{"id":2305,"date":"2020-12-10T11:44:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T11:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/martinemussies.nl\/web\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2022-05-03T20:12:35","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T20:12:35","slug":"wyrm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinemussies.nl\/web\/wyrm\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyrm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In various pieces of fan fiction<\/a> #KingAlfred, a mysterious creature makes its appearance: the wyrm<\/em>. Intrigued by this secretive being, I was inspired to research its earlier appearances. During Old English Fun Time Online<\/em>, I shared my findings in a short presentation, and it seemed nice to me to further process my rambling<\/del>\/braindump<\/del> ehm… ‘research notes’ into a blog post. So, for Paulo and other people that have asked me about it: here are some of my thoughts on the mysterious wyrm! \ud83d\ude42 All comments & suggestions are very welcome, as always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Since the publication of this blog post, I have incorporated my research on the wyrm in two scholarly publications<\/em>. Please follow the links below to read them. The unaltered original blogpost follows underneath. [2022 update]<\/em>

Mussies, M. (2021). \u201cDashing and daring, courageous and caring\u201d: Neomedievalism as a Marker of Anthropomorphism in the Parent Fan Fiction Inspired by Disney\u2019s Adventures of the Gummi Bears<\/a>. Dzieci\u0144stwo. Literatura I Kultura, 3(2), 60-83. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.32798\/dlk.625<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mussies, M. (2021). Healing Women: the COVID-19 Crisis and Alfredian Fanfiction.<\/a> In Journal of the Lucas Graduate Conference<\/em> (Vol. 9, pp. 52-73).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alfred looked up at the woman kneeling beside him. He could see the honest desire to help in her eyes, so he nodded. \u201cYes, whatever it may take.\u201d \u201cThen I must be honest about your ailment. It is not sickness that makes you sick, but a beast. Wyrms burrow in the bodies of men while young, and then slowly grow, causing the host great pain until they grow enough to consume them and break free from the host body.\u201d Modwenna shook her head, and her shoulder\u2019s slumped in remorse. \u201cI must do something that might not reflect well upon myself and may be seen as\u2026a sin. I must let you know this before I can help you. Will this be a problem?\u201d Alfred gasped as he felt the wyrm shift in his spine, nearly causing him to curl up on himself again and cry out in agony.<\/p>Surakian (2020)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In this TLK fanfic<\/a> by Surakian, King Alfred gets very sick (when hiding in the Athelney marshes) and Modwenna cures him. She finds out that he has a wyrm in his spinal cord, and her herbal medicine does not seem to work, but when he is as good as dead, she summons the wyrm – that is called Gifer – to go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As my friend Evina<\/a> already knew, this scene resonates with the ideas around snakes that Isidore of Seville described in his Etymologies<\/em><\/a>: \u201c48. Pythagoris says that a snake is created from the spinal cord of a dead person. Ovid mentions this in his Metamorphoses<\/em> when he says (15.389): ‘There are those who believe the human spinal cord is changed to a snake when the spine, in the sealed sepulcher, has rotted.’ This, if it is believed, occurs with some justice, in that as a human’s death comes about from a snake, so a snake comes about from a human death.\u201d Moreover, the fact that Surakian calls her wyrm \u201cGifer\u201d immediately refers to the Old-English poem Beowulf<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I contacted the author and asked her about her inspiration for the wyrm, however, she told me that it is a creature in the Japanese video game series Final Fantasy<\/em><\/a> (1987-). In this science fantasy media franchise created by Hironobu, the wyrm is a recurring enemy. Spelled as \u30a6\u30a3\u30eb\u30e0, the use of katakana already signifies that this is a loan word. Indeed, the wyrm-like creatures from Japanese folklore (often described as \u7adc – dragon) all have very different names, such as Ry\u016bjin (\u9f8d\u795e), the dragon that took all the bones from the jellyfish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My comic book like sketch of the story of Ry\u016bjin, for a (secret!) project with Jolijn<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Other games also mention the wyrm as an enemy, for example Total War: Warhammer II<\/em> (2017) features the Frost-Wyrm<\/a>, the Wyrmhunter<\/a> and a figure called Esteban Wyrm Killer. Traditional tabletop Warhammer<\/em> includes the Merwyrm<\/a>. What might have inspired the wyrms featured in these games?