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Lindworm

January 20, 2023

For the popular motif found on runestones in 11th-century Sweden, see Runic animal.

The lindworm (worm meaning snake), also spelled lindwyrm or lindwurm, is a mythical creature in Northern and Central European folklore living deep in the forest that traditionally has the shape of a giant serpent monster. It can be seen as a sort of dragon.

Lindworm
Swedish lindworm drawn by Swedish illustrator John Bauer, 1911. The Swedish lindworm lacks wings and limbs.
GroupingMonster
Sub groupingDragon
FamilyWhiteworm, Guivre, Vouivre, Wyvern, Sea serpents
FolkloreMythical creature, legendary creature
First attestedViking age[1]
Other name(s)Lindwurm, lindwyrm, lindorm
RegionNorthern Europe, Central Europe

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 another beast (as in the fairy tale The Frog Prince), 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 [de]) 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 Old High German lint and orm, perhaps from the Proto-Germanic adjective *linþia- meaning "flexible", or perhaps by way of Old Danish/Old Saxon lithi, Old High German lindi, "soft, mild" (German lind, (ge)linde), Old English liðe (English lithe, "agile"). The term occurs in Middle High German as lintwurm and was adopted from German into Scandinavia as Old Swedish lindormber (modern Swedish lindorm), Danish lindorm, meaning "lind-snake".[5] In Icelandic, the term linnormr was used to translate German sources to produce Þiðreks saga (an Old Norse chivalric saga adapted from the Continent from the late 13th c.)[6][7]

Portrayals

 
Lindworm or dragon carving at Urnes Stave Church, Norway.

Lindworm-portrayals vary across countries and the stories in which they appear.

Swedish lindworm (lindorm)

In Swedish folklore, lindworms traditionally appear as giant forest serpents without limbs, living between the rocks deep in the forest. They are said to be dark in color with a brighter underside. Along the spine it has fish like dorsal fins or horse like mane, sometimes being called a "mane snake" (Swedish: manorm). For defence and attack it can spit out a foul milk-like substance which can blind enemies.[1]

Lindworm eggs are laid under the bark of Tilia cordata trees (Swedish: Lind, thereof the name) 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 folklorist Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius (1818–1889) collected in the mid 19th century stories of legendary creatures in Sweden and met several people in Småland, Sweden who said they had encountered giant snakes, sometimes equipped with a long mane. He gathered around 50 eyewitness reports, and in 1884 offered a cash reward for a captured specimen, dead or alive.[8] Hyltén-Cavallius came to be ridiculed by Swedish scholars and as no one ever managed to claim the reward it resulted in a cryptozoological defeat. Rumours of the existence of lindworms in Småland soon abated.[9][10]

Central European lindworm (lindwurm)

 
Winged four legged lindwurm fountain in Klagenfurt.

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 wyvern, but move like a mole lizard: they slither like a snake and use their arms for traction.[11]

Lindworm offshoots (guivre, vouivre, wyvern)

 
Vouivre or wyvern being lanced by Saint George.
Main articles: Guivre, Vouivre, and Wyvern

There exist several related offshoots of the winged lindworm outside Northern and Central Europe, such as the French guivre and vouivre, and to some extent the British wyvern. The French guivre and vouivre are more dragon-like than the traditional lindworms while the British wyvern is a full fletched dragon canonically.

In heraldry

According to the 19th-century English archaeologist Charles Boutell, a lindworm in heraldry is basically "a dragon without wings".[12] A different heraldic definition by German historian Maximilian Gritzner was "a dragon with four feet" instead of usual two,[13] so that depictions with - comparatively smaller - wings exist as well.[14][better source needed]

  •  

    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.

In tales

 
16th-century lindworm statue in Klagenfurt, Austria, featuring wings and limbs.

