Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas,
Speaker 1: and monsters. In time, dragons and worms wind their way
Speaker 1: through human history, keeping largely to the shadows of myth
Speaker 1: and legend, terrifying in their strength, mystery and symbolic resonance.
Speaker 1: In the traditions of Sweden and Northern Scandinavia, we find
Speaker 1: tales of just such a beast, the lendworm. In older accounts,
Speaker 1: the lindworm takes on a hybrid form. It has the
Speaker 1: body of a great serpent and a head like that
Speaker 1: of a horse, complete with a mane running down part
Speaker 1: of its neck. It occupies loathsome regions of the wilderness,
Speaker 1: guards buried treasure, spits venom, and in some cases may
Speaker 1: bite its own tail and roll like a hoop, or
Speaker 1: ascend into the sky, shedding sparks and fire. Folklore's Carol
Speaker 1: Rose also adds that in the later stages of its life,
Speaker 1: the lindworm may mutate and take to the sea as
Speaker 1: a sea serpent. Now the hoop snake account we can
Speaker 1: neatly tuck away as part of the larger tradition of
Speaker 1: the ora borus, the snake that bites or consumes its
Speaker 1: own tail. For the most part, this does not occur
Speaker 1: in the natural world, but it has proven to be
Speaker 1: an intriguing image in human cultures. For ages. Likewise, we
Speaker 1: can file away the lindworm's brilliant aerial maneuvers as part
Speaker 1: of a broader tradition of unidentified aerial phenomenon transformed into
Speaker 1: legend and the treasure well. It's pointed out by Thomas
Speaker 1: mam in twenties a footnote to Scandinavian herpetology. The Bronze
Speaker 1: Age salt tales from Asia and Africa traffic into Europe,
Speaker 1: including accounts of large constrictor snakes and spitting cobras. There
Speaker 1: also arrived reliefs from the Near East that if a
Speaker 1: human being buried valuables in secret, their greed would transform
Speaker 1: them after death, and they would come back from the
Speaker 1: grave as a large snake to guard the buried treasure.
Speaker 1: It stands to reason that the lendworm is simply the
Speaker 1: convergence of all these elements. Along with Swedish knowledge of
Speaker 1: native snake species such as the grass snake, and yet
Speaker 1: the lendworm seemed resistant to keep to the shadows of
Speaker 1: myth and legend, because among rural swedes there remained sightings
Speaker 1: of the beast and even accounts of fighting and slaying
Speaker 1: such monsters, and these continued throughout the Enlightenment and into
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. As Mom details in his article published
Speaker 1: in the International Society for the History and Bibliography of Herpetology.
Speaker 1: One man was encouraged by these accounts to drag the
Speaker 1: lindworm out of the shadows and into the world of
Speaker 1: scientific verification, ethnologist Gunar Olaf Hilton Karalius, who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: eighteen through eighteen eighty nine. To be clear, it would
Speaker 1: be more than half a century before the term cryptozoology
Speaker 1: was introduced. Hilton Cavalius's curiosity certainly matched the spirit of
Speaker 1: earlier inquiries, and he was quick to insist that he
Speaker 1: himself was no zoologist, but he was fascinated by Swedish
Speaker 1: accounts of the lindworm and was increasingly convinced that there
Speaker 1: must be some underlying reality to it, not mere folklore
Speaker 1: or oversized descriptions of otters and grass snakes, but an
Speaker 1: actual large fierce serpent with something resembling a horse's mane.
Speaker 1: He dismissed all the flying, hooping and treasure guarding, but
Speaker 1: he believed and as yet undocumented organism awaited scientific discovery,
Speaker 1: and so Hilton Cavalius drafted a memorandum to the Royal
Speaker 1: Swedish Academy of Sciences and self printed his report, compiling
Speaker 1: numerous accounts and his insistence that the existence of the
Speaker 1: lindworm be explored. He offered a cash reward for proof
Speaker 1: of the creature's existence, assuring the common folk that a
Speaker 1: dead specimen could be pickled in schnaps within a waterproof vessel.
Speaker 1: The Swedish scientific community largely found his efforts amusing, it best,
Speaker 1: at times lampooning the notion of rural swedes rampaging through
Speaker 1: the forest in search of monsters, ready to dunk them
Speaker 1: in liquor and collect their reward. Alas the lindworm could
Speaker 1: not be coaxed out of the safety of folklore, and
Speaker 1: no proof was ever recovered of this large, fearsome serpent
Speaker 1: with something like a horse's mane, Hilton Cavalias went to
Speaker 1: his grave without ever seeing proof of the lindworm's existence,
Speaker 1: and as has and pointed out this alone has some
Speaker 1: scientific value, but his mom details He did get his
Speaker 1: serpent in the end as his grave stone, and Scatolov
Speaker 1: features the emblem of a serpent biting its own tail.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to my son Sebastian. On this episode, I
Speaker 1: was at a loss as to what to cover this week,
Speaker 1: and he instantly piped up at the breakfast table and
Speaker 1: suggested the Lindworm, which he learned about on the Netflix
Speaker 1: animated series KILLEDA Tune into additional episodes of The Monster
Speaker 1: Fact each week. As always, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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