surprising to me that a prisoner captured in war should have dared to fight me, since few captives are bold in battle.”

  Sigurd said, “Do you blame me for being far from my kinsmen? Even though I was taken captive, I was not bound, and you have found that I am free.”

  Fáfnir replied, “You take whatever I say as words of hatred. But the gold that I have owned will be your bane.”

  Sigurd said, “Everyone wants to keep all the gold until that one day, but everyone has to die sometime.”

  Fáfnir said, “In few things will you follow my judgment, but if you sail the sea unwarily, you will drown; it is better to wait on land until it’s calm.”

  Sigurd said, “Tell me then, Fáfnir, if you are so very wise: who are those Norns who take sons from their mothers?”

  Fáfnir answers, “They are many and various. Some are from the family of gods, some from the family of elves, and some are daughters of Dvalinn.”

  Sigurd said, “What is that holm called, where Surtr and the gods will shed each other’s blood?”

  Fáfnir answers, “It is called Uncreated.” And Fáfnir said further, “Reginn, my brother, caused my death, and it pleases me that he will cause your death too, and it will go as he wanted.” Fáfnir spoke again: “I wore the Helm of Terror before all men, ever since I lay down upon my brother’s inheritance, and I snorted venom all around me so that no one dared come near me, and I feared no weapon. I never encountered so many men before me that I didn’t think myself much stronger, and all were afraid of me.”

  Sigurd said, “That Helm of Terror that you spoke about gives victory to few, because whoever comes among many will find out eventually that no one is bolder than everyone else.”

  Fáfnir replies, “I advise you to take your horse and ride away as quickly as possible, because it often happens that he who receives his death-wound takes his own revenge.”

  Sigurd said, “That is your advice, but I will do otherwise. I will ride to your lair and take that vast amount of gold which your kinsmen have possessed.”

  Fáfnir replies, “You will be riding to a place where you will find enough gold to last you all your days, but that same gold will be your bane and that of everyone else who owns it.”

  Sigurd stood up and said, “I would ride home without this great treasure if I knew that I would never die. But every brave man wants to control all his wealth until that one day. But you, Fáfnir, lie in your death-throes until Hel takes you.”

  And then Fáfnir dies.

  WINGED DRAGONS OF THE NORTH

  Fáfnir was not the only dragon to haunt the northern wastelands. Despite J. R. R. Tolkien’s claim that dragons were “as rare as they are dire” in Scandinavian literature, many Old Norse and Icelandic sagas composed in the later Middle Ages told of violent encounters between hardy warriors and winged dragons.1 In the Saga of Ketil Trout (Ketils saga hœngs), a Norwegian chieftain named Ketil Trout of Hrafnista squared off against a flying reptile that attacked him while he was traveling. Likewise, the Saga of Þiðrekr of Bern (Þiðreks saga af Bern), whose titular character was based on the Ostrogothic king of Italy Theodoric the Great (d. 526), related how Þiðrekr and his companion Fasold interrupted a dragon as it attempted to devour a hapless victim whole. In the ensuing battle, they slew the monster to set him free. In these legend-shrouded stories, the dragons were predatory beasts of nature. They did not speak or hoard treasure like Fáfnir. Instead, they were simply one of the many perils that confronted those who were brave or foolhardy enough to traverse th
e harsh wilderness of the northern world.

  (A) THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED2

  One evening after sunset Ketil took his ax in hand and went north toward an island. But he had not gotten very far away from the farm when he saw a dragon flying southward toward him from some rocky cliffs. It had a coil and tail like a wyrm but wings like a dragon. Fire seemed to burn forth from its eyes and maw. Ketil thought he had never seen such a fish or any other such evil creature, and he would rather have had to defend himself against a host of men. The dragon attacked him, but Ketil defended himself well and manfully with his ax. So it went for a long while until Ketil was able to strike the coil and cut the dragon in two. It fell down dead.

