DRAGON SLAYER’S: ST. GEORGE AND SIGURD: MYTHIC PARALLELS?

Introduction

The legend of Saint George and the Dragon – a Christian knight slaying a fearsome dragon to rescue a princess – is among the most iconic tales of medieval Christendom. Yet many scholars and folklorists have noted striking similarities between this saintly legend and earlier Norse/Germanic dragon-slayer myths, most notably the saga of Sigurd (Siegfried) slaying the dragon Fafnir. This raises the question: Is the St. George story a Christian reworking of the Sigurd myth? In exploring this possibility, one must examine the narrative parallels between the two legends, the extent to which the St. George story may have been shaped by syncretic adaptation of pagan motifs, and the role of national identity – especially England’s adoption of St. George as patron saint – in elevating one figure over the other. This paper presents a balanced analysis of these issues, drawing on mythological, historical, literary, and religious scholarship to compare St. George and Sigurd. Rather than asserting a definitive origin, it will explore how the dragon-slayer motif could traverse cultures and religions, and whether Sigurd might be seen as an earlier incarnation of the hero that St. George came to personify. Or is St. George inspired by Greek myths or even Beowulf though Grendel and his mother are monsters (like Jotnar) rather than dragons, which is from an earlier time.

Both St. George and Sigurd are celebrated as dragon-slaying heroes, and their tales share core elements of the hero-versus-monster archetype. In the medieval Christian legend, Saint George is said to have encountered a dragon terrorizing the city of Silene (in Libya, according to the Golden Legend). The dragon demanded daily tribute of sheep and children, and the king’s own daughter was about to be sacrificed when George arrived. George wounded the dragon with his lance and subdued it, then offered to kill the creature only if the townspeople converted to Christianity.

After the king and populace agreed to baptism, George slew the dragon, delivering the land from danger.

This dramatic episode – a knight on horseback defeating a serpent and saving a maiden – is a far cry from the original 4th-century martyrdom story of St. George and was a later addition to his legend. Medieval writers appended the dragon combat to George’s vitae by the 11th–13th centuries (it was popularized in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend c. 1260), likely to embellish the saint’s story with a chivalric miracle that resonated with popular heroic lore. Indeed, the entire dragon episode in St. George’s legend closely parallels the ancient Greek myth of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from a sea-monster: in both cases a princess is offered to a beast, a hero intervenes, slays the monster, and saves the maiden and her people. Many scholars suggest that George’s dragon-slaying is a Christianized version of the Perseus myth, transplanted into a Christian saint’s life. The Encyclopædia Britannica, for example, notes that George’s battle with the dragon “may be a Christian version of the legend of Perseus, who was said to have rescued Andromeda from a sea monster near Lydda.” Lydda (in the Holy Land) was where George’s cult was centered, which further hints that the Perseus-Andromeda story (set in the Levant in classical lore) was consciously echoed in George’s legend. Sigurd’s dragon-slaying narrative, while arising from a different cultural milieu, shares the fundamental trope of the hero who overcomes a mighty serpent. In the Old Norse Völsunga saga (13th century, drawing on earlier oral tradition), Sigurd is a legendary Germanic hero who slays Fafnir, a dragon guarding a hoard of gold. Advised by the dragon’s brother, Sigurd digs a pit to ambush the serpent and drives his sword Gram through Fafnir’s belly. The aftermath of Sigurd’s victory adds distinctive mythical motifs: by bathing in the dragon’s blood, Sigurd gains invulnerable strength, and by accidentally tasting the dragon’s blood he is granted the ability to understand the language of birds. He also roasts and eats part of the dragon’s heart, imbibing its power and wisdom.

These elements – the magical benefits from a dragon’s blood and heart – have no parallel in the St. George legend, which reflects a key difference in narrative purpose: Sigurd’s tale is one of personal heroism and mythical wisdom, whereas St. George’s is moral and religious, emphasizing deliverance and conversion rather than personal gain. Moreover, Sigurd does not save a community or maiden as a direct result of killing Fafnir; instead, his slaying of the dragon is motivated by revenge and the acquisition of the treasure (and it sets in motion a tragic chain of events in the saga, including betrayal and Sigurd’s own death). By contrast, St. George’s dragon-slaying is overtly altruistic and emblematic: he rescues others from the beast and uses the victory to affirm the triumph of the Christian faith (the defeated dragon often symbolizing the Devil or paganism). Despite these differences, the mythological parallels between the two heroes are significant.

