The Bride of Prince Lindworm - More on the Danish Folktale

 

"She Saw the Lindworm for the First Time as He Came In and Stood by Her Side,"

 Kay Nielsen (1922).

Let's continue our discussion of the Danish folktale, "Prince Lindworm." The text of the folktale is found in the previous post, but there is much more to share.  This story is filled with metaphors and symbols.  It can be viewed in many ways.  That fact alone emphasizes the power of folktales to bring understanding and healing to issues we deal with today.

This is one of those stories we could talk about all day.  Many people have thought about it, written about it, and reflected on it.  Much of our discussion, however, comes from an article written by Tom Pettitt entitled “King Serpent (Kong Lindorm) A Wondertale from Danish Folk Tradition.” Pettitt provides multiple interpretations for those interested in a further analysis of the story. We’ll start with a psychological perspective (both the Freudian and Jungian views).  We’ll also examine the story with a folkloric and gender lens. 

Psychological:

Let’s start with the elephant in the room and talk about Sigmund Freud.  Now, if you’ve been listening to me for a while, you should know that I have little patience for Freud’s mono-thematic version of psychology.  And it goes without saying that his work has done lots of damage to women culturally throughout the years.  Nevertheless, in a psychoanalytic interpretation, the Lindworm would obviously be seen as the penis.  The Lindworm’s devouring of young women on their wedding night has a sexual connotation that even feminists would agree with. 

Freudians might also see the lindworm as symbolizing a conflict between the id and the superego.  The id is the primal part of our personality, concerned with sexual pleasure and in need of instant gratification.  The superego equates to our conscience.

Another Freudian way to look at this story is through the Oedipus complex.  This is a theory in which a child experiences unconscious sexual desires for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry with the same-sex parent.  Following this theory, the old woman who helped the Queen is her mother.  The Lindworm is in love with his mother, making the quest of the young woman a quest to make him love her instead. I know it’s more than a bit convoluted and a bit tedious to me.  The bottom line is, to Freud, it’s always the mother’s fault.

In Jungian fairytale analysis, there are also numerous interpretations. The lindworm might be seen as the shadow twin, the one holding all the repressed thoughts and feelings. Integrating the shadow into the Self is essential to personal growth.  From another perspective, the lindworm could be seen as merging with the anima on the wedding night. The anima, according to Carl Jung, is the feminine aspect of a man's unconscious, representing his inner woman and emotional life.

Jungian analyst Marie Louise Von Franz writes about this story in her book “The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales.” She sees the lindworm as a hermaphrodite wrapped in “feminine” dragon skin.  That interpretation seems to stretch things quite a bit (no pun intended). She writes, “Prince LIndworm is also the man surrounded by the woman, but he is in the form of a lump of bleeding flesh surrounded by a dragon skin, a regressive form of the union of the opposites.”  That argument is somewhat like my anima one, but her argument is broader.  Von Franz describes this transformation in more spiritual terms, discussing the Bride of Christ, Buddha, harems, and marriage. She goes off quite a bit, but I do like her idea that the story has to do with the unfolding of the Self.  In some way, she sees the birth of the lindworm as the birth of a divine child. She writes, “If you observe the symbolism of the Self as it manifests in an individual, you will see that it is in a state of constant change.  It sheds certain aspects and perpetually renews itself.” She continues, “the divine being is buried and has to be extracted from destructive matter.“  “[I]f there is a lingering malaise within yourself, you may be quite sure that you have not taken off enough shirts and dragon skins and have not reached the naked truth.” I think from a metaphoric perspective, this is a good one to ponder.

Both the Freudians and Von Franz are fixated on the sexual element of the story, but sadly only from the Lindworm’s perspective. What about the young woman protagonist?  This is her story, too.  She’s not just a figure to be sacrificed for the individuation of the lindworm.  She is the hero.

Folklore:

So, let’s look at this story from a more common perspective.  That is how the tale is seen within folklore, remembering folklore is the knowledge, culture and beliefs of people at a particular point in time. 

In the Socioeconomic view, we would explore the class differences, especially the way the peasants continue to save the nobles in this story.  This is a common theme.  It’s a question  as to who has the greater wisdom and knowledge. We also see in this story an unlikely hero. It’s not the handsome prince.  It’s not the King and Queen. It’s a young woman from the peasant class who saves the day.

In fairy tales, it is common for royal women to give birth to unusual babies.  They are either too small, too large, or monstrous.  She might give birth to a plant or animal.  These stories also address the fear, shame, and sadness of infertility and how this burden is most often borne by the woman alone. Often, she is cast aside. Sometimes she loses her head if she is the wife of Henry VIII. Most often, she is blamed for the infertility and for any birth defects.  In this environment, it’s understandable for the queen to go off on her own to find a solution, and understandable that she keeps the existence of the lindworm secret.

