Where Do Dragons Come From? Tracing an Ancient Motif
Article 1 of 4
While researching for my novel, I came across a number that genuinely stopped me in my tracks: people have been telling stories about dragons for more than 4,500 years. Four and a half millennia! Few mythological creatures can claim a history that long or that widely spread across the globe.
The Earliest Traces: Mesopotamia
The earliest known depiction of a dragon fight appears on cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia, dating to around 2500 BC. Not long after, around 2100 BC...
The Hero Who Didn't Want the Job:
Why We Love Reluctant Heroes
When I started plotting my story, one thing was clear to me: My protagonist wouldn’t be the type to volunteer. No sword in hand, no “I’m going to save the world”-look in his eyes—more like someone who’d rather hide in the library. Though in his case, this isn’t just due to his thirst for knowledge and his love of books: his world offers him no way to influence events, so he puts his energy in what he can control. It is precisely this involuntary passivity—which shifts when circumstances force him to act—that makes this character so interesting to me.
The “reluctant hero” is one of the most enduring figures in the narrative tradition: someone who doesn’t seek the role of hero but is thrust into it.
Why Does the Dragon Show Up in Different Cultures,
Times, and Places?
Article 2 of 4
In the first part of this series, we traced the long journey of the dragon — both temporally and geographically. From Mesopotamia to East Asia, from antiquity to the present. But I deliberately left one question open, because it deserves its own article: how is it that cultures with no documented contact with one another independently arrived at the same mythological creature? There's no single, definitive answer — but several plausible explanations that don't rule each other out.
What Humans Experience Everywhere
A very simplified but obvious approach is that people everywhere face the same basic dangers...
More Than Blood and Genes:
Why the “Found Family”-Trope is so popular
A group of people (or creatures) who aren't related by blood, but who come together through shared experience, shared hardship, or plain coincidence—and end up meaning more to each other than the families they came from. That's the found family trope, one of the most beloved constellations in fantasy and science fiction. Guardians of the Galaxy. The Crows from Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows. A motley crew of misfits giving each other what their families of origin never could.
It's tempting to think of this as a modern invention. It isn't...cLong before Marvel or YA fantasy got hold of it, L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1900) told essentially the same story.
From Monster to Character:
How Dragons Evolved in Literature and Film
Article 3 of 4
When I first began exploring the topic of dragons for my novel, I realized something I hadn't previously grasped to that extent: few fantasy creatures have changed as dramatically over time as the dragon. From deathly monster in ancient epics to companion of human heros to cuddly good-luck charm in children's films, it's been a long journey — and that journey probably says more about us than it does about dragons.
Phase 1: The Dragon as the Final Test
It starts with the monster. In the Old English epic Beowulf, composed around 700 AD, the aging hero faces one last challenge: a dragon terrorizing his land...
Do you prefer books that match the season,
or quite the opposite?
Do you enjoy sitting on the couch with a hot chocolate and a cozy blanket, rooting for the heroes of the story you’re reading to make it through the snowstorm they’re currently trudging through? Or would you rather let a novel whisk you away to a tropical beach while snowflakes dance outside your window?
As a translator, I don’t get to choose, but as a reader, I like it when what I’m reading fits the season. Still, when the summer heat just won’t let up, the opposite can be appealing, too.
As an author, I naturally spend far too long writing a text for it to always be seasonally appropriate, but whenever possible, I like to publish at the right time.
Book 1 of my trilogy “The Undesirable Heir” takes place during the transition from winter to spring and will be released in late January.
Spirit Animal and Symbol:
The Dragon in Esotericism and the New Age
Article 4 of 4
The previous three articles in this series have explored the dragon as a historical motif: its origins, spread, and literary evolution. But to conclude, I would like to explore another dimension in which dragons have gained significant importance in recent years.
There is also a spiritual and esoteric interpretation of the dragon that focuses less on its history and more on the symbolism it embodies and the significance it can hold in the times of massive change that we are currently experiencing.
Where Does the Myth of the Shapeshifter Come From?
A Search for Clues...
Several characters in my own story share the ability to change shape—sometimes a powerful creature, sometimes moving through the world in human form, never quite one or the other. Looking more closely into the motif, I realized I'm in very old company.
Almost no culture gets by without shapeshifters. In Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus himself transforms time and again, Proteus evades every attempt to pin him down by constantly changing shape, and Lycaon is turned into a wolf as punishment for his crimes—the oldest surviving werewolf story in Western literature, recorded in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the north, the berserkers and their wolf-skin-wearing counterparts, the Ulfhednar, were a warrior caste of the Viking age who deliberately worked themselves into a wolf-like battle fury...