Siegfried and the Dragon

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Both are typically depicted as mounted warriors in later iconography – Sigurd sometimes shown on horseback plunging his sword into Fafnir, and George as the mounted knight with a lance – highlighting the image of a martial champion defeating a draconic embodiment of evil. Both figures came to be celebrated as dragonslayers above all else. In fact, of all his many deeds in Germanic legend, Sigurd/Siegfried is “widely known as ‘the Dragon Slayer’” and his slaying of Fafnir is the centerpiece of his legend. Likewise, St. George’s entire posthumous fame in folklore rests on the single act of slaying the dragon – a feat so iconic that it eclipsed his actual martyrdom story. The hero-slaying-dragon motif is ancient and widespread; it recurs in Indo-European myths from antiquity through medieval lore. Comparative mythologists point to examples such as the Vedic god Indra who vanquished the serpent-demon Vṛtra to release the life-giving waters, the Persian hero Thraetaona (Ferīdun) who slew the three-headed dragon Zahhak, and the Teutonic hero Siegfried (Sigurd) who killed a fearsome dragon and seized its golden hoard.

In this broader context, St. George, and Sigurd both participate in a trans-cultural “dragon-fighter” archetype representing the victory of cosmos over chaos, or of virtue over wickedness. The recurrence of this archetype across pagan and Christian traditions suggests that medieval Europeans would naturally map familiar dragon-slayer stories onto new figures. The narrative of St. George slaying the dragon, appended to his saintly legend in the Middle Ages, appears to be one such mapping, adapted to convey Christian values.

Christian Adaptation and Syncretism

The adaptation of the dragon-slaying motif into the St. George legend exemplifies how Christian hagiography often absorbed and reinterpreted our pagan lore. Early Christian missionaries and writers, facing well-established pagan hero myths, sometimes wove elements of those stories into Christian narratives to make the new faith more accessible or symbolically resonant to converts. The tale of St. George and the Dragon, which took its full form in the 12th–13th centuries, bears the hallmarks of such syncretism. The core storyline – a noble warrior defeating a serpentine monster – was not originally Christian at all, yet by grafting it onto the biography of a Christian martyr, the Church could portray it as an allegory of Christian triumph. In the Golden Legend’s version, the dragon terrorizing Silene is explicitly associated with pagan evil: George’s condition that the people convert before he slays the dragon makes the episode a clear metaphor for Christianity’s victory over idolatry.

Many dragon-slayer myths pre-Christianity involved heroes securing material rewards (treasure, a kingdom, or a bride), but in St. George’s case the reward is spiritual – the conversion of souls. This reflects a deliberate Christianization of the motif: the dragon symbolizes the Devil or the forces of pagan darkness, the princess and her people represent the innocent souls in need of salvation, and the saint’s victory becomes a demonstration of God’s power. By prevailing over the dragon (often called “the dragon of idolatry” in medieval commentary), George “slayed” paganism in the eyes of the faithful. The story thus served didactic purposes for Christians, teaching that faith can overcome even the most terrible evils. In crafting the St. George legend, medieval writers drew not only on biblical symbolism (Saint George was sometimes likened to St. Michael the Archangel, who in the Book of Revelation battles the Dragon, i.e. Satan), but also on local mythologies. One influence noted by scholars is the Thracian hero archetype: in the late Roman era Balkans and Asia Minor, pagan art commonly depicted a heroic horseman (the Thracian Rider) spearing a beast or boar, often as a protective deity of the land. Early icons of St. George in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) world seem to borrow this imagery of the mounted hero-god. By adopting the iconography of a pagan horseman slaying a monster, Christian artists effectively transferred the pagan hero’s attributes to a Christian saint. The Legenda Aurea account of St. George explicitly places the dragon by a lake and has George arrive on horseback with a lance – imagery that would be familiar in pagan hero cults and now given new meaning under the sign of the Cross.

In Greek myth, Bellerophon with the help of the winged horse Pegasus (a gift from Athena or captured by Bellerophon himself), the hero flies above the composite fire breathing monster called Chimera, avoiding its flames, and kills it. The monster has the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon, yet most importantly… it breathes fire.  The similarity is obvious he is mounted albeit on a winged ahorse and he uses a lance in some versions and in others bow and arrow.

Bellerophon

What about direct links to Sigurd’s tale? It is possible that the writers of St. George’s dragon legend were not consciously thinking of Sigurd, but rather of the general dragon-slaying hero archetype that permeated folklore. Nevertheless, given that the Norse and Anglo-Saxon peoples had their own dragon-slayer traditions during the Middle Ages, the incorporation of such a motif into a saint’s life may have been partially inspired by or at least palatable to audiences familiar with heroes like Sigurd. By the 11th century, Sigurd’s story was known in England and across the Norse diaspora – evidenced by carvings on runestones in Sweden and even on some stone monuments in the British Isles depicting scenes of Sigurd slaying the dragon Fafnir. This means that long before St. George’s tale became popular in Western Europe, the image of a dragon-slaying warrior-hero was already part of the cultural landscape in Germanic Christian kingdoms. The Church could capitalize on this familiarity: to newly converted Norse or Anglo-Saxon Christians, a saint who killed a dragon would seem rewarding and relatable, aligning the new faith’s champions with beloved legendary heroes of old. Some researchers argue that St. George’s very survival as a prominent saint (despite his tenuous historical ties to Western Europe) was because his name and legend became attached to “an older tradition” – effectively piggybacking on pre-Christian hero lore to gain popular appeal.

