Lindwurm of Klagenfurt

The Lindwurm of Klagenfurt is the winged dragon of a Carinthian founding legend, said to have lived in the marshes by Lake Wörthersee until brave men caught it with a baited hook, and pictured on the city's famous 16th-century fountain.

The Legend

Long ago, the story goes, the land where Klagenfurt now stands was a misty swamp near the shore of Lake Wörthersee. A lindworm lived in the marsh. It seized cattle and travelers, and nobody dared to settle or even pass through the area.

The duke of Carinthia offered a reward to anyone who could kill the beast. A band of brave young men built a strong tower at the edge of the marsh. They chained a fat bull to the tower and hid a large barbed hook inside the bait. When the lindworm rushed out and swallowed the bull, the hook caught fast in its throat. Unable to escape, the monster thrashed until the men rushed out and clubbed it to death. With the marsh now safe, people settled around the tower, and the settlement grew into the town of Klagenfurt.

The Lindworm Fountain

The legend is best known from the Lindwurmbrunnen, the Lindworm Fountain on Klagenfurt's Neuer Platz (New Square). The dragon was carved from a single huge block of stone in the late 16th century. Sources disagree on the exact date: many credit the sculptor Ulrich Vogelsang around 1590, while others say the work began about 1582. The great winged lindworm crouches on a rock, its tail curled behind it, with water pouring from the basin around it. A statue of Hercules holding a club was added in front of the dragon in 1636, turning the anonymous dragon-killers of the legend into a classical hero.

The fountain is the symbol of the city. A lindworm in front of a tower also appears on Klagenfurt's coat of arms, which links the beast directly to the town's founding story.

A Real Fossil Behind the Dragon

The Klagenfurt lindworm is a famous example of how fossils fed dragon legends. In 1335 a large skull was found in a gravel pit near the town and kept in the town hall as the skull of a dragon. Modern scientists identified it as the skull of a woolly rhinoceros from the last Ice Age. The sculptor of the fountain is believed to have used this skull as the model for the lindworm's head, making it one of the earliest known reconstructions of a prehistoric animal, even if the animal was entirely wrong. The skull is now held by the Carinthian state museum (Landesmuseum Kärnten).

Legacy

The lindworm is everywhere in Klagenfurt today, from souvenirs and shop signs to an Austrian silver collector coin. For lindworms in general, see German Dragons and Dragon Species.

Related

• Lindworm: A lindworm is a huge serpent-dragon of Scandinavian and German folklore, usually wingless and with two front legs or none, that devours livestock, guards treasure, and sometimes proves to be an enchanted prince.
• Wawel Dragon: The Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) is the legendary dragon of Kraków's Wawel Hill, killed, in the best-known version, when it ate a carcass stuffed with burning sulfur and drank from the Vistula River until it burst.
• Lambton Worm: The Lambton Worm is a giant serpent of County Durham folklore, fished from the River Wear by young John Lambton, which grew huge, coiled around a hill, and could rejoin its body whenever it was cut apart.
• Tarasque: The Tarasque is a river dragon of Provençal legend, a monstrous hybrid said to be the offspring of Leviathan, which Saint Martha tamed at Tarascon on the Rhône and which the town still parades in its festival.
• German Dragons
• Dragon Species
• Dragon Legends

Sources and Further Reading

• Othenio Abel, Vorzeitliche Tierreste im deutschen Mythus, Brauchtum und Volksglauben (Gustav Fischer, 1939)
• Hieronymus Megiser, Annales Carinthiae (Leipzig, 1612)

Cite this entry: “Lindwurm of Klagenfurt,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/klagenfurt-lindwurm.