  (B) RESCUED FROM THE DRAGON’S MAW3

  They [Þiðrekr and Fasold] see a huge flying dragon (flugdreka). It is both long and stout; it has thick legs and claws both sharp and long. Its head is huge and terrifying. It flies along close to the ground and everywhere its claws rake the earth, it was as if the sharpest iron blade had struck it. In its mouth it is carrying a man [Sistram] and had swallowed his legs and everything up to his arms. His head and shoulders were sticking out of its mouth. His arms were in the lower jaws, and the man was still alive . . . They leap from their horses and draw their swords and both strike the dragon at the same time. Þiðrekr’s sword cut somewhat, but Fasold’s not at all. Although the dragon was big and strong, it was beyond its power to carry the man along with the weapons, and it could not rise aloft to fly or to defend itself, as it would have done if it were free. Then the man in the dragon’s mouth said to Fasold: “I see that your sword does not cut into him because he is so tough-skinned. Take the sword here in the dragon’s jaws; it is more likely to cut most anything that comes under its blade, if a brave man wields it . . . Strike carefully. My legs have gone way down into the dragon’s throat and you should take care because I do not want to be wounded by my own sword . . . Strike hard, good lads, because the evil dragon is squeezing me so hard with his jaws that blood is springing from my mouth and I do not know how all this is going to turn out.” Now they both struck with mighty strokes until the dragon was dead. The man was now set free from the dragon’s mouth.

  BOOKS OF MONSTERS

  Dragon Lore in Medieval Europe

  In the decades around the year 1000, the skies of northern Europe were alive with dragons. Writing in the 1040s, the monastic chronicler Rodulfus Glaber reported that a great dragon had appeared over the city of Auxerre on Christmas Eve in the year 997. Traveling from north to south and shimmering with a great brightness, this monster terrified onlookers. In medieval Europe, a dragon aroused fear not only because it was an apex predator with the potential to lay waste to human habitation with its fiery breath but also because its sudden manifestation was a portent of bad things to come. Like the appearance of comets and eclipses, the arrival of a dragon anticipated calamity in one form or another for those who witnessed it. In this case, it heralded a civil war that ravaged Burgundy the very next year at the cost of many lives. As chroniclers like Glaber attested, dragons had multivalent meanings for premodern audiences. Medieval authors were as indebted to the musings of Roman authorities like Pliny for information about the habitat and diet of these great winged serpents as they were to the writings of early Christian authors who stressed their diabolical origins. But they also freighted dragons with new meanings drawn from the currents of oral tradition, local folklore, and even firsthand experience to craft new stories about their nature and significance for generations of later readers.

  A TREASURY OF ANCIENT DRAGON LORE1

  Bishop Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636) was a Spanish church prelate with a voracious appetite for knowledge about the world and its inhabitants. Throughout his lifetime, he compiled a massive encyclopedia of ancient learning about subject matter as diverse as astronomy and animals, roads and rocks, buildings and birds. Known as the Etymologies, this towering compendium distilled and preserved traditions of classical knowledge for future generations. Isidore approached this diverse range of topics with a common methodology. He believed that an understanding of the origin and definition of words was the key to unlocking information about the natural world and human societies. For this reason, every entry in the Etymologies began with a derivation of the root meaning of the terms related to the topic under discussion. While this may seem like a specious approach to modern readers, the Etymologies was a very popular resource in medieval abbeys because it served as a digest of ancient knowledge presented with the authority of a bishop. Isidore’s treatment of dragons and the gems that allegedly grew on their heads was little more than a distillation of anecdotes found in Pliny’s Natural History (see pp. 23–25), but it informed a much wider readership throughout Christian Europe who may not have had easy access to the Roman naturalist’s work.

  The dragon is larger than all other serpents or even all other animals on the earth. The Greeks call this creature draconta, from which we derive the Latin word draco. Drawn forth from its caves, the dragon often takes flight and disturbs the air. It is plumed with a small mouth and narrow windpipes through which it draws breath and sticks out its tongue. Its strength lies not in its teeth, but in its tail and it kills by lashing rather than by biting. Moreover, the dragon is unharmed by venom, but it is not necessary for it to use venom to cause death because whatever it wraps itself around soon perishes. The elephant is not safe from it, even though its body is huge. For, lying in wait on the paths along which elephants habitually walk, the dragon grabs hold of their legs with knotted coils and kills them by suffocation. Dragons are born in Ethiopia and India in the very blaze of continual heat.

  * * *

  —

  Dracontites is forcibly taken from the brain of a dragon, and unless it is cut from the living creature it does not have the quality of a gem. For this reason, magicians cut it out of dragons while they are sleeping. For bold men explore the cave of the dragons, and scatter medicated grains there to put them to sleep, and in this way cut off their heads while they are sunk in sleep and take out the gems.