In summary, the St. George legend can be seen as a deliberate Christian reworking of a pagan mythic pattern: it recasts the archetypal dragonslayer (be it Sigurd, Perseus, Bellerophon, or a local deity) into a Christian knight who slays the monster in Christ’s name. This does not require a one-to-one borrowing of Sigurd’s specific story so much as a translation of mythic themes into a new religious idiom.

National Identity and England’s Patron Saint

The question of national identity further intertwines the legends of St. George and Sigurd, particularly in England. Although St. George was a soldier of Cappadocia (in modern Turkey) and had no historical connection to Britain, he was adopted in the later Middle Ages as patron saint of England, displacing earlier native saints. One might ask: why would the English choose a foreign saint famous for slaying a dragon? One compelling explanation is that the dragonslayer resonated with existing English (Anglo-Saxon and Norse) heroic lore, making George a natural figure to venerate. The Anglo-Saxons and related Germanic peoples had their own dragon-slaying heroes in story and song – not only Sigurd of the Völsung tales, but also the dragon-fight of Beowulf (the Old English epic hero who, in his final battle, slays a dragon threatening his people). In fact, the Old English Beowulf poem even alludes to a dragonslayer of old named Siegmund (a figure closely related to the Sigurd/Siegfried legend) who “waded in blood” after defeating a great dragon, winning a hoard of treasure. These narratives were part of England’s early medieval cultural memory. When Christianity took root, the Church and monarchy often co-opted familiar motifs to smooth the transition from pagan to Christian identity. By the 13th–14th centuries, St. George’s dragon exploit had become wildly popular in England, in part due to chivalric romance literature and the Crusades. King Edward III (reigned 1327–1377) especially elevated St. George’s status: he established the Order of the Garter (1348) under George’s patronage and officially declared St. George the Patron Saint of England, sidelining older candidates like the martyr St. Edmund or the confessor St. Edward. Chroniclers of Edward’s court explicitly framed George as the embodiment of knightly English virtues and as a heavenly protector in war.

Saint George 15th Century

The choice may have been politically motivated – forging a unifying national symbol during the Hundred Years’ War – but it was certainly helpful that George already carried the mystique of the dragon-slaying knight. According to one analysis, George “fought off” two royal English saints (Edmund and Edward) for national patronage, with the support of Edward III, precisely because the noble knight’s legend captured the imagination in ways the others did not. An English writer in 1483 even claimed that St. George “by his prowess … gat the love of the people” in England, implying that popular sentiment favored the dragon-slayer saint as a national hero, perhaps more so than indigenous saints who lacked such a thrilling legend. Notably, St. George’s feast day (April 23) coincides with what some call “Sigurd’s Day” in the old Germanic calendar. There is evidence that in Anglo-Saxon England (and certainly in later Scandinavian tradition), the springtime feast of a dragon-slayer hero was celebrated around that date. April 23rd later became St. George’s official feast day. The overlap is intriguing: it suggests that as England Christianized, the pagan celebration of the dragonslayer may have been supplanted or merged with the Christian feast of St. George.  This h9nts that the church deliberately aligned George’s festival with an existing heroic commemoration. This would be analogous to how Christian holidays often correspond to earlier pagan festivals. By appropriating the timing (and thematics) of Sigurd’s cult-figure, the Church effectively rebranded a pagan hero as a Christian saint for the English people. As a result, many English folk customs and ballads associated with St. George may actually preserve vestiges of the Sigurd/dragon-slayer myth under a new name.

For instance, traditional English mummers’ plays performed around St. George’s Day depict “St. George” fighting a dragon or a Turkish knight, dying and being resurrected – motifs more suggestive of mythic drama than of any episode in the historical George’s life. This again underscores that the folk image of George in England was less that of a distant martyr and more that of a mythic champion, much like Sigurd or Beowulf, who dies and returns and conquers the forces of darkness. Some commentators have gone so far as to call Sigurd “the true earlier figure” behind St. George – essentially, England’s original dragon-slayer hero who was replaced in name by George. While this is more poetic than provable, it reflects real sentiment. Modern scholars and neopagan groups point out that Sigurd (or Siegfried) was known in the Norse-influenced parts of medieval Britain, and thus they argue St. George’s legend is “a medieval reworking of the myth of Sigurd” to fit Christian norms.