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 "salamander" features in the legend of the Lambton Worm, a serpent caught in the River Wear and dropped in a well, which 3–4 years thence, terrorized the countryside of Durham while the nobleman who caught it was at the Crusades. Upon return, he received spiked armour and instructions to kill the serpent, but thereafter to kill the next living thing he saw. His father arranged that after the lindworm was killed, a dog would be released for that purpose; but instead of releasing the dog the nobleman's father ran to his son, and so incurred a malediction by the son's refusal to commit patricide. Bram Stoker used this legend in his short story Lair of the White Worm.[17]

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]

 
The maiden amidst the Lindorm's shed skins. Illustration by Henry Justice Ford for Andrew Lang's The Pink Fairy Book (1897).

In the 19th-century tale of "Prince Lindworm" (also "King Lindworm")[19] from Scandinavian folklore, a "half-man half-snake" lindworm is born, as one of twins, to a queen, who, in an effort to overcome her childlessness, followed the advice of an old crone who instructed her to eat two onions. As she did not peel the first onion, the first twin was born a lindworm. The second twin is perfect in every way. When he grows up and sets off to find a bride, the lindworm insists that a bride be found for him before his younger brother can marry.[20] Because none of the chosen maidens are pleased by him, he eats each one until a shepherd's daughter who spoke to the same crone, is brought to marry him, wearing every dress she owns. The lindworm tells her to take off her dress, but she insists that he shed a skin for each dress she removes. Eventually his human form is revealed beneath the last skin. Some versions of the story omit the lindworm's twin, and the gender of the soothsayer varies. A similar tale occurs in the 1952 novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis.[21]

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 Lindwurm 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 recognises him and he no longer likes human food.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Lindormar" (PDF). ungafakta.se. Retrieved 2022-08-07.
  2. ^ Mayor, Adrienne (2000). The first fossil hunters: paleontology in Greek and Roman times. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08977-9.
  3. ^ Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Academic Press. 147-148. 1887.
  4. ^ "Lindwurm Fountain". Tourism Information Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  5. ^ Hellquist, Elof (1922). Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerups Förlag. p. 411. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  6. ^ Cleasby, Richard; Vigfusson, Guđbrandr (1957). An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon. p. 90.
  7. ^ "Þiðreks saga af Bern". Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  8. ^ G. O. Hyltén-Cavallius, Om draken eller lindormen, mémoire till k. Vetenskaps-akademien, 1884.
  9. ^ Meurger, Michel [in French] (1996). "The Lindorms of Småland". Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore. 52: 87–9. ISBN 9789122016731.
  10. ^ Sjögren, Bengt (1980). Berömda vidunder. [Laholm]: Settern. ISBN 9175860236. OCLC 35325410.
  11. ^ "lindworm". Nordisk familjebok. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  12. ^ Aveling, S. T., ed. (1892). Heraldry, Ancient and Modern: Including Boutell's Heraldry. London: W. W. Gibbings. p. 139.
  13. ^ Gritzner, Adolf Maximilian Ferdinand (1878). "Heraldische Terminologie". Vierteljahrsschrift für Heraldik, Sphragistik und Genealogie. 6: 313–314. Retrieved April 24, 2022.
  14. ^ Havas, Harald (2021). "Linder Wurm". Orte - Eine Sammlung skurriler und unterhaltsamer Fakten (in German). Carl Ueberreuther. ISBN 9783800082100.
  15. ^ J. Rappold, Sagen aus Kärnten (1887).
  16. ^ a b "645-646 (Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 16. Lee – Luvua)". runeberg.org. 22 January 2018.
  17. ^ "The Lambton Worm". sacred-texts.com. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  18. ^ "Tatzelwurms". Astonishing Legends. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  19. ^ Grundtvig, Svend. Gamle danske minder i folkemunde: folkeæventyr, folkeviser. Kjøbenhavn, C. G. Iversen. 1854. pp. 172-180.
  20. ^ "Prince Lindworm•". European folktales. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  21. ^ Stein, Sadie (May 22, 2015). "The Lindworm". Paris Review. Retrieved June 1, 2019.
  22. ^ 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
  23. ^ Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. University of California Press. 1977. p. 101. ISBN 0-520-03537-2
  24. ^ Kuoni, Jacob (1903). ""Der Lindwurm", Sagen des Kantons St. Gallen". Werner Hausknecht & Co. St. Gallen. Retrieved June 13, 2021.
  25. ^ 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).
  • 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.
  • , a ballad in Swedish published at the Mutopia project.

