The Lindworm of Klagenfurt

This picture was taken during my last trip home, in my old bedroom in my parents's house in Chicoutimi, where my bookshelves are covered with memorabilia from old family holidays. It is a reproduction of a fountain in Klagenfurt, Austria. it represents a lindworm/lindwurm, in other words a sort of dragon. We stayed only a night in Klagenfurt, back in 1991, on the 200th anniversary year of the death of Mozart. There was no internet then and I never learned about the legend of the Lindworm of Klagenfurt until I did a bit of research online a few months ago. You can read a bit here on Wikipedia and here. I don't even remember seeing the fountain when I was in the city. A shame, as I love these old legends. It was the summer before I started playing Dungeons & Dragons and it surprises me, reading about the legend, that we played similar situations in our games: a monster, often a dragon (but sometimes something else) terrifying the population of a village or a town and poisoning the well or a river, or barring a road, would be vanquished by us. I guess it is a common tale, rooted in human psyche. Anyway, I don't know why, but I thought about it tonight.