Forests, Fountains and Good Fortune: The Lore of Lindworms

A lindworm is often seen as a kind of dragon, since they are depicted as giant serpents, sometimes with wings and/or limbs. They are typically believed to dwell deep in forests, living between rocks and brooding over treasure, because it was also believed that everything that lay beneath a lindworm would increase in size as the creature grew, meaning it was easy for them to amass a huge fortune.

In Sweden, lindworms earned the nickname 'hjulorm' or 'wheel snake' because, according to Swedish legend, lindworms would often swallow their tails and roll along at high speeds, pursuing prey. (A terrifying sight to behold, no doubt, although I admire their ingenuity). 

The belief in the existence of lindworms in some parts of Sweden persisted into the mid 19th Century. In fact, Swedish folklorist Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius (a magnificent name) collected around 50 eyewitness reports of giant snakes in Småland and, in 1884, he offered a cash reward for anyone who could bring him a captured lindworm, dead or alive. Unfortunately, nobody was ever able to redeem the reward. Belief in the existence of lindworms in Småland died out and Hyltén-Cavallius was ridiculed by his fellow scholars. 

Legend tells of two kinds of lindworm: the kind that bring good fortune and prosperity, and the kind that attack and eat people. Whiteworms were thought to be a sign of good luck, and it was often believed that the shed skin of a lindworm could increase a person's knowledge about nature and medicine (a fun alternative to four years in medical school). Other, nastier lindworms were associated with disease and eating cattle and corpses, sometimes even raiding cemeteries to eat everyone buried there. 

King Lindworm is a Danish fairy tale, published in the 19th Century by Danish folklorist Svend Grundtvig (another magnificent name). In the story, a childless queen is given two roses (one red, one white) by an old crone, and is instructed to eat only one. Now this seems simple enough, but there's a problem: the queen's memory is not one of her strengths. In fact, she forgets the one instruction she was given and eats both roses. As a result, she gives birth to twins, and the first is a lindworm. 

The second child, on the other hand, is perfect in every way, and when he grows up, he seeks a bride. The lindworm decides that he must be given a bride before his brother can marry one of his own, but none of the brides presented to him are good enough, so he does what any well-adjusted eligible bachelor would do: he eats every single one his potential partners. The royal family, who are equally well-adjusted, decide that the solution is to present the lindworm with a shepherd's daughter after instructing her to attend the wedding wearing every dress she owns. The lindworm demands she undress, but she demands that he shed a skin for every dress she takes off. Eventually, the lindworm's human form is revealed underneath all of the skins.

A similar skin-shedding incident occurs in the 1952 fantasy novel, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis: the third of seven novels in the Chronicles of Narnia. Eustace Scrubb (not a magnificent name) steals treasure from a dragon's hoard but is transformed into a dragon after falling asleep with his pockets weight down with gold. When he wakes up full of regret and covered in scales, he tries and fails to shed his new skin and has to be returned to normal in a very painful process with Aslan's help. 

Another lindworm legend takes place in Klagenfurt, Austria. A 13th Century tale tells of a lindworm living just outside the city being blamed for floods that were threatening travellers along the Glan river. A duke offered a reward for anyone who could capture it, and a group of young men came up with an ingenious plan: they tied a bull to a chain and fed it to the lindworm, therefore catching it much like one would catch a fish. The lindworm was then killed by the men and the flooding ceased.

In 1335, in a quarry not far from Klagenfurt, the skull of a woolly rhino was unearthed, but it was misidentified as the skull of the slain lindworm from the legend. An anonymous artist crafted a statue of a lindworm out of a single block of chlorite slate, modelling the creature's head off the skull from the quarry, making the statue the earliest known reconstruction of an extinct animal. A fountain was added in 1624, creating the infamous Lindwurmbrunnen ('Lindworm fountain'). The woolly rhino skull is still on display, and can be found at the Landesmuseum für Kärnten (the State Museum of Carinthia). 

Whether they're eating everything in sight, bringing you good luck or being mistaken for a woolly rhinoceros, lindworms have inspired many legends and are a staple in Scandinavian and Central European mythology. Never leave one unattended near your cows, never try and marry one, and they might just bring you good fortune and medical know-how. If they're not too busy raiding your graveyards like a well-stocked pantry, that is.

SOURCES:

• Brown, Devin, 'Examining Eustace's Transformation and its Mythic Antecedents in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', Inklings Forever, Vol. 2, (1999), pp. 68-72

• Inscoe, Michael, 'Lindwurmbrunnen', Atlas Obscura, (2017)

• Malm, Thomas, 'A Footnote to Scandinavian Herpetology: Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius and his Quest for the Dragon or Lindworm', Bibliotheca Herpetologica, Vol. 14, (2020), pp. 1-11

• Stein, Sadie, 'The Lindworm', The Paris Review, (2015)