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The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.. The Roman poet Virgil in his poem Culex lines 163–201, [1] describing a shepherd battling a big constricting snake, calls it "serpens" and also "draco", showing that in his time the two words probably could mean the same thing.
Dragons were personified as a caring mother with her children or a pair of dragons. Much like the Chinese Dragon, The Vietnamese Dragon is a water deity responsible for bringing rain during times of drought. Images of the Dragon King have 5 claws, while images of lesser dragons have only 4 claws. Con rit is a water dragon from Vietnamese mythology.
Urnes-style runestone U 887, Skillsta, Sweden, showing a runic dragon and a bipedal winged dragon.. Worms, wurms or wyrms (Old English: wyrm, Old Norse: ormʀ, Old High German: wurm), meaning serpent, are archaic terms for dragons (Old English: dracan, Old Norse: dreki, Old High German: trahho) in the wider Germanic mythology and folklore, in which they are often portrayed as large venomous ...
One medieval French legend holds that, in ancient times, a fearsome dragon known as La Gargouille had been causing floods and sinking ships on the river Seine, [163] so the people of the town of Rouen would offer the dragon a human sacrifice once each year to appease its hunger. [163]
The iconography of military saints Theodore, George and Demetrius as horsemen is a direct continuation of the Roman-era "Thracian horseman" type iconography.The iconography of the dragon appears to grow out of the serpent entwining the "tree of life" on one hand, and with the draco standard used by late Roman cavalry on the other.
Tolkien's dragons were inspired by medieval stories, including those about Fafnir in Germanic mythology [1] and the Beowulf dragon. [2] The folklorist Sandra Unerman writes that Smaug's ability to speak, the use of riddles, the element of betrayal, his enemy's communication via birds, and his weak spot could all have been inspired by the ...
The dragon with his hoard is a common motif in early Germanic literature with the story existing to varying extents in the Norse sagas, but it is most notable in the Völsunga saga and in Beowulf. [6] Beowulf preserves existing medieval dragon-lore, most notably in the extended digression recounting the Sigurd/Fafnir tale. [2]
A similar story of white and red dragons fighting is found in the medieval romance Lludd and Llefelys, although in this case the dragons are not used to symbolize Britons or Saxons. The battle between the two dragons is the second plague to strike the Island of Britain, as the White Dragon would strive to overcome the Red Dragon, making the Red ...