An English antiquarian writing in 1701 mused that Saint George might really be “no other than the English Siegfried under a Christian guise” (though this was a speculative idea) – highlighting that the notion of Sigurd as an ur-figure for George has been entertained for centuries in England’s national discourse.

Conclusion

In examining the evidence, we find strong mythological and narrative parallels between the tale of St. George and the Dragon and that of Sigurd slaying Fafnir, yet a direct one-to-one derivation remains unproven. The legend of St. George clearly belongs to a broad family of dragon-slayer myths that long predates Christianity. The core elements – a courageous hero, a marauding dragon, a high-stakes combat, and the subsequent reward (whether treasure, maiden, or salvation) – are shared across Indo-European myths from ancient India and Persia to Greece, Germany, and Scandinavia. In the medieval era, the Christian retelling of this archetype in the story of St. George was certainly a case of syncretism: the Church and popular storytellers repurposed a beloved pagan motif to convey Christian ideals.

Beowulf decapitates Grendel

Within that process, the Sigurd/Siegfried legend stands out as one prominent precursor, especially relevant to Northern Europe. The two stories are not identical – their motivations and symbolism differ in line with pagan versus Christian worldviews – but they rhyme in suggestive ways. Both heroes epitomize valor in the face of overwhelming evil (be it a gold-hoarding dragon or a town-devouring dragon), and both became cultural icons well beyond their original contexts. Is St. George essentially Sigurd in saintly armor? We can conclude that St. George is not a simple copy of Sigurd, but neither is he entirely independent of the mythic patterns that Sigurd represents. The Christian legend of George was crafted in an era and milieu saturated with dragon-slayer folklore, and it shows. It is safest to say that St. George and Sigurd are parallel heroes shaped by a common human story-pattern, with the former adapted to a Christian moral narrative. The medieval English enthusiasm for St. George indeed suggests that his legend filled a niche that figures like Sigurd had once occupied in the popular consciousness – that of the champion who overcomes the dragon of chaos. In the end, St. George’s dragon fight can be viewed as one more incarnation of the eternal myth of the dragonslayer, molded to fit the spiritual battles of a Christian society.

The possibility that the tale was directly borrowed from the Norse/Germanic Sigurd story remains intriguing but unproven; what is beyond doubt is that such myths were readily interchangeable in the medieval mind. St. George’s name prevailed under Christianity, while Sigurd’s faded into folklore – yet on a mythic level, the echo of Sigurd’s sword can be heard in George’s lance thrust. England’s patron saint may wear a cross on his shield, but he carries on an older, universal legacy of dragon-slaying heroism. In exploring St. George and Sigurd side by side, we gain insight into how myth and faith intertwine, and how nations build identities by weaving new tapestries from the threads of older legends, rather than by inventing patterns from whole cloth.

Siegfried

Illustrations:

Siegfried by Arthur Rackham for Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungen." Around 1910

Beowulf decapitates Grendel by John Henry Frederick Bacon

Sigurd as imagined by Jenny Nyström (1854–1946)

Saint George and the Dragon, 1434/35, by Bernat Martorell

Bellerophon riding Pegasus and slaying the Chimera, central medallion of a Gallo-Roman mosaic from Autun, 2nd century AD, Musée Rolin

Bibliography:

Azevedo, Mateus (ed.). Ye Shall Know the Truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005. (Includes Whitall N. Perry’s essay on “The Dragon that Swallowed St. George.”)

Chambers, Ian. “St George – A Cainite Myth?” Patheos – By the Pale Moonlight, 23 April 2020.

Franklin, Anna. “St George’s Day 23 April.” Hearth Witchery blog, April 2025.

Hanson, Marilee. “St George.” English History (englishhistory.net), 16 Feb 2022.

Mackley, Jon (J.S.). “The Pagan Heritage of St George.” Paper presented at the IMC, University of Leeds, July 2011. (Summary on Medievalists.net, Dec 8, 2012.)

Saint George – Encyclopædia Britannica. (Online) Last updated 21 May 2025.

Sigurd – Wikipedia. (Online) Last modified 2023 (retrieved 2025).

The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. (English translation by William Caxton, 1483; repr. in Temple Classics, 1900.) – See the chapter “St. George” for the medieval narrative of the dragon.

Newark Odinist Temple (UK). “Sigurd’s Day (23rd April) Celebration.” Odinist Fellowship website, 2025.

Perry, Whitall N. “The Dragon that Swallowed St. George.” In Ye Shall Know the Truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy, edited by M. Soares de Azevedo, 313–327. World Wisdom, 2005.

Poetic Edda / Völsunga Saga (13th c. Icelandic) – for the legend of Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane. (Translated excerpts available in The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Jesse L. Byock, Penguin Classics, 1990.)