Here be dragons
“Hic sunt dracones” (HC SVNT DRACONES) is a Latin phrase that translates to “Here be dragons”. It is in fact an anachronism that pays tribute to the practice of putting illustrations of mythical creatures on medieval maps to indicate unexplored or dangerous territories, serving as a warning to travelers. The phrase originated during a time when cartographers had limited knowledge of distant lands, and they would sometimes embellish their maps with mythical creatures like dragons (also: HIC SVNT LEONES) to represent the unknown and potentially hazardous regions. Today, “hic sunt dracones” is sometimes used metaphorically to denote areas of uncertainty or danger, or to evoke a sense of adventure and exploration.
Dragon sagas and debris flows
Heiser et al. (2019) published a completeness analysis of the torrential event catalog of Austria. Their article includes a detailed historiographic analysis which considers a wide variety of sources. In addition to historical or semi-historical written sources such as chronicles, annals, and newspapers, narratives like sagas also offer insights into the occurrence of natural hazards.
Sagas often present a supernatural reinterpretation of catastrophic events, with dragons being a common motif1. These beliefs trace back to the proto-scientific and early scientific endeavors of the 16th and 17th centuries, where fossils and bones were sometimes construed as evidence for the existence of dragons2.
Based on a corpus of almost 6800 sagas the researchers charted the correlation between dragons and debris flows, revealing its prevalence in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Dragons or dragon-like beings frequently feature in associations with various natural hazards, particularly those originating from mountain torrents. Alongside dragons, entities such as witches, demons (e.g., the “Butz” in Dornbirn, Vorarlberg), or wandering spirits (e.g., the “Salige” in Vent, Tyrol, credited with the rupture of the ice-dammed Rofener lake), and even the devil himself, were believed to be responsible for causing debris flow or flood occurrences.
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