Toothless

Toothless is the dragon partner of the Viking boy Hiccup in Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon books (from 2003), a tiny, talkative dragon who became the sleek black Night Fury of DreamWorks' 2010 film.

The Story

In Cressida Cowell's book How to Train Your Dragon (2003), Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third is the son of the chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe on the island of Berk. To become a full member of the tribe, every boy must catch a dragon and train it. Hiccup, small and unheroic, ends up with the smallest dragon of all, a toothless little creature he names Toothless. The usual Viking method of training is to shout at dragons. Hiccup, who can speak Dragonese, tries kindness and jokes instead, with very mixed results. When two giant sea dragons threaten the island, Hiccup's cleverness and Toothless's loyalty save the tribe.

The book series runs to twelve volumes, ending with How to Fight a Dragon's Fury (2015).

DreamWorks Animation's film How to Train Your Dragon (2010) kept the names and setting but changed the story. Here, Vikings and dragons are at war, and Hiccup secretly befriends a dragon he has wounded, a rare and feared Night Fury. Toothless cannot fly because his tail fin was torn, so Hiccup builds him an artificial fin that he must ride to steer.

Appearance and Powers

In the books, Toothless is a small green Common or Garden dragon, far smaller than the other boys' dragons, with no teeth. He is greedy, vain, disobedient, and talks a great deal in Dragonese, but he proves brave and loyal when it counts. In the films, he is a large, sleek black dragon with retractable teeth, big cat-like eyes, and blasts of fiery plasma, and he does not speak. His look and behavior are partly modeled on cats and dogs.

Origins and Sources

Cowell has said the books grew out of childhood summers on a small Scottish island, where she was told stories of dragons and Vikings. The film was directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who reworked the dragon into the Night Fury; Sanders had earlier created Stitch for Lilo & Stitch, and the resemblance is often noted.

Legacy

The 2010 film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and was followed by two sequels (2014 and 2019), television series, and a 2025 live-action remake. Toothless is now one of the most recognized dragons in the world. See dragon books for the original series.

Related

• Saphira: Saphira is the sapphire-blue dragon of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, which begins with Eragon (2002); she hatches for the farm boy Eragon and becomes his telepathic partner as a Dragon Rider.
• Norbert: Norbert is the baby Norwegian Ridgeback dragon that Hagrid illegally hatches in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997); the dragon is later revealed to be female and renamed Norberta.
• Draco: Draco is the talking dragon of the 1996 film Dragonheart, voiced by Sean Connery, the last of his kind, who shares half his heart with a prince who grows up to be a tyrant.
• Spyro: Spyro is the small purple dragon hero of the Spyro the Dragon video game series, beginning on the PlayStation in 1998, who charges and breathes fire to rescue his fellow dragons and their treasure.
• Dragon Books

Sources and Further Reading

• Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon (Hodder Children's Books, 2003)
• How to Train Your Dragon, directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois (DreamWorks Animation, 2010)
• Tracey Miller-Zarneke, The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (Newmarket Press, 2010)

Cite this entry: “Toothless,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/toothless.