Real world places associated with dragon legends?

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Mechanist
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Real world places associated with dragon legends?

Post by Mechanist »

A couple weeks ago, when playing multiplayer (or rather, fooling around in multiplayer) with HeNniFerBoB, the conversation eventually led me to bring up the subject of Janosik, who was a legendary folk hero - robbing the rich and giving to the poor.

Obviously, Janosik is not connected to any dragon legends, but he's interesting in that he actually existed; he lived in the mountains near where the borders of Slovakia, Poland and Czech Republic meet, which is why he is well known in these 3 countries.
Of course the actual circumstances surrounding Janosik are somewhat different (and perhaps not quite as noble) compared to what the legends say - however, well, that's how legends work.

But since that's clearly unrelated, why do I even bring it up in the first place?
Some time after we had that conversation, it occured to me that I had missed something obvious - there's at least one place in Poland that has its own dragon legend!
That place is the ancient city of Kraków, a former capital of Poland (for over 5 centuries).

It didn't occur to me when we had that conversation, because it's the kind of folklore that pretty much every Pole knows.
If I recall correctly, it's even taught in primary education in Poland - but don't quote me on that, as it's been a very long time!

The legend of the Wawel Dragon, in most general terms, is a generic dragonslaying story.
I won't go into details here, since the long version is (understandably) rather long-winded; a condensed version can be read by following the link.

As might be expected, the city of Krakow is a popular tourist attraction because of this (as well as because of many other unrelated historical structures), and there's the usual assortment of souvenirs and stuff.

There's even a neat, full size dragon statue there, which is rigged to breathe fire every couple of minutes:
Image
It's a pretty crap picture, not showing the whole thing; but it gets the point across.

That's an old photo BTW - coincidentally, taken around the last time that I was there (but again, not actually by me) - the fire effect was rather wimpy at that time; notice how the photo had been taken at dusk? It's because the fire was very poorly visible during daytime.
We did try taking a photo of it during daytime, but the fire wasn't visible in the picture at all; moreover, I seem to have misplaced that photo anyway during all the moves and furniture rearrangements we've had over the years.
I haven't been there since then, but I've heard that they've made some improvements to the statue; I presume that the fire effect is more impressive now :D

Now, obviously if there was a dragon, then there also had to be a dragon's lair - and indeed, there is:
Image
BTW, in case anyone's wondering - no, that's not me in that photo; it's just some image I grabbed from Wikimedia Commons.

I did actually visit that location a long time ago, but I don't have any photos of that - it was long before the era of digital cameras, and we only had a very basic film camera at the time, and lacked the skill to use it properly in difficult lighting conditions; so the photos we took there at that time were basically worthless.

Now, it's commonly said that every legend has a grain of truth in it - and in this case, apparently it originated due to a (very real) discovery of some dinosaur bones in that area in medieval times, presumably during the excavation work for some construction project.
Of course at that time, no one even knew about the (former) existence of dinosaurs, so there could only be one logical conclusion as to the kind of creature that would leave such remains :)

Here are some of the bones in question:
Image


Finally, there's one more thing - although the actual legend is a dragonslaying story, several years ago a Polish author wrote a series of stories which take place in an alternate timeline, in which the Wawel Dragon survived the assassination attempt.
Since these stories were targeted at readers of all ages, they're particularly nonviolent.
They're also kinda silly (but not even close to Divinity: Dragon Commander levels of silly) - the dragon travels around the country in a car (!) with the protagonist (an eccentric scientist), as well as two other characters.

Here's an example; it's the first part of the series.
Unfortunately, these books are all in Polish, and I don't know of any translations being available - and even if they were, these stories also reference other aspects of Polish folklore, which would make little to no sense to a foreign reader :)

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Real world places associated with dragon legends?

Post by Arokhs Twin »

Well we have Saint George and the dragon who is the patron saint of England. It's said that the red cross of the English flag came from the white tabbard he wore over his armour which he wiped his sword across which was smeared with the dragon's blood. In British fokelore dragons are seen to be evil. The only exception I can think of is the Welsh Dragon that was kind hearted, noble and heroic - maybe Arokh had was loosely based on her. If you believe certain versions of King Arthur's legend the dragon was not really evil rather an ordinary animal although in the TV series he was sentient and capable of speech.

St George was born sometime around the year 280 in what is now Turkey. He was a soldier and rose up through the ranks of the Roman army, eventually becoming a personal guard to the Emperor Diocletian. He was executed for being a Christian on April 23, 303, and is buried in the town of Lod in Israel.

St George is most widely known for slaying a dragon. According to legend, the only well in the town of Silene was guarded by a dragon. In order to get water, the inhabitants of the town had to offer a human sacrifice every day to the dragon. The person to be sacrificed was chosen by lots. On the day that St George was visiting, a princess had been selected to be sacrificed. However, he killed the dragon, saved the princess and gave the people of Silene access to water. In gratitude, they converted to Christianity. It is thought that the dragon represents a certain type of pagan belief that included the sacrifice of human beings.


We also have the Welsh Dragon which came from a legend of a battle between two dragons, red of Wales and White of the Saxons of England.

There's many more but it's easier just to post a link to a list of them https://listverse.com/2015/11/15/10-dr ... -folklore/

The legend that is local to where I live is the Dragon Of Loschy Hill.

Also don't forget the legend of King Arthur who's father (Uther) had something to do with a golden dragon. Uther is known for eradicating all magic from the Britain and anyone practicing it would be burned at the stake. He reportedly burned many witches and magi, spellbooks and killed many dragons as they were seen to be magical creatures. There's a TV series called 'Merlin' who finds the golden dragon, the last known dragon in existence Imprisoned by his father as an example and sets it free with drastic consequences. The dragon remains allies with Merlin though.
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