tirsdag den 24. april 2012

The farting dragon

In honor of St. George, here is a story of a Danish dragon, that I don't think many will know outside of my home-country. Denmark is not particularly rich in dragon-lore, but the ones we do have, tend to be rather special in some way. They are usually not too bad-tempered and evil, although they do tend to destroy churches on sight, and they are not generally as fixated on gold and tresures as many of their colleagues in other parts of Europe. The dragon in this story is though, it lives deep below the ruins of Kalø Castle in eastern Jutland where it guards an enormous treasure, big enough to pay all the taxes in Denmark for a seven year period. All the money is to be found in a giant copper kettle, around which the dragon has curled itself. A lot of people have tried to dig down to the dragon's lair, but only twice have people managed to actually open the gates to the dungeons. The first one was an adventorous German, but in his case the dragon acted suitably dragon-like and tore him to pieces. In the second case though, things did not start out well for the dragons. Perhaps because it was two local lads. In any case they spoke to the dragon in such a stern way that the poor creature got quite scared, and tried to hide in a corner of the cave. The two men were just about to start dragging the treasure op to the surface, when something rather unexpected took place. In pure fright the dragon released a mighty foul-smelling wind that brought tears to the eyes of the men, curled their hair and singed their shirt-tails. Coughing and spluttering they staggered towards the surface, leaving the treasure behind. And since then not a single soul have dared to enter the lair of the farting dragon.

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