Lindworm
First attested | Viking Age[1] |
---|---|
Other name(s) | Lindwurm, lindwyrm, lindorm |
Region | Northern Europe, Central Europe |
The lindworm (worm meaning
According to legend, everything that lies under the lindworm will increase as the lindworm grows, giving rise to tales of dragons that brood over treasures to become richer. Legend tells of two kinds of lindworm, a good one, associated with luck, often a cursed prince who has been transformed into the beast (same trope as in the fairy tales The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast etc), and a bad one, a dangerous man-eater which will attack humans on sight. A lindworm may swallow its own tail, turning itself into a rolling wheel, as a method of pursuing fleeing humans.[1]
The head of the 16th-century lindworm statue at Lindwurm Fountain (Lindwurmbrunnen ) in Klagenfurt, Austria, is modeled on the skull of a woolly rhinoceros found in a nearby quarry in 1335. It has been cited as the earliest reconstruction of an extinct animal.[2][3][4]
Etymology
Lindworm derives from
The term occurs in
Portrayals
Lindworm-portrayals vary across countries and the stories in which they appear.
Swedish lindworm (lindorm)
In
Lindworm eggs are said to be laid under the bark of linden trees (Swedish: lind) and once hatched they slither away and make a home in some pile of rocks.[1] When fully grown they can become extremely long. To counter this during hunting they swallow their own tail to become a wheel, after which they roll at extremely high speeds to pursue prey. This has given them the nickname "wheel snake" (Swedish: hjulorm).[1]
Late belief in lindworms in Sweden
The belief in the reality of a lindorm, a giant limbless serpent, persisted well into the 19th century in some parts. The Swedish
Central European lindworm (lindwurm)
In Central Europe the lindworm usually resembles a dragon or similar. It generally appears with a scaly serpentine body, dragon's head and two clawed forelimbs, sometimes also with wings. Some examples, such as the 16th-century lindworm statue at Lindwurm Fountain in Klagenfurt, Austria, has four limbs and two wings.
Most limbed depictions imply lindworms do not walk on their two limbs like a
Lindworm offshoots (guivre, vouivre, wyvern)
There exist several related offshoots of the winged lindworm outside Northern and Central Europe, such as the French guivre, and to some extent the British wyvern. The French guivre, earlier vouivre, are more dragon-like than the traditional lindworms while the British wyvern is canonically a full-fledged dragon. These terms are ultimately derived from Latin vīpera "adder, poisonous snake".
In heraldry
According to the 19th-century English archaeologist
-
Wingless limbed lindworm in the arms of the small Bavarian town of Wurmannsquick.
-
Winged and limbed lindworm in the arms of the city of Klagenfurt.
-
Wingless and four-limbed lindworm in the arms of the city of Sipbachzell.
In tales
An Austrian tale from the 13th century tells of a lindworm that lived near Klagenfurt. Flooding threatened travelers along the river, and the presence of the lindworm was blamed. A duke offered a reward to anyone who could capture it and so some young men tied a bull to a chain, and when the lindworm swallowed the bull, it was hooked like a fish and killed.[15]
The shed skin of a lindworm was believed to greatly increase a person's knowledge about nature and medicine.[16]
A serpentine monster with the head of a "
The sighting of a "whiteworm" once was thought to be an exceptional sign of good luck.[16]
The knucker or the Tatzelwurm is a wingless biped, and often identified as a lindworm. In legends, lindworms are often very large and eat cattle and human corpses, sometimes invading churchyards and eating the dead from cemeteries.[18]
In the 19th-century tale of "Prince Lindworm" (also "
The tale of Prince Lindworm is part of a multiverse of tales in which a maiden is betrothed or wooed by a prince enchanted to be a snake or other serpentine creature (ATU 433B, "The Prince as Serpent"; "King Lindworm").[22][23]
In a short Swiss tale, a Lindworm terrorises the area around Grabs. "It was as big as a tree trunk, dark red in colour and, according to its nature, extraordinarily vicious". It was defeated by a bull that had been fed milk for seven years and had hooks attached its horns. A girl, who had committed an offense, was tasked with bringing the bull to the Lindworm. After the beast was defeated, the enraged bull threw itself off a cliff, but the girl survived.[24] In another tale, a cowherd falls into a cave where a Lindworm lives. Instead of eating him, the Lindworm shares his food source, a spring of liquid gold. After seven years, they are discovered by a Venetian who hauls up the Lindworm and ties it up. The cowherd releases the Lindworm, who kills the Venetian and then leaves. When the cowherd goes home, no one recognizes him and he no longer likes human food.[25]
See also
- Little Wildrose
- The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh
- Tulisa, the Wood-Cutter's Daughter, Indian tale about a Serpent Prince
- Norse dragon
References
- ^ a b c d e "Lindormar" (PDF). ungafakta.se. Retrieved 2022-08-07.
- ISBN 0-691-08977-9.
- ^ Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Academic Press. 147-148. 1887.
- ^ "Lindwurm Fountain". Tourism Information Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
- ^ Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag. p. 411. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
- ^ Cleasby, Richard; Vigfusson, Guđbrandr (1957). An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon. p. 90.
- ^ "Þiðreks saga af Bern". Retrieved 13 October 2020.
- ^ G. O. Hyltén-Cavallius, Om draken eller lindormen, mémoire till k. Vetenskaps-akademien, 1884.
- ISBN 9789122016731.
- OCLC 35325410.
- ^ "lindworm". Nordisk familjebok. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
- ^ Aveling, S. T., ed. (1892). Heraldry, Ancient and Modern: Including Boutell's Heraldry. London: W. W. Gibbings. p. 139.
- ^ Gritzner, Adolf Maximilian Ferdinand (1878). "Heraldische Terminologie". Vierteljahrsschrift für Heraldik, Sphragistik und Genealogie. 6: 313–314. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
- ISBN 9783800082100.
- ^ J. Rappold, Sagen aus Kärnten (1887).
- ^ a b "645-646 (Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 16. Lee – Luvua)". runeberg.org. 22 January 2018.
- ^ "The Lambton Worm". sacred-texts.com. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
- ^ "Tatzelwurms". Astonishing Legends. 24 September 2018. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
- ^ Grundtvig, Svend. Gamle danske minder i folkemunde: folkeæventyr, folkeviser. Kjøbenhavn, C. G. Iversen. 1854. pp. 172-180.
- ^ "Prince Lindworm•". European folktales. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
- ^ Stein, Sadie (May 22, 2015). "The Lindworm". Paris Review. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
- ^ Jan M. Ziolkowski. 2010. “Straparola and the Fairy Tale: Between Literary and Oral Traditions.” Journal of American Folklore 123 (490). p. 383. doi:10.1353/jaf.2010.0002
- ISBN 0-520-03537-2
- ^ Kuoni, Jacob (1903). ""Der Lindwurm", Sagen des Kantons St. Gallen". Werner Hausknecht & Co. St. Gallen. Retrieved June 13, 2021.
- ^ Kuoni, Jacob (1903). ""Der Lindwurm in Gamidaur", Sagen des Kantons St. Gallen". Werner Hausknecht & Co. St. Gallen. Retrieved June 29, 2021.
External links
- King Lindorm, translated from: Grundtvig, Sven, Gamle danske Minder i Folkemunde (Copenhagen, 1854—1861).
- Gesta Danorum, Book 9 by Saxo Grammaticus.
- Saint George Legends from Germany and Poland
- Lindorm, an article from Nordisk Familjebok(1904–1926), a Swedish encyclopedia now in the Public Domain.
- Lindormen, a ballad in Swedish published at the Mutopia project.