I would say that my interest in Norse mythology began when I first saw the marvel movie Thor. I do not want to give away any spoilers for those who have not seen it yet so I won’t reveal the exact moment in the movie that peaked my interest. I haven’t been able to do much research on the subject matter before so I saw this as a good opportunity to do so.
Background
There are two words that the Vikings are said to have used to describe dragons which were dreki and ormr. I will be using dreki for the rest of this blog post. The Vikings themselves were also known as Norsemen and were around from A.D. 800 to about the 11th century. Vikings would raid coastal towns and had many different gods. Due to the fact that they had many gods made those in Europe during this time see them as “animals”. Some of their gods include Thor, Loki, Odin, and Freyr, etc. There are 3 dreki that are named in Norse Mythology; Jormungandr, Fafnir, and Nidhogg. I will be providing photos of each of these dreki.
Jormungandr
Jormungandr’s father is Loki and the mother is Angrbroda. Odin cast Jormungandr into the sea and this is where he grew to the size to encompass Midgard with his whole body. He had his tail in his mouth and if he released it then Ragnorak would occur. Out of all the gods in Norse mythology, he is most connected with Thor. There are three events of this. I will mainly talk about 1 of those incidents that I believe had the most impact.
These two powerful beings were prophecied to meet and this meeting would be the start of Ragnorak. Ragnorak is the destruction of the world and will be restored again. Like I said before it would begin the moment Jormungandr releases his tail from his mouth. Thor battled him but was only able to take 9 steps before he was poisoned by Jormungandr. Thor did kill him in those 9 steps. The death of these two beings resulted in the end of Ragnorak.
Links to the resources that were used:
https://www.vikingsbrand.co/blogs/norse-news/norse-viking-dragons