January 20, 2023
lindworm, popular, motif, found, runestones, 11th, century, sweden, runic, animal, lindworm, worm, meaning, snake, also, spelled, lindwyrm, lindwurm, mythical, creature, northern, central, european, folklore, living, deep, forest, that, traditionally, shape, g. For the popular motif found on runestones in 11th century Sweden see Runic animal The lindworm worm meaning snake also spelled lindwyrm or lindwurm is a mythical creature in Northern and Central European folklore living deep in the forest that traditionally has the shape of a giant serpent monster It can be seen as a sort of dragon LindwormSwedish lindworm drawn by Swedish illustrator John Bauer 1911 The Swedish lindworm lacks wings and limbs GroupingMonsterSub groupingDragonFamilyWhiteworm Guivre Vouivre Wyvern Sea serpentsFolkloreMythical creature legendary creatureFirst attestedViking age 1 Other name s Lindwurm lindwyrm lindormRegionNorthern Europe Central EuropeAccording 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 another beast as in the fairy tale The Frog Prince 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 de 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 Contents 1 Etymology 2 Portrayals 2 1 Swedish lindworm lindorm 2 1 1 Late belief in lindworms in Sweden 2 2 Central European lindworm lindwurm 2 3 Lindworm offshoots guivre vouivre wyvern 3 In heraldry 4 In tales 5 See also 6 References 7 External linksEtymology EditLindworm derives from Old High German lint and orm perhaps from the Proto Germanic adjective linthia meaning flexible or perhaps by way of Old Danish Old Saxon lithi Old High German lindi soft mild German lind ge linde Old English lide English lithe agile The term occurs in Middle High German as lintwurm and was adopted from German into Scandinavia as Old Swedish lindormber modern Swedish lindorm Danish lindorm meaning lind snake 5 In Icelandic the term linnormr was used to translate German sources to produce THidreks saga an Old Norse chivalric saga adapted from the Continent from the late 13th c 6 7 Portrayals Edit Lindworm or dragon carving at Urnes Stave Church Norway Lindworm portrayals vary across countries and the stories in which they appear Swedish lindworm lindorm Edit In Swedish folklore lindworms traditionally appear as giant forest serpents without limbs living between the rocks deep in the forest They are said to be dark in color with a brighter underside Along the spine it has fish like dorsal fins or horse like mane sometimes being called a mane snake Swedish manorm For defence and attack it can spit out a foul milk like substance which can blind enemies 1 Lindworm eggs are laid under the bark of Tilia cordata trees Swedish Lind thereof the name 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 Edit The belief in the reality of a lindorm a giant limbless serpent persisted well into the 19th century in some parts The Swedish folklorist Gunnar Olof Hylten Cavallius 1818 1889 collected in the mid 19th century stories of legendary creatures in Sweden and met several people in Smaland Sweden who said they had encountered giant snakes sometimes equipped with a long mane He gathered around 50 eyewitness reports and in 1884 offered a cash reward for a captured specimen dead or alive 8 Hylten Cavallius came to be ridiculed by Swedish scholars and as no one ever managed to claim the reward it resulted in a cryptozoological defeat Rumours of the existence of lindworms in Smaland soon abated 9 10 Central European lindworm lindwurm Edit Winged four legged lindwurm fountain in Klagenfurt 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 wyvern but move like a mole lizard they slither like a snake and use their arms for traction 11 Lindworm offshoots guivre vouivre wyvern Edit Vouivre or wyvern being lanced by Saint George Main articles Guivre Vouivre and Wyvern There exist several related offshoots of the winged lindworm outside Northern and Central Europe such as the French guivre and vouivre and to some extent the British wyvern The French guivre and vouivre are more dragon like than the traditional lindworms while the British wyvern is a full fletched dragon canonically In heraldry EditAccording to the 19th century English archaeologist Charles Boutell a lindworm in heraldry is basically a dragon without wings 12 A different heraldic definition by German historian Maximilian Gritzner was a dragon with four feet instead of usual two 13 so that depictions with comparatively smaller wings exist