Dragon Lair
A dragon lair is a treasure that is guarded by a dragon . The hoard is one of the elements of the dragon myth . It is particularly pronounced in medieval northern European and German heroic epics . From here he got into the folk tales and fairy tales of modern times.
The treasure consists of valuable objects, mostly gold . He is kept hidden by the dragon in an inaccessible place. Often it is a cave , sometimes the inside of a mountain, a well, the sea floor or a remote, uninhabited area. The treasure can be endowed with magical powers or cursed . The connection with the dragon fight is common. The treasure keeper can be a former person who has been transformed into a dragon, who has been cursed and who changes roles in the course of the fight with his adversary. If the hero defeats the monster, he wins the hoard, but at the same time incurs the curse. The determining motive in these stories is greed , which leads the miser to guard his wealth even after death.
The dragon itself is a hybrid creature that was already known to the ancient cultures of the Near East and has found an almost worldwide distribution in myths. However, not all dragons fulfill the function of treasure keeper. As an isolated ancient testimony, a fable by Phaedrus should be mentioned in which a fox digs up a dragon's den and wonders what the sense of guarding a treasure is. The dragon hoard story is also said to be related to a story in the ancient Indian Rigveda : In it, the thunder god Indra defeats the snake demon Vritra , who stole the sun and rain, hid them on the seabed and thus brought harm to the people.
The dragon's hoard is only found as a fixed topos in the Norse and Germanic heroic tales . In the Gull-Þóris saga, viking Vale , a giant or a hero in the form of a dragon, breeds in a cave over great gold . His kin, also made up of dragons, keep him company. All dragons are armed with helmets and swords and sleep. The hero Thorir defeats them with their own weapons and wins the treasure. The Niflungenerbe in the Edda transforms the patricide Fafnir into a lindworm, who lies down on the cursed treasure on the Gnitalheide . In the Völsunga saga , Fafnir guards a gold treasure in an otter skin that had to be set up and covered with gold until nothing of the otter was visible. In the Beowulf the dragon guards golden dishes, banners, helmets and rings.
The German-speaking folk tales of modern times also know dragons that keep golden treasures, sometimes in connection with enchanted virgins. The right time can be decisive for purchasing the after-school care center. Some dragons leave the hoard at regular intervals and come to the surface of the earth to sunbathe or bathe. The victory over the monster does not have to be enough to acquire the hoard. The dragon that Heinrich von Winkelried killed in Ennetmoos , Switzerland , leaves the treasure in the cave in the care of a ghost.
The dragon lair also has a firm place in modern culture. Well-known examples are Richard Wagner, who borrowed from the old Germanic epics for the Ring of the Nibelung , and JRR Tolkien , for whose treasure-guarding dragons the Völsunga Saga and Beowulf provided the models. Dragon hoards made of gold, jewels, valuable jewelry and magical weapons can be found as elements of fantasy culture in dungeons and board games .
literature
- Concise dictionary of German superstition , Vol. 2, 385: The dragon as a treasure guard.
- Lutz Röhrich: dragon, dragon fight, dragon slayer . In: Enzyklopädie des Märchen, Vol. 3, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1981, ISBN 3-11-008201-2 , pp. 788-820.
- Rudolf Simek: Middle Earth - Tolkien and the Germanic mythology. Drache und Drachenhort, page 133-139, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52837-6 .
Remarks
- ^ Wilhelm Mannhardt: Germanic myths . Researches. Berlin 1858, esp. Pp. 149-153.
- ^ JW Wolf: Contributions to German mythology . Göttingen and Leipzig 1852 and 1857, p. 446.
- ↑ Karl Freiherr v. Leoprechting: From the Lechrain . Munich 1855, p. 78.
- ^ Kuhn: Legends, customs and fairy tales from Westphalia . 1859, p. 152.
- ↑ Alois Lütolf: sagas, customs, legends from the five towns of Lucern, Uri, Schwiz, Unterwalden and Zug . Lucern 1862, p. 314f.