WEBVTT - The Monstrefact: The Lindworm 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:05.640 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:10.480 My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:14.240 this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:19.079 Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas, 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:25.239 and monsters. In time, dragons and worms wind their way 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:29.440 through human history, keeping largely to the shadows of myth 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:35.040 and legend, terrifying in their strength, mystery and symbolic resonance. 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.880 In the traditions of Sweden and Northern Scandinavia, we find 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:45.560 tales of just such a beast, the lendworm. In older accounts, 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.040 the lindworm takes on a hybrid form. It has the 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.839 body of a great serpent and a head like that 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:55.720 of a horse, complete with a mane running down part 0:00:55.760 --> 0:01:00.160 of its neck. It occupies loathsome regions of the wilderness, 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:04.200 guards buried treasure, spits venom, and in some cases may 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:07.360 bite its own tail and roll like a hoop, or 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.960 ascend into the sky, shedding sparks and fire. Folklore's Carol 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.000 Rose also adds that in the later stages of its life, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.200 the lindworm may mutate and take to the sea as 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.119 a sea serpent. Now the hoop snake account we can 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.160 neatly tuck away as part of the larger tradition of 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.360 the ora borus, the snake that bites or consumes its 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:32.160 own tail. For the most part, this does not occur 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:34.560 in the natural world, but it has proven to be 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.880 an intriguing image in human cultures. For ages. Likewise, we 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:42.440 can file away the lindworm's brilliant aerial maneuvers as part 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.959 of a broader tradition of unidentified aerial phenomenon transformed into 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:51.000 legend and the treasure well. It's pointed out by Thomas 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:56.680 mam in twenties a footnote to Scandinavian herpetology. The Bronze 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.640 Age salt tales from Asia and Africa traffic into Europe, 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:05.640 including accounts of large constrictor snakes and spitting cobras. There 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:09.079 also arrived reliefs from the Near East that if a 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:14.400 human being buried valuables in secret, their greed would transform 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.160 them after death, and they would come back from the 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:21.040 grave as a large snake to guard the buried treasure. 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.160 It stands to reason that the lendworm is simply the 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:32.760 convergence of all these elements. Along with Swedish knowledge of 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.320 native snake species such as the grass snake, and yet 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.600 the lendworm seemed resistant to keep to the shadows of 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.240 myth and legend, because among rural swedes there remained sightings 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:48.480 of the beast and even accounts of fighting and slaying 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:53.240 such monsters, and these continued throughout the Enlightenment and into 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:57.440 the nineteenth century. As Mom details in his article published 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:02.360 in the International Society for the History and Bibliography of Herpetology. 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:05.880 One man was encouraged by these accounts to drag the 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.400 lindworm out of the shadows and into the world of 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:17.040 scientific verification, ethnologist Gunar Olaf Hilton Karalius, who lived eighteen 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:21.120 eighteen through eighteen eighty nine. To be clear, it would 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.560 be more than half a century before the term cryptozoology 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:30.160 was introduced. Hilton Cavalius's curiosity certainly matched the spirit of 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.400 earlier inquiries, and he was quick to insist that he 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.520 himself was no zoologist, but he was fascinated by Swedish 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.280 accounts of the lindworm and was increasingly convinced that there 0:03:41.360 --> 0:03:45.680 must be some underlying reality to it, not mere folklore 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.320 or oversized descriptions of otters and grass snakes, but an 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:54.120 actual large fierce serpent with something resembling a horse's mane. 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.200 He dismissed all the flying, hooping and treasure guarding, but 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:03.520 he believed and as yet undocumented organism awaited scientific discovery, 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:08.480 and so Hilton Cavalius drafted a memorandum to the Royal 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:12.360 Swedish Academy of Sciences and self printed his report, compiling 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:16.120 numerous accounts and his insistence that the existence of the 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:20.040 lindworm be explored. He offered a cash reward for proof 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.680 of the creature's existence, assuring the common folk that a 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.080 dead specimen could be pickled in schnaps within a waterproof vessel. 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:32.520 The Swedish scientific community largely found his efforts amusing, it best, 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:37.000 at times lampooning the notion of rural swedes rampaging through 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.160 the forest in search of monsters, ready to dunk them 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:44.479 in liquor and collect their reward. Alas the lindworm could 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.200 not be coaxed out of the safety of folklore, and 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:51.000 no proof was ever recovered of this large, fearsome serpent 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:55.159 with something like a horse's mane, Hilton Cavalias went to 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:58.400 his grave without ever seeing proof of the lindworm's existence, 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.480 and as has and pointed out this alone has some 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.920 scientific value, but his mom details He did get his 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.920 serpent in the end as his grave stone, and Scatolov 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.760 features the emblem of a serpent biting its own tail. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.320 Special thanks to my son Sebastian. On this episode, I 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:21.679 was at a loss as to what to cover this week, 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.359 and he instantly piped up at the breakfast table and 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:28.200 suggested the Lindworm, which he learned about on the Netflix 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:35.200 animated series KILLEDA Tune into additional episodes of The Monster 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.000 Fact each week. As always, you can email us at 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:50.760 contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:52.960 to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.240 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.160 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.