Professor John McKinnell

(Durham University)

English and Norse Dragons, Ancient and Modern

All Anglo-Saxonists are familiar with the deadly wyrm in Beowulf, but the story of how the Old Norse dragon Fáfnir was killed by the hero Sigurðr was probably more widely known in Viking Age Northumbria. In this lecture I will give a brief account of the poetic and sculptural evidence for this, and will suggest that powerful landowning families may have found it useful to claim Sigurðr as an ancestor, as happens in the eddic poem Hyndluljóð. I will also show how the same story pattern is found in several post-medieval ‘worm’ slaying folktales from Anglo-Norse areas of England, especially Northumbria; how the heroes of these stories are usually connected with local landowning families; and how the ‘truth’ of the story is usually vouched for by appeal to sculptures which can be seen in local churches. Finally, I will consider what some of the typical significances of these ‘worms’ may have been for the local populations who perpetuated the stories, and why they still have a popular appeal today.