Tamara Reuveni: How Tolkien Saved the Dragons

What adjectives come to mind when you think of dragons? Noble? Majestic? Terrifying?

If any or all of those are correct, you're either a student of classic mythology or a child of the post-Tolkien fantasy renaissance.

The earliest known dragon legend comes from ancient Babylon where they believed that the world was created from the bones of a dragon which the gods slayed. For millennia dragons were a kind of litmus test for heroism, at least in stories. Anyone who wanted to call themselves a hero had to face off against a dragon at some point. Beowulf killed one, or rather slayed it. So did Sigurd of Norse legend. The city of Krakow in Poland is supposedly named for the knight who slayed a dragon on that spot. The city has capitalized on the legend, building a statue of the dragon which breathes fire at regular intervals. I've seen it, and it's not nearly as cool as it sounds.

But in the nineteenth century, dragons went out of style. In fact, fantasy went out of style. Magic and magical creatures were considered juvenile, the stuff of children's stories which no self respecting adult paid attention to. Consequently, the dragons and other monsters underwent a neutering process so that they wouldn't scare the kiddies. They became quirky. Cuddly. Trying to slay them would have been like disemboweling a teddy bear.

Tolkien was the first writer to take dragons seriously again. He was fascinated by dragons from a very early age, but he was always drawn more to the ancient legends than to the modern tales. And many years later when he wrote The Hobbit for his own children, it was to those ancient stories that he looked for inspiration.

In fact, The Hobbit has a strong resemblance to the Norse legend of Fafnir and Sigurd. Fafnir didn't start out as a dragon. He was a dwarf prince who became so obsessed with protecting his treasure that he killed his brothers and shut himself in a cave with all his gold. His greed became so strong that it warped his body as well as his mind until he became a dragon.

Although The Hobbit is still pretty juvenile by our standards, it was the beginning of the renaissance. It got its metaphorical foot (probably a large, hairy one with an exceptionally leathery sole) in the door, and primed the world for The Lord of the Rings. But there are no dragons in the seemingly infinite pages of that book, or as Ted Sandyman says, "There's only one Dragon...and that's Green." Without The Hobbit, dragons would have remained banished to the brightly colored pages of fairy tales, drinking tea with dimwitted children. There would be no Eragon, no Song of Ice and Fire.

The cuddly dragons persisted for a while.