The removal of skin is another standard motif for an enchanted husband.  “In East of the Sun West of the Moon,” the husband bear becomes a man at night.  In “Hans My Hedgehog,” he removes his skin to become a handsome man.  Marriage in such circumstances does not come easily, and there are often one or more false starts or brides needed.  In our story, we follow the three rule, so it is the third young woman who succeeds.  How does she do so?  By following the instructions of the old woman.  The two princesses before her entered their wedding night without knowing what was meant to come.  That was very common in even my mother’s generation.  Women were told little about sexuality.  The old woman tells her to clothe herself in multiple pure white shifts.  She is covering herself in modesty, virginity and chastity.  Each time he asks her to remove a garment, she asks him to remove his skin. The only way to manage his unbridled passion is by covering her nakedness.

In one translation, the Lindworm is said to split his wife apart.  This depicts rape more than a consummation of the wedding vows.  He devours his partner.  We see in Prince Lindworm a rage, disrespect, and violence found in the worst of men. He is the one who lies, for he has a forked tongue. He is a beast. In medieval times, the royal court waited outside the bedroom doors on the wedding night. Checking the sheets to be sure the wedding was consummated.  Why did some of the young women die when the last one didn’t?  You might say they didn’t have proper guidance. Which was true.  The first two brides were princesses who lived insular lives, waited on and treated with respect.  They expected admiration and kindness from their husband even though they knew nothing about him except that he was of royal blood. The final bride had no such upbringing.  She was a child of nature, poor and taught to work and act.  She knew to respect her elders, so when the old woman told her what to do, she followed the instructions.  She had him remove his skin, then she beat him with switches dipped in lye.  She bathed him in milk and held him.

In both parts of the story, the transformation comes through milk, a symbol of purity and nurturing.  In the days of this story, infants only survived through a “mother’s milk.”  It represents the continuing bond between mother and child.  At its best it represents unconditional love.  When your mother is the queen, however, she farms you out to wet nurses.  In this case, she even puts her lindworm son in a hole.  He was not nursed.  The lindworm only receives milk through his new bride’s milk bath. There is a healing in a milk bath. The lindworm must be reborn.  After the beating, with the removal of all his skin, he needs the sustenance of milk just as a baby does to live.  In part 2 of the story, we see the new queen mother nursing 2 king birds.  It’s an odd development.  Her children have been sent away, and yet she still needs to nurse.  This seems to bring the birds to her.  In each case, the milk is transformative, changing what’s monstrous and what’s bird into human form. 

The lindworm is an abomination.  He is unloved and cast out.  In so many stories we see the need for the beast to be loved for who he is.  Beauty and the Beast comes to mind.  That motif is also present here although we don’t understand his condition as being a curse.  When the young woman is able to hold him, she breaks the spell and transforms the lindworm to his human form.  We don’t know that the young woman was able to love him then, but she was able to do what was required in the moment.  She was able to follow instructions, even the one most challenging - holding his flesh in her arms. 

Transformation is achieved through consummation.  The question is can anyone love him to wholeness. Doesn’t he have to do this work himself?  The story says “No”; others can help us to achieve authenticity, growth, individuation.  It can be achieved through relationships. The self is relational.  Individuation is dependent upon relationships with others.  Jung went so far as to say: “The self is relatedness… The self only exists inasmuch as you appear.  Not that you are, but that you do the self.  The self appears in your deeds and deeds always mean relationship.” (Jung 1935-39, p. 73)

Gender/Feminist

Another way to look at a story is through gender analysis.  In this technique, the female characters in the story are explored to discover how they are viewed and treated.  We examine the power structure to see if the patriarchal system guides the tale.  Here we see three brides forced into a marriage by their fathers.  They are traded like any other commodity and violence perpetrated against them through rape and non-consensual sexual consummation.  Pettitt writes, “The third bride survives thanks to the intervention of a wise-woman knowledgeable in the workings of supernatural factors in personal relationships, and the successful application of her procedures (deploying humble domestic materials) is but one manifestation of an unusually strong female counterforce at work in the tale.”  I would suggest that even though the title of the story is “Prince Lindworm,” the unnamed young woman is the hero protagonist.  To look at it in any other way is dismissive. 

That's enough discussion for now.  If you are interested in how this crone sees the story, check out my podcast of the same name.  You can access it on this website or you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts at the "Wise Crone Cottage."