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.
Read next
- Next in Norse and Viking symbolsBorre ring-chainAn interlace of bands running through rings and lozenges, the signature motif of the Borre style of Viking art, about 850–950. It is named after harness mounts from a ship grave at Borre in Vestfold, Norway.
- The same shape in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeHarpyIn Greek myth, the snatchers: storm winds that carried people off, later pictured as foul birds with women’s faces who stole the food of the blind king Phineus.
See also
Year of the Dragon, Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), Gungnir, Sleipnir, Huginn and Muninn, Yggdrasil.
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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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