Who doesn’t like dragons? Despite having never existed, they’ve left their mark on human history. Here are the 10 most culturally important dragons in the world.
10. Zilant
You may not have heard of it, but Kazan is one of the most important cities in Russia. Capital of the Tatarstan Republic, an independent khanate, it was captured by Ivan the Terrible, rebuilt by Catherine the Great, and was home to both Tolstoy and Lenin as students. It’s actually a century and a half older than Moscow, and better displays the east-meets-west mystique of Eurasia. In fact, Moscow has paid vast sums to Kazan to keep it a part of the nation. Nowadays it’s a big, oil-rich manufacturing center.
The story of its founding is like a creation myth. According to legend, the land on which Kazan was built was a serpents’ nest pervaded by a foul stench and a whistling sound. One of the serpents in particular, known as Zilant, had two heads—one a snake’s, with which it ate animals, and the other a bull’s, with which it ate grass. Thinking this an ideal place to found a powerful capital city, Kazan’s founder paid a wizard to clear the nest. However, because it also had wings, Zilant escaped to a nearby hill and terrorized the city as it grew.
Eventually, Zilant was killed and is nowadays commemorated on the Kazan coat of arms. In heraldry, Zilant is a type of dragon called a wyvern. These have the upper body of a dragon and the lower body or tail of a serpent.
9. Ryujin
In Japan, the dragon is a symbol of power. There are two types, the tatsu and ryu—both of which, unlike Chinese Dragons, are usually depicted with three claws. Most powerful of them all is the dragon god of the Shinto faith, Ryujin. Dwelling under the sea in a coral palace, he is Lord of the Ocean and possessor of the Tide Jewels, which he uses to control the tides. Being a water dragon, he is attended by a staff of half-fish half-human butlers.
Seen as the guardian of the Shinto faith, Ryujin is depicted at temples and shrines throughout Japan. Under him are the dragon kings, which are perhaps the most diverse dragons in the world. They include the 40-foot-long Han Riu, striped with nine different colors; the eight-headed Yamata-no-Orochi; and the super-sighted Ri Riu, who can see for more than 100 miles.
Ryujin also has a daughter, the ‘luminous jewel’ Toyotama-Hime. As Dragon Princess of the Sea, she is renowned for her extreme beauty—except in dragon form.
8. Antaboga
A mainstay of Javanese shadow plays, Antaboga—the ‘World Serpent’—is “older than age itself.” Antaboga spent all his timelessness meditating, eventually meditating into existence a companion, the ‘World Turtle’ Bedwang. This was the beginning of the universe.
Noticing Bedwang came with an underworld as well as a world, Antaboga placed a black stone lid to keep it shut. But the underworld gods Setesuyara and Batara Kala didn’t like the dark and pushed it back up, allowing earth and light to flow into existence, followed by water and skies, the sun, moon, stars, and so on.
Then with the universe created, Antaboga departed for Heaven. However, the story doesn’t end there. In Heaven, he was asked to build a palace for the supreme god Batara Guru—and found it impossible without arms or legs. So the dragon wept, and from his tears came a jewel-encrusted egg. Fortunately, this was enough to please Batara Guru, who thought it an excellent decoration for his palace—even after the goddess Dewi Sri hatched out.
7. Fafnir
Once a mortal man, Fáfnir became a dragon after killing his dad for his gold—which, unknown to him, was cursed by the Norse god Odin. Unable to spend his ill-gotten fortune, Fáfnir was doomed to protect it …until the hero Sigurd—spurred on by Odin and Fáfnir’s own brother Regin—slayed him. On the brother’s request, Sigurd also took out Fáfnir’s heart and roasted it over a fire. According to tradition, Regin hoped to gain knowledge by eating the heart of a dragon. Unfortunately for him, however, Sigurd touched the heart while it was cooking to check if it was done, burning his thumb. Then he stuck his burned thumb in his mouth, inadvertently consuming some of the heart, and suddenly found himself able to understand the language of birds—which warned him, just in the nick of time, that Regin planned to kill him. So Sigurd killed Regin instead and took Fáfnir’s treasure for himself.
What makes Fáfnir so important, you ask? This old Norse dragon wasn’t just the star of the Völsunga Saga, he was also a key influence for J.R.R. Tolkien, and a template for The Hobbit’s dragon Smaug. Like Fáfnir—who warns Sigurd away from his hoard, saying “that same gold which I have owned shall be thy bane too,”—Smaug can talk. “My armor is like tenfold shields,” he warns Bilbo Baggins, “my teeth are swords, my claws spears,” and so on. And of course, Baggins, like Sigurd, is there to steal his treasure.
Fáfnir and other dragons in ancient literature (including the dragon in Beowulf) weren’t just models for Smaug, though; they were the spark behind the whole of Middle Earth. “I desired dragons with a profound desire,” Tolkien once said, describing “the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir” as rich and beautiful. In fact, some of his earliest stories were about dragons. So, without Fáfnir, we may never have had The Lord of the Rings—or even the fantasy genre as we know it.
6. St. George’s Dragon
The dragon slain by the Greek-born Roman soldier known today as St. George lived near the city of Silene (in present day Libya). According to the story, he rode into town amid a gathering storm and skewered the beast on his lance, which he named Ascalon.