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The English dictionary defines a wyrm as a dragon without legs or wings, but that is far from the definitive definition. Other versions describe \u2018wyrm\u2019 as a wurm or a (large) snake. The general consensus is that in Middle English the term \u2018wyrm\u2019 refers to the earthworm and to creatures such as dragons and snakes. On the whole, it can be argued that historically, the term \u2018wyrm\u2019 is often used to refer to worm and snake-like creatures, but can even be used for spiders and wasps. Nonetheless, there is no standard definition for the term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Various mythologies have their own unique definitions and use for the word. Most Western mythologies depict wyrms as long bloodied fire drakes that are flightless (Flanagan, 2017). Sigurd slew a Wyrm Fafnir in the Norse legend and chronicler Layamon tells how Merlin anticipates that King Vortigern’s castle will collapse through two dragons who fight each other underground. The one \u2018so read so blod, worm alre boldest\u2019 (Summerfield 2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fantasy genres, the wyrm is often more dragon-like. Glaurung was a Wrym from the 1st age of Tolkien’s Silmarillion<\/em>. As was Scatha the last Wyrm, whom Fram (Ancestor of Theoden and Eomer) slew in the north of Middle Earth. In addition, in D&D and related games Wyrm is the term used for “really old and powerful dragon”, just like in the computer games Total War Warhammer II <\/em>and the Final Fantasy<\/em> series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of etymological research argues that the word in question is used to mean dragon and is of Germanic origin (Lionarons, 1998). Its equivalent in Old High German is \u2018wurm\u2019 (Gibka, 2016). These words were replaced by the Latin term draco, draconic which was borrowed by Germanic languages in the Middle Ages. German archeologist Hayo Vierck coined the term \u2018wurme\u2019 in 1967 to classify a group of creatures portrayed in ancient art, characterized by snake-like bodies and variable heads (Vierck, 1967). In Germanic languages, the term \u2018wurme\u2019 is widely used to denote all saurian-, worm-, dragon-like or snake-like creatures.

The word \u2018wyrm\u2019 often occurs in the corpus of Old English. Hannah Millard<\/a> found no less than 580 instances of wyrmas\/wurmas\/weormas in Anglo-Saxon sources. The examples from her database illustrate the friction between science and symbolism. As the Anglo-Saxons did not have a gene-based taxonomy, it remains a puzzle how they classified their (fantastic) beasts, especially when considering that they used the label \u201cwyrm\u201d for a wide variety of serpentine creatures that present-day people regard as being completely distinct. Moreover, when writing about worms in the eyes, this is likely meant to be figurative (like gremlins in the computer), but when writing about the worms in hell, this might well be meant literally, as worms were already known to be bodily consumers. The old-English wyrm was often associated with death and decay, signifying corruption in body and in soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best-known example of a wyrm in Anglo-Saxon literature is Gifer, from the Old English epic heroic poem Beowulf<\/em>. In the single Beowulf manuscript that survived, wyrm is used to describe the final monster which is like a dragon as seen in the statement, \u201cthen the wyrm awoke, accusation was renewed\u201d (Wanner, 1999). Germanic cultural art, in particular; the tales of Beowulf conferred a lot of belief in the boar protector and often featured dragon and snake-like monsters which were referred to as \u2018wyrms\u2019 (Glosecki, 1986). The wyrm in <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beowulf is called Gifer – \u201cgreedy one\u201d – and is an unrelenting consumer, but not inherently evil. Although from Beowulf, it might seem that the words wyrm and draca are completely interchangeable, Satan is never directly called a wyrm. Within the biblical text Genesis, however, in the retelling of the sin, the word \u2018wyrm\u2019 makes an unlikely appearance and is used to describe the well-known serpent in hagiographical literature (Flanagan, 2017). This is interesting for the snake has often been linked to the female. In many Medieval depictions, Eve – a symbol for all women – and the snake are very much alike, adorned with symbols of vanity such as an exquisite hair style, a crown and even make-up. Could the wyrm represent the Devil, through the sin committed by Eve? A pointer in that direction could be that, in various other stories, Mary (a symbol of purity) tramples the snake, thus restoring order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Middle English literature, we find the worms in the Tales of Caunterbury <\/em>(1387-1400) – aka The Canterbury Tales<\/em> – by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400). According to the Pardoner’s Prologue, cattle can be cured with the shoulder bone of a holy Hebrew sheep, when \u201cThat any worm hath ete, or worm ystonge\u201d (69). Apparently, the worm is not only dangerous when swallowed, but it also has the capacity to sting, like a bee or a wasp. It remains a mystery what these worms could look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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