Draconika

German Dragons

Dragons are an important part of German mythology.

Dragons are an important part of German myths, legends, and tales. They are usually portrayed as evil, and stories are told of how people outsmart and kill them. There are several different types of German dragon. Nidhogg, Fafnir, and Jörmungandr are the more famous dragons from Norse and Germanic mythology. There are four types of dragons mentioned in German stories: the lindworm, the firedrake, the black worm, and the puk.

German has two main words for these creatures. Drache comes, like English "dragon," from Latin draco. Wurm ("worm") is the older Germanic word for a serpent or dragon, related to Old English wyrm and Old Norse ormr. Many German place names, such as the Drachenfels ("dragon's rock") on the Rhine, preserve local dragon legends.

The Puk and the Household Drak

Not much is written about the puk. It is a small dragon spirit with four feet. It lives in households and brings stolen goods to the head of the house. Stories of the puk started in Germany and spread outward through Europe from there.

The puk is closely related to the Drak or Hausdrache ("house dragon") of northern and eastern German folklore. People said they had seen it at night as a fiery streak flying down a chimney, bringing grain, milk, or money it had stolen from the neighbors. A family that suddenly grew rich might be suspected of keeping one. In return, the drak had to be fed and treated well, or it might burn the house down. These creatures are closer to household goblins, like the kobold, than to the great dragons of epic.

The Black Worm

The black worm is mentioned in a tale of a greedy man. This dragon sleeps coiled around its hoard of treasure, but it is not big enough to fit around all of it. While it is sleeping, a man sneaks into the creature's cave and quietly fills his pockets with gold. He wants more gold and calls to his wife to come in and get some gold. This awakens the dragon, who roars, scaring the man into dropping the treasure he took. When the man runs away, the black worm and its gold sink into the ground, never to be seen again. Treasure that sinks into the earth when someone breaks a rule, such as speaking aloud, is a common theme in German folk legends.

The Firedrake

Firedrakes are found in Germanic legend. They usually are found in caves guarding treasure. They can breathe fire to defend themselves from intruders looking to steal their treasure. The dragon that Beowulf defeats toward the end of the Old English epic poem is called a fȳrdraca ("fire-dragon"); read more on our Beowulf page. J.R.R. Tolkien's famous dragon Smaug is also a firedrake.

The Lindworm

Lindworms (German Lindwurm) are often depicted as a monstrous serpent, sometimes with front claws and wings, other times just with front claws. They are evil creatures and considered a bad omen. They invade churches and churchyards, digging up corpses. When cattle and other livestock go missing, it is blamed on a lindworm. They are thought to be greedy creatures that guard hoards of treasure in underground caves. In some German tales, a lindworm is a human that became so greedy he transformed into the monster.

The most famous lindworm stands in Klagenfurt, Austria, where a huge stone fountain from the late 16th century shows the lindworm that, according to the town's legend, lived in the marshes before the town was founded. In Scandinavian fairy tales, a lindworm can also be an enchanted prince, as in The Bride of the Lindorm King. In heraldry, a lindworm is usually drawn with two legs, like a wyvern.

Siegfried and the Nibelungenlied

Germany's own dragon-slayer is Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, an epic poem written around 1200. Earlier in his life, Siegfried killed a dragon and bathed in its blood, which made his skin as hard as horn. But a linden leaf fell between his shoulders as he bathed, leaving one spot unprotected. His wife Kriemhild unknowingly reveals this secret, and the warrior Hagen later kills Siegfried by spearing him in that very spot. Local tradition places Siegfried's dragon on the Drachenfels near Bonn. The German story is closely related to the Norse tale of Sigurd and Fafnir below, and Richard Wagner combined both in his opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, in which the giant Fafner turns himself into a dragon to guard his gold.

Two Tales in German Collections

There is a story known in German as Die siebenköpfige Schlange (The Seven-Headed Serpent) about a seven-headed serpent that demands a sacrifice of twelve youths and twelve maidens every year or it would destroy the country. After years of this, the king's son finds out how to kill the beast. He takes some cotton, sneaks into the serpent's palace, silences the warning bells with the cotton, and cuts off each of the serpent's heads. This tale reached readers through 19th-century German collections, though it was originally collected in Greece; Andrew Lang later included it in The Yellow Fairy Book.