as well 14 better source needed 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 In tales Edit 16th century lindworm statue in Klagenfurt Austria featuring wings and limbs 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 salamander features in the legend of the Lambton Worm a serpent caught in the River Wear and dropped in a well which 3 4 years thence terrorized the countryside of Durham while the nobleman who caught it was at the Crusades Upon return he received spiked armour and instructions to kill the serpent but thereafter to kill the next living thing he saw His father arranged that after the lindworm was killed a dog would be released for that purpose but instead of releasing the dog the nobleman s father ran to his son and so incurred a malediction by the son s refusal to commit patricide Bram Stoker used this legend in his short story Lair of the White Worm 17 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 The maiden amidst the Lindorm s shed skins Illustration by Henry Justice Ford for Andrew Lang s The Pink Fairy Book 1897 In the 19th century tale of Prince Lindworm also King Lindworm 19 from Scandinavian folklore a half man half snake lindworm is born as one of twins to a queen who in an effort to overcome her childlessness followed the advice of an old crone who instructed her to eat two onions As she did not peel the first onion the first twin was born a lindworm The second twin is perfect in every way When he grows up and sets off to find a bride the lindworm insists that a bride be found for him before his younger brother can marry 20 Because none of the chosen maidens are pleased by him he eats each one until a shepherd s daughter who spoke to the same crone is brought to marry him wearing every dress she owns The lindworm tells her to take off her dress but she insists that he shed a skin for each dress she removes Eventually his human form is revealed beneath the last skin Some versions of the story omit the lindworm s twin and the gender of the soothsayer varies A similar tale occurs in the 1952 novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C S Lewis 21 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 Lindwurm 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 recognises him and he no longer likes human food 25 See also EditLittle Wildrose The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh Tulisa the Wood Cutter s Daughter Indian tale about a Serpent Prince Norse dragonReferences Edit a b c d e Lindormar PDF ungafakta se Retrieved 2022 08 07 Mayor Adrienne 2000 The first fossil hunters paleontology in Greek and Roman times Princeton N J Princeton University Press ISBN 0 691 08977 9 Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London Academic Press 147 148 1887 Lindwurm Fountain Tourism Information Klagenfurt am Worthersee Retrieved June 1 2019 Hellquist Elof 1922 Svensk Etymologisk Ordbok Lund C W K Gleerups Forlag p 411 Retrieved 13 October 2020 Cleasby Richard Vigfusson Guđbrandr 1957 An Icelandic English Dictionary Oxford Clarendon p 90 THidreks saga af Bern Retrieved 13 October 2020 G O Hylten Cavallius Om draken eller lindormen memoire till k Vetenskaps akademien 1884 Meurger Michel in French 1996 The Lindorms of Smaland Arv Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 52 87 9 ISBN 9789122016731 Sjogren Bengt 1980 Beromda vidunder Laholm Settern ISBN 9175860236 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 fur Heraldik Sphragistik und Genealogie 6 313 314 Retrieved April 24 2022 Havas Harald 2021 Linder Wurm Orte Eine Sammlung skurriler und unterhaltsamer Fakten in German Carl Ueberreuther ISBN 9783800082100 J Rappold Sagen aus Karnten 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 Retrieved June 1 2019 Grundtvig Svend Gamle danske minder i folkemunde folkeaeventyr folkeviser Kjobenhavn 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 Thompson Stith The Folktale University of California Press 1977 p 101 ISBN 0 520 03537 2 Kuoni Jacob 1903 Der Lindwurm Sagen des Kantons St Gallen Werner Hausknecht amp Co St Gallen Retrieved June 13 2021 Kuoni Jacob 1903 Der Lindwurm in Gamidaur Sagen des Kantons St Gallen Werner Hausknecht amp Co St Gallen Retrieved June 29 2021 External links EditKing 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 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Lindworm amp oldid 1129510227, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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