Description:
Dragons in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, called Dov in their own language, are a species of large, winged, scaled, serpentine creatures. They are also all sentient beings, capable not only of normal speech but also the magical Thu'um, "voice," which is their innate ability to project magical power that changes based on the words spoken in dragon language. Dragons are said to have been created by Akatosh/Auriel (LINK?), the god of time and first of the Aedra (the "good" gods who are worshipped throughout the continent of Tamriel) to take form, as well as their chief deity. Despite this mythic progeny from a deity associated with order, time, endurance, and obedience, dragons in The Elder Scrolls are greedy creatures with a lust for power, for whom domination and subjugation are seemingly impossible urges to ignore. Some of this resonates with the medieval dragons of Old Norse and Old English literature, most famously Fáfnir (LINK) from Völsunga saga (LINK) and the nameless dragon from the epic Beowulf (LINK?), respectively. In particular, greed was seen as an anti-social trait in medieval European society, and its literary embodiment in a terrifying serpentine form, breathing poison or fire and lying upon heaps of accumulated (sometimes cursed) gold and treasure, speaks to the way greed was understood in societies where generosity and being open-handed were not only valued, but allowed the creation and maintenance of social bonds at a foundational level. A note on appearances: dragons in Old Norse literature come in a variety of strange shapes and sizes, not conforming to a modern fantasy "default" of the flying, fire-breathing dragon (although these also do occur). Many, such as the aforementioned Fáfnir, are wingless serpents that slither or crawl upon the ground, spew poison from their mouths, and have acidic, poisonous blood. Some of these variations, interestingly, are reflected in Skyrim's dragons, even if unintentionally. For instance, Skyrim's dragons have one of two elemental attacks as their breath, either fire or frost; although poison is unfortunately not one of their possible breath types, a counterpart to fire is an interesting kind of departure (although it is not isolated to Skyrim's depiction of dragons). They also come in several varieties which are given different names and which are more powerful, only appearing once the player reaches certain level thresholds to increase the danger of encountering dragons. One of these, introduced in the Dragonborn DLC, is the Serpentine Dragon, which have no horns or protruding spines or crests on their main body, giving them a more snakelike appearance. Although they still have wings, a more serpentine dragon hearkens back to the slithering wyrms (Ormr in Old Norse) of medieval literature (see Dragon (LINK) for a discussion of the different words for dragons in Old Norse literature and their associated characteristics). The strongest link between medieval literary dragons and dragons of modern fantasy media comes in the form of Smaug, the greedy dragon guarding the dwarfish gold in the Lonely Mountain in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Tolkien (LINK) is renowned for his authorship of The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and his other assorted writings about Middle-Earth, many published after his death by his son Christopher. It is less well known that Tolkien was also an influential scholar of medieval languages and literatures of northern Europe, particularly Old English. His fascination with the Old English epic poem Beowulf and his early interactions with Old Norse literature were formative aspects of his Middle-Earth fantasy books, and Smaug appears as a direct reference and transformation of the dragon in Beowulf who overcomes the eponymous hero at the end of the poem. Tolkien was bewitched by dragon-slaying tales from a young age, having encountered a retelling of Sigurðr the dragon-slayer from the Völsung cycle when he was seven years old. The Beowulf dragon is considered to be the earliest appearance in writing of the archetypal European dragon: winged, fire-breathing, gold-hoarding, haughty, and quick to anger. These aspects appear earlier in other texts, and quite often in Old Norse literature, but rarely assembled together like in Beowulf (Beowulf, and Old English literature broadly, predates Old Norse literature do to the gulf of time between the Christianization of the British Isles and Scandinavia, which brought with it Latin script and manuscript culture). That said, one thing that is striking and has always stuck out to me about Skyrim's dragons is that, despite existing in the backdrop of Tamriel's lore since the earliest eras, they chose an explicitly Viking-coded entry in the franchise, centering on the Nords and their Norse-flavored homeland of Skyrim, to choose to have the dragons return.| Medieval Citation | Medieval Sources | Description | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fáfnir | Fáfnismál Der Ring Des Nibelungen Völsunga saga | Fáfnir is a dragon in the Völsung legends, the collection of different stories, versions, and heroic traditions about the Völsung family. These princi... | Dragon |