  DARK AGE CREATURE CATALOGUES1

  While Bishop Isidore of Seville took his inspiration directly from the works of Pliny and other Roman authors, some early medieval storytellers drew from the deep well of oral traditions and folklore for their information about dragons. Compiled in pre-Conquest England before the turn of the first millennium, catalogues of fantastic creatures like the Wonders of the East and the Book of Monsters described the habitat and character of monstrous races and mythological beasts that populated distant lands like Africa and India. The anonymous authors of these texts enticed their readers with stories about “the most dreadful kinds of dragons and serpents and vipers.” True to their word, these inventories provided brief, yet evocative accounts of the reptilian monsters that posed a danger to human beings in the distant parts of the world (and in the underworld as well!).

  And there is another island to the south of Brixonte river on which are born men without heads who have their eyes and their mouth on their chests.2 They are eight feet in height and likewise eight feet across. Dragons also abound there, one hundred and fifty feet long and as thick as columns. Because of the multitude of dragons, it is difficult for anyone to go across the river.

  * * *

  —

  The legends of the Greeks speak of men with gigantic bodies and yet, despite their great size, they are very much like human beings, except that they have the tails of dragons, whence they are also called Dracontopodes in Greek.

  * * *

  —

  And the pagans with their slanderous speech speak of the dark river Styx in the underworld as the largest serpent in the entire world, so huge that it wraps its black coils nine times around Tartarus through the dark fen of wailing souls in such a way as to invoke tears. And thus the river Styx with its serpentine barrier and the swamp with its fetid water, the terrifying edge of which no one would dare to touch, enc
loses the braying souls of the dead in everlasting lament.

  YOU CRUSHED THEIR HEADS UPON THE WATERS1

  Hrabanus Maurus (ca. 776–856) was a monastic schoolmaster at the abbey of Fulda and later served as the archbishop of Mainz. Among the most learned intellectuals of the Carolingian period, Hrabanus produced voluminous commentaries on the Bible and an arresting series of illustrated poems in praise of the Holy Cross. He also penned a massive encyclopedia fittingly entitled About Everything (De universo). This sprawling book explained the historical and allegorical meaning of thousands of Latin words with reference to their use in the Bible and the writings of the early church fathers. In his chapter on serpents, Hrabanus unpacked the mystical significance of the word “dragon.” After rehearsing ancient traditions about their nature and habitat culled from the works of Pliny and Isidore of Seville, Hrabanus turned to the Hebrew scriptures to unveil the hidden meaning of the dragon as an allegory for unclean spirits purged by baptism and even for the Devil himself. This diabolical affinity, already present in early Christian writings, would inform literary depictions of the dragon for the rest of the Middle Ages.

  The dragon is larger than all other serpents or even all other animals on the earth. The Greeks call this creature draconta, from which we derive the Latin word draco. Drawn forth from its caves, the dragon often takes flight and disturbs the air. It is plumed with a small mouth and narrow windpipes through which it draws breath and sticks out its tongue. Its strength lies not in its teeth, but in its tail and it kills by lashing rather than by biting. Moreover, the dragon is unharmed by venom, but it is not necessary for it to use venom to cause death because whatever it wraps itself around soon perishes. The elephant is not safe from it, even though its body is huge. For, lying in wait on the paths along which elephants habitually walk, the dragon grabs hold of their legs with knotted coils and kills them by suffocation. Dragons are born in Ethiopia and India in the very blaze of continual heat.2 Allegorically, the dragon signifies either the devil or his servants or indeed the persecutors of the church, impious men whose secrets are found in many places in scripture. For it was written concerning this in the Psalter, and in the Book of Job, and indeed in the Apocalypse of John. In fact, the psalmist says, “You made firm the sea in your might, you crushed the heads of dragons upon the waters.”  3 Indeed, he made the aqueous depths of the Red Sea firm, when he parted the water on both sides and turned a sailing route into a walking path. “You crushed the heads of dragons upon the waters” explains properly the mystery of the preceding miracle, because that prefiguration of the crossing of the Red Sea pointed to the waters of holy baptism, where the heads of dragons, that is, the spirits of the unclean, are brought to nothing, when the saving water washes clean the souls, which they stain with the filth of sinners. Moreoever, the psalmist adds: “You have broken the head of the great dragon.”  4 Although the psalmist put “heads of dragons” in the plural in his desire to signify spiritual depravities, he put “great dragon” in the singular to indicate Satan himself, who is so much stronger and so much more wicked. When put in the singular, he is unwilling to dwell among the malign spirits. For his head was crushed when his pride was cast out of heaven and he did not deserve to retain that brightness with which he was born, when he stained himself with a darkness of his own making.