It is summer, the moment to escape into space and time, into the historical / mythological fantasy: here is the -republished- Lindwurm!

The Lindwurm, or lindworm, was a serpentine dragon (and man-eater) of Norse and Central European mythology (Fafnir was also a lindworm). It is at the origin of the legendary foundation of the city of Klagenfurt (among others), of which it is the symbol. 

The preparatory sketch and the pencil drawing 

Alamannic Warriors and Hillfort, 5th century AD

 

There are many wrong informations about the life and the general appearance of the people who lived in the late Antiquity/Dark Ages.

First of all: folks were not always short!

According to the data of the beautiful Archaeologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Württemberg in Konstanz (average height of the men at 172 cm and at 162 cm for the women in Alamannic area, www.konstanz.alm-bw.de), the archaeologist of the Oxford University Sally Crawford writes about the Anglo-Saxons:

“(the earliest cemeteries) show that the population buried in these Germanic burial grounds was a little taller than the population associated to the late Romano-British cemeteries, with males standing at about 173 cm and females at 162 cm on average. (…) The evidence from the early Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries shows that the population was relatively healty, with little bone evidence for diseases caused by malnutrition or deficiency in the diet.”

©Sally Crawford, “Anglo-Saxon England”, Shire Publications, 2011, page 65.

The results of the measurements of Charlemagne's tibia indicates that he was 1.84 m tall!

 

Anglo-Saxons

Anglian King, 7th century AD




Anglo-Saxon Woman, 7th century

Ceorl, 8th century AD

Anglo-Saxon Thegn, 8th-9th century AD