Another story from the same era is The Dragon of the North. It tells of a dragon coming from the north and destroying the countryside. It was a powerful dragon that could hypnotize its victims and draw them to it, so it did not have to move until all of the food in the area was gone. A wise man found out that only a man wearing King Solomon's ring could defeat the dragon. One young man went to search for the ring. He was able to find and steal the ring from the witch that possessed it. A magician told him how to use the ring to defeat the dragon. He became a hero and married the king's daughter. This tale was published in German from Estonian sources and was also included in Lang's Yellow Fairy Book.

Dragons of Norse Myth

The Norse and the German-speaking peoples shared older Germanic myths, and the best records of them come from medieval Iceland, especially the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda.

Jörmungandr

Jörmungandr is a child of the giantess Angrboda and the god Loki; his siblings are the wolf Fenrir and Hel, ruler of the dead. According to legend, Odin took Jörmungandr and threw him into the great ocean that encircles Midgard, our world. The serpent grew until he was able to surround the Earth and grasp his own tail between his teeth, like the ouroboros. Jörmungandr is also known as the Midgard Serpent or the World Serpent because of this. Popular retellings say that if he ever lets go of his tail the world will end. In the myths themselves, he rises from the sea at Ragnarök, the final battle, and he and the god Thor kill each other: Thor strikes him dead, walks nine steps, and falls from the serpent's venom.

Fafnir

Fafnir is a dwarf (or, in some versions, a man) who was transformed into a dragon due to his greed. In the Völsunga saga, the gods Odin, Loki, and Hœnir accidentally killed Fafnir's brother Otr and paid his father, Hreidmar, a cursed treasure of gold as compensation. Fafnir killed his father to take the gold. He brought it to a lair on Gnitaheath and carefully guarded it day and night, and his greed caused him to transform into a dragon. Fafnir's other brother, Regin, plotted to kill Fafnir and take the treasure for himself. Regin's foster son Sigurd dug a pit in the dragon's path and waited in it with his sword. When Fafnir passed over the pit, Sigurd drove his sword up into Fafnir's exposed belly, killing him. Regin asked Sigurd to roast the dragon's heart for him. While cooking it, Sigurd burned his fingers and licked them. Instantly he could understand the language of the birds. The birds told Sigurd that Regin was planning to kill him. Sigurd listened to their warning and killed Regin first. He loaded the treasure onto his horse Grani and rode away. Carvings of this story survive on the Ramsund rock in Sweden, from around 1000 AD.

Nidhogg

Nidhogg is a monstrous serpent that lies below the World Tree, Yggdrasil, in the underworld and gnaws on one of its roots. In the poem Völuspá, Nidhogg also chews on the corpses of oath-breakers and murderers. The poem's final lines, which come after the world has been reborn following Ragnarök, describe the dark dragon flying up from below with the dead carried in its wings.

German Dragon Festivals

Dragons are still celebrated in Germany. In the Bavarian town of Furth im Wald, the Drachenstich ("dragon stabbing") is a folk play performed every August that is believed to be one of the oldest in Germany. A knight rides out to kill a giant walking dragon, which today is a large mechanical model that breathes fire and bleeds. The Drachenfels, with its castle ruins above the Rhine, has drawn visitors to the "dragon's rock" for centuries.

For dragons from neighboring lands, see Western Dragons and Dragons Across Cultures.

Sources and Further Reading

  • The Nibelungenlied, trans. A. T. Hatto (Penguin Classics, 1965).
  • The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Jesse L. Byock (Penguin Classics, 1999).
  • The Poetic Edda, trans. Carolyne Larrington, rev. ed. (Oxford World's Classics, 2014).
  • Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (Everyman, 1987).
  • Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
  • Andrew Lang, ed., The Yellow Fairy Book (Longmans, Green, 1894).
  • Daniel Ogden, The Dragon in the West: From Ancient Myth to Modern Legend (Oxford University Press, 2021).