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The Dragon vs Storm god motief is present in Semitic peoples, too. Notably Marduk and Tiamat, Baal and Lotan, and even amongst broader Hamito-Semitic groups such as the Egyptian Ra vs Apophis. It is not just an Indo-European thing, though this is an Indo-European variant of the myth. In general, the Serpent is associated with water or the Sea, so we have the Rain vs the Sea. More broadly though, we have an image of Order vs Chaos, most explicitly in the Tiamat form, where the world is ordered from the remains. It is the same narrative function as the Superhero vs Supervillain of modern storytelling, actually. If you look up comparative mythology, or the broad variants, you'll see a sky god facing a water serpent is quite common. You'll even find it in the Americas, such as Cipactli vs Texcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl amongst the Aztecs.
would have bumped up against the Romans and gotten Arianized'ish Christian conversions as early as 300'ishAD which might have blended existing Odin stories and concepts with Christian ones. (Odin might have been around pre-Christ (?) not sure, but maybe he wasn't hanging on a tree sacrificing himself to himself with a spear in his side until 500AD or so, after he got the idea from someone else is what I am saying)
ouroboros - Dictionary.com.
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a snake or serpent eating its own tail, variously signifying infinity and the cycle of birth and death.
WHERE DOES OUROBOROS COME FROM?
mythologian.net
Ouroboros derives from a Greek word meaning “tail-devourer.” While the word is not attested in English until the 1940s, the concept of the ouroboros is very ancient, used across many cultures as a symbol of cosmic harmony, eternity, and the cycle of birth and death.
The earliest known ouroboros symbol comes in a 14th-century BCE Egyptian religious text found in the tomb of King Tutankhamen. The symbol appears in a passage about the origin of the sun god Ra through a union with the death god Osiris, meant to illustrate creation through destruction. Ancient Egyptians also used the ouroboros to symbolize the flooding of the Nile, which occurred in seasonal cycles and was of great importance to ancient Egyptian agriculture and society. Other ancient cultures also incorporated the ouroboros symbol. Norse legend tells of the great serpent, Jörmungandr, who encircles the earth and bites its own tail. Hindu cosmology features an ouroboros as helping to prop up the Earth.
The ouroboros was specifically adopted by Gnostic philosophers in the 2nd century BCE. For them, it symbolized the dual nature of existence, marked by life and death, male and female, light and dark, mortality and divinity, or Earth and heaven.
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I'm not sure the Midgard Serpent is really a proper ouroboros; he's not really eating himself, he's just big and wrapped around the earth and biting his own tail, maybe like an anchor, like he really wants to hold onto it no matter what. And he may be willing to starve himself to death while doing it. Commitment!
Some people look at an ouroboros and see a symbol of life, infinity, cycle.
View attachment 294668
I look at an ouroboros and I see just the opposite.
I see "what NOT to do" lol.
I mean seriously, this thing can't accept any reality or sustenance except itself.
So it eats itself.
... "A for effort"?
*facepalm*
Worst Pet eVER.
Oh, I don't think they got the idea from Christianity. In my opinion, this is a representation of Praeparatio Evangelica.Yeah it was the "myself to myself" that caught my eye - I am not familiar with the rest of the mythology and poems beyond some comic books, roleplaying and some skims of wikipedias. Seems like the norse poetry referenced was also of a post-christian era, like 1300AD or further forward, and a lot of Germanic tribes (kinda Norse? Or is that a Norse of a different color?
Likewise, if Revelations is dated ~100AD and the Midgard Serpent didn't appear earlier but rather appeared centuries later, then it could be a Nordic interpretation of what they heard from conversion/scripture introductions grapevined over a few centuries.
Norse mythology - Wikipedia
800AD... pretty young, really... 700 years post Revelations (or Ragnarok, if you prefer)
Rök runestone - Wikipedia
Possibly a little was lost in translation
The interesting thing about Odin is that he is the head of the gods at all. Generally, Indo-European religion has a Father of the gods or King and a subsidiary thunderer - the Dyaus Piter and Perkwunas of the hypothetical reconstructed proto-form. The former in various ways came to be sidelined, as High gods often are, or combined. So Jupiter (maintaining the Piter) or Zeus (from the Dyaus) absorbed the thundering role, with many of those aspects brought to the demi-god Hercules/Herakles; or Indra in India.
