Of Wolf and Snake
- Connla Redleaf
- Aug 26, 2024
- 5 min read
A trope that has gradually come to my attention in the media I consume is the constant pairing of wolves and serpents. Most recently, I discovered a pair of shields in the Elden Ring: Shadows of the Erdtree DLC. While the acquisitions of each item seem almost entirely unrelated, their descriptions are nearly identical to each other.
The Wolf Crest Shield pictured above is described as follows:
A finely made "blueshield" featuring an engraving of a wolf under the moon. Excels at fending off sorceries. Whereas the Serpent Crest Shield is described:
A finely made "redshield" featuring an engraving of a winged serpent. Excels at guarding against fire.
Even the numerical mechanics are complimentary, as the Wolf Crest Shields boasts a 63% Magic-Damage reduction to the Serpent Crest's 63% Fire-Damage reduction. In the context of the game itself, these shields are representative of two characters: Rellana, knight of the Twin Moon, and Messmer the Impaler, host of the Abyssal Serpent. It is also implied by other item descriptions scattered throughout the Realm of Shadow that Rellana followed Messmer's crusade out of love for him, though he was married to his purpose.
Despite this most recent example cited, wolves and serpents are not always paired so explicitly in media (much less so romantically). Probably the most notable relationship between a wolf and a serpent is that of siblings. In the Norse Sagas, Loki is the father of three children by the giantess Angrboda. The eldest of these siblings is Fenrir, the wolf that grew so large that the gods of Asgard had to fashion an impossible bind to keep him from attacking them. The middle sibling, Jormungandr, is similarly oversized--the length of his body capable of wrapping around the entirety of Midgard (Earth). The youngest sibling, Hel, is a half-corpse woman who rules over the domain of the dead.
While interactions between Fenrir and Jormungandr are almost entirely nonexistent in mythology, the brothers do still maintain a sort of kinship during the events of Ragnarok. Ragnaraok, the prophesized death of the Asgardians, depicts Jormungandr fighting a duel with Thor, god of thunder and lightning, in which Thor defeats the great serpent, but quickly succumbs to his wounds and the poison inflicted upon him. Likewise, Fenrir is destined to break free of his bonds and devour the god Odin, father of Thor, before being slain himself by another of Odin's sons, Vidarr.
Thor and Odin are arguably the most popular of all the Norse gods, and their father-son relationship sets a strange parallel with Fenrir and Jormungandr's brotherhood. Their relationship may in fact be an allegory for the relationship between Odin and Loki themselves: unlike the popular Marvel films, Loki is actually blood-brothers with Odin rather than Thor. As Odin is often associated with wolves (see his pets Geri and Freki), and Loki the trickster is associated with serpents (his son Jormungandr, of course, but also the serpent that drips venom on his face as part of his punishment for killing the god Baldr).
Curiously enough, there is another mythological connection between the wolf and the snake that may surprise even those not well-versed in the classics: Cerberus. Most often, Cerberus is depicted as the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, but he has had many interpretations and depictions that vary from that image. Sometimes, he was depicted as having only two heads(much like his brother Orthrus) and other times he is described as having 50 or 100 heads, only three of which at most are shaped like a dog's (the remaining heads being described as--you guessed it--snakes).
There is, however, another multi-headed creature more directly associated with serpents: the Lernean Hydra, another of Heracles' many foes. The hydra is most well known for its ability to regrow heads where one is cut off, but the number of heads regrown, as well as the number of heads it began with, vary from retelling to retelling. In an interesting twist, although it's rarely addressed, the Hydra and Cerberus are technically brothers, just like Fenrir and Jormungandr, both being sons of Typhon and Echidna.
While the imagery of both wolves and serpents seem to recur in tandem, the relationship between the two symbols feels a bit shaky at best. Perhaps my own recognition of such a pattern is merely a case of apophenia, but I believe there is a more abstract, literary connection between the two. In fiction, there are often recurring roles that can be identified as patterns in the greater human psyche (see Joseph Cambell's works, especially The Hero with a Thousand Faces). In particular, I'd like to talk about two character tropes that seem to fall on equal and opposite sides of a story.
Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, and many of those stories end up following certain patterns we refer to as "tropes." Tropes can be as broad as "the protagonist" (sometimes called "the main character" or "the hero," although that's not always true), or as narrow as "the goddess," an (almost) always female entity of great power and wisdom who helps "the protagonist" on his (or her) journey by granting them some sort of magical (or sometimes just useful) item or power.
Long-winded, I know, but as I said, humans have been telling stories for thousands of years, leaving us plenty of time to play with these categories and subvert expectations to make a more engaging story. The two tropes we want to look at here are in fact the right-hands of both the protagonist and antagonist of any given story. A good story is nothing without conflict, and that conflict can come in many different forms. The best stories have multiple layers of conflict, not just between the "good guys" and the "bad guys." In many stories, the "main character" will even have interpersonal conflicts with their friends or teammates, most often with one character in particular: "the lancer."
Many stories contain a hero that can't complete his mission alone, and joins a small party of companions. Each of these parties, regardless of size (although they usually form groups of 3 or 5), tend to have their members fall into tropes of their own. There's the main hero, or "leader," the protagonist of the story whom the audience has known the longest and is intended to relate to, and then their closest friend (and usuallygreatest rival) the "lancer." Some examples of lancers to their heroes include:
For more information on the hero/lancer dynamic, I highly recommend the Trope Talk video by Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube (direct link: https://youtu.be/fgmT_Q2R2ww?si=UEJ_YPHAhs_sM2gP). Now here's the interesting part: while the hero has a lancer counterpart, so too does the villain sometimes have their own lancer, referred to as "the dragