A dragonslayer is a person or being that slays dragons. Dragonslayers and the creatures they hunt have been popular in traditional stories from around the world: they are a type of story classified as type 300 in the AarneâThompson classification system. They continue to be popular in modern books, films, video games and other forms of entertainment. Dragonslayer-themed stories are also sometimes seen as having a chaoskampf themeâin which a heroic figure struggles against a monster that epitomises chaos.
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đ Dragonslayer in the context of The Dragon (Beowulf)
The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf includes Beowulf's fight with a dragon, the third monster he encounters in the epic. On his return from Heorot, where he killed Grendel and Grendel's mother, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules wisely for fifty years until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jeweled cup from its lair. When the angry dragon mercilessly burns the Geats' homes (including Beowulf's) and lands, Beowulf decides to fight and kill the monster personally. He and his thanes climb to the dragon's lair where, upon seeing the beast, the thanes flee in terror, leaving only Wiglaf to battle at Beowulf's side. When the dragon wounds Beowulf fatally, Wiglaf attacks it with his sword, and Beowulf kills it with his dagger.
This depiction indicates the growing importance and stabilization of the modern concept of the dragon within European mythology. Beowulf is the first piece of English literature to present a dragonslayer. Although the Beowulf dragon exhibits many existing motifs common to Germanic tradition, the Beowulf poet was the first to combine features and present a distinctive fire-breathing dragon. The Beowulf dragon was adapted for Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), one of the forerunners of modern high fantasy.
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Dragonslayer in the context of Princess and dragon
Princess and dragon is an archetypical premise common to many legends, fairy tales, and chivalric romances. Northrop Frye identified it as a central form of the quest romance.
The story involves an upper-class woman, generally a princess or similar high-ranking nobility, saved from a dragon, either a literal dragon or a similar danger, by the virtuous hero (see damsel in distress). She may be the first woman endangered by the peril, or may be the end of a long succession of women who were not of as high birth as she is, nor as fortunate. Normally the princess ends up married to the dragonslayer.
Dragonslayer in the context of Sigmund
In Germanic mythology, Sigmund (Old Norse: Sigmundr [ËsiÉŁËmundzÌ ], Old English: Sigemund) is a hero whose story is told in the Völsunga saga. He and his sister, SignĂœ, are the children of Völsung and his wife Hljod. Sigmund is best known as the father of SigurĂ° the dragon-slayer, though SigurĂ°'s tale has almost no connections to the Völsung cycle except that he was a dragonslayer.