Dragon-head prow
The carved beast’s head on the stem of a Viking ship. In the sagas the finest warships carry a dragon’s head at the prow and a tail at the stern.
Meaning
Store norske leksikon calls the dragon head the commonest of the animal-head decorations the Norse used from the Migration Period far into Christian times, on the ends of timbers and interlace, “but first and foremost” as the stem ornament of longships. People believed such heads had magical power that kept evil spirits away. Snorri’s Heimskringla describes King Olaf Tryggvason’s ship the Serpent: “In front it had a dragon’s head, and aft a crook, which turned up, and ended with the figure of the dragon’s tail.”
Origin and history
Few ship heads survive. Store norske leksikon names the remains of a serpent’s head on the Oseberg ship and another head found in the river Scheldt in 1935, now in the British Museum; the drawing here follows the Oseberg stem. The National Museum of Denmark notes that the Oseberg ship shows how elaborately ships could be carved, decoration that emphasised the ship’s symbolic value. The heads travelled with the Norse. The Bayeux Tapestry shows dragon heads on William the Conqueror’s fleet, and Snorri tells that Sigurd the Crusader gave the dragon heads of his ships to the emperor in Constantinople, who set them up on a church there.
Heads off before land
Store norske leksikon retells a story from the Icelandic Book of the Icelanders: a ship approaching Iceland had to take its dragon head down so as not to frighten the land spirits.
Dragon heads on churches and villas
The heads moved from ships to buildings. Norwegian stave churches carried them on their gables, and one from Lom stave church survives, according to Store norske leksikon. The Danish encyclopedia Lex describes carved dragon heads on beam ends and roof ridges in the Nordic national romantic architecture of about 1880–1910, modelled on the stave churches, above all Borgund.
See also
Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), Gungnir, Sleipnir, Huginn and Muninn, Yggdrasil, Valknut.
Sources
- Dragehode – utskåren dekorasjon (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- Heimskringla (Laing translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Samuel Laing, 1844, Project Gutenberg, Saga of Olaf Trygvason
- How did the Vikings travel around in the world?, National Museum of Denmark
- Dragehoved – træornament (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
Last reviewed September 26, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research