However, it wasn’t until the 9th century—500 years after St. George’s death—that the earliest depictions appeared. The tale didn’t even reach western Europe until the 13th century—almost a millennium after his death. In other words, it’s safe to say that this story was no more than a fable.
That’s not to say people in the Middle Ages didn’t believe in dragons, though. They did. In fact, dragons appeared in authoritative bestiaries and books on natural history. Part of the reason for this is the prevalence of fake stuffed “dragon” specimens. But it also has to do with observations getting lost in translation. In Europe, at least, the mythical dragon probably evolved through centuries of embellishment on what was originally some kind of snake—because the Greek word for ‘serpent’ is drakon.
5. Y Ddraig Goch
The Welsh national flag is one of the most striking in the world: a large and detailed red dragon (Ddraig goch in Welsh) on a background of green and white. And while (officially) it only dates back to 1959, the red dragon has been an emblem of Wales for much longer, used as early as 655 AD by Cadwaladr, King of Gwynedd.
The red dragon also featured as a symbol of Wales in the 12th-century legend of Merlin (Myrddin), waking up and fighting a white dragon representing England. In fact, King Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon’s name means ‘Dragon Head’. In 1346, at the Battle of Crecy, green-and-white-clad Welsh archers marched under a red dragon standard. But it was Henry VII who first superimposed the image of the red dragon, a sign of his Cadwaladr lineage, on a background of green and white, the colors of the House of Tudor, for his flag at the Battle of Bosworth.
By the beginning of the 19th century, when Britain annexed Ireland, the red dragon was an obvious choice for the national emblem of Wales. In 1953, it was surrounded by a circle of text: Y Ddraig goch ddyry cychwyn (‘the red dragon gives impetus’).
4. The Great Red Dragon
In the Bible’s Apocalyptic final book, the Book of Revelation, Satan appears as the Great Red Dragon. And he doesn’t hold back. The seven-headed, 10-horned beast (thought to symbolize the seven hills of Rome) appeared and “swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.” Then he “stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.”
Famously painted by William Blake, the Great Red Dragon hates the woman for giving birth to a follower of God. In Blake’s series of watercolors, the sky is stormy and dark—whipped up by the beating of the Red Dragon’s wings. A flood invoked by the dragon rises to engulf her but at the last moment, as the dragon hovers to watch her drown, God saves her by granting her wings.
For Blake, good and evil were two sides of the same coin, hence the depiction of the woman’s arms and the dragon’s arms both outstretched in mirror image. Neither exists independently of the other.
3. Druk
Another country with a dragon on its flag is Bhutan. Almost ethereal in white (though originally green) on a background of orange and yellow, this is Druk—the Thunder Dragon. Actually, to the people who live there (the Drukpa), Bhutan’s real name is Drukyul, the “Land of the Thunder Dragon”. There’s a whole Thunder Dragon culture, with dragon temples and monuments, that’s passed from generation to generation since ancient times.
Druk originated in Tibet, and spread to Bhutan as the Drukpa Kagyu lineage. In Tibetan mythology, Druk is subordinate to the Klu—Chinese-style water dragons, temperamental in nature, whose queen would ride out with garments made of snakes and a bag full of disease.
Druk is more generally benevolent. On the flag of Bhutan, its white scales represents purity and the unity of different ethnic groups, while the jewels in its claws represent the wealth and perfection of Drukyul, or Bhutan.
2. La Gargouille
The French town of Rouen was, in the Middle Ages, terrorized by a bloodthirsty dragon—at least according to legend. La Gargouille, who lived in a cave by the Seine, had a serpentine neck, slender head, and “membranous wings.” But it still caused damage wherever it went, spouting water to sink ships as well as breathing fire. According to legend, locals became so desperate to make peace with the dragon that they sacrificed criminals and (more reluctantly) maidens to it.
In the end, though, it was man of the cloth Frater Romanus who saved the people—but only on the condition they built a church in the town and got themselves baptized. After they agreed, he rode out to La Gargouille and tamed it with the sign of the cross, then led it back to be burned at the stake.
Only its head and neck survived (being fire-retardant), so they were mounted on the wall of the town. A replica was also carved onto Rouen Cathedral, becoming the world’s first gargoyle, the architectural water spouts named for the dragon. La Gargouille’s name, by the way, comes from Late Latin gurgula, meaning ‘throat’.
1. The Azure Dragon
So important is the Azure Dragon in classical Chinese mythology that the grouping of stars (or asterism) representing it takes up a quarter of the sky, and is split into seven sections. In fact, the Azure Dragon is even important in Japan, as Tokyo’s guardian, and Korea.
Representative of the east, the Azure Dragon is one of four cardinal totems, the others being: the Vermillion Bird (south), the White Tiger (west), and the Black Tortoise (north). It has control over the weather, breathing clouds and influencing rivers, lakes, and seas.
There are many other dragons in Chinese mythology, of course. Besides the Dragon King, who controls all China’s seas and can take on any form, the Azure Dragon is simply the most important. Among others, there’s also the horned dragon, an evil being who’s lived long enough to grow horns; the treasure dragon, who protects personal wealth; and the cloud dragon, who flies through clouds to make it rain and is often depicted in paintings.