Today we share a post by Naomi Farkas, who was a student in our Fall 2024 Introduction to the Fairy Tale course.
I'm Naomi Farkas, a student and literature/storytelling enthusiast. I've been fascinated with fairytales and folktales since I was a morbid and strange little kid--their unabashed darkness and horrific aspects, their inherently transformative nature, and the way they shift with each retelling, gaining new symbols and meaning throughout culture and generation. My favorite fairytale is Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” but it's a pretty tough competition. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be either a princess or a vampire-- and fairytales are a pretty great combination of both concepts.
There's a fairly obscure Scandinavian folktale that I haven't been able to get out of my head since reading it for the first time. “Prince Lindworm” (Danish: Kong Lindorm) broadly follows a Beauty and the Beast (Animal as Bridegroom) type of narrative structure, or one reminiscent of the framing device for The Thousand and One Nights. The Lindworm, a serpent creature, insists that it must have a wife before its younger human brother can marry. The Lindworm brutally devours the first two princesses that are sent to it. Having already made enemies with two kingdoms, the Lindworm's father-- the King-- finds a humble shepherd's daughter to be the Lindworm's next offering. With the help of the witch, a tub full of fresh milk, a bucket of lye, and a few extra layers of clothing, the shepherd's daughter manages to defeat the Lindworm, revealing that under the monstrous serpent creature lay a handsome prince.
If this seems like a pretty standard, unambiguously heterosexual love story, that's because it is. But what fascinates me is the basis for this story, the inciting incident and reason for the crown prince of a kingdom to be a giant serpent creature in the first place. A queen is unable to conceive, and seeks the aid of a witch. The witch gives her two magic roses, a red rose, and a white rose. If she eats the red rose, she will have a son, and if she eats the white rose, she will have a daughter. The witch then tells her, in no uncertain terms, not to eat both roses.
Because this is a fairytale and must have conflict, and because fairytale characters never listen to witches, the woman eats both roses. She explicitly eats the white rose first, and then the red rose. She gives birth to twins, but horrifically her first child is a serpent creature who flees the palace upon delivery, while her second child is a beautiful human boy. If you're following the logic of the two magical baby-giving roses, the Lindworm should be a woman, or at the very least assigned female at birth. The story, however, genders the Lindworm as male. He calls for a bride, he turns into a beautiful prince. I very much doubt it was the writers' intention to tell a queer story with Prince Lindworm, and I'm not trying to pretend it was--but regardless of the intentions, what we're left with is a story that picks up some really fascinating subtext when approached through a queer lens.
I think the Lindworm can be very easily read as a lesbian or trans man (that is, a man assigned female at birth, who identifies as a man). Granted, the Lindworm is depicted as not necessarily a good person--they do eat those princesses, and there's no justification for princess-eating, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. But even within the original fairytale, there's something compelling about the Lindworm. The Lindworm is very much a product of the disgust and fear of the society around it, rejected at birth for its existence, something it can't control. The Queen completely denies the existence of the Lindworm until she's faced with the creature she's birthed--denial that might seem familiar for children of homophobic parents.
“Prince Lindworm” is a story about the often grotesque yet beautiful process of transformation, of redemption through love. It's a story that hasn't been able to escape my mind, not only because of its compellingly horrific imagery but also because of the way it uses sex and gender dynamics in its storytelling, keeping its themes just ambiguous enough to allow for a whole host of meanings and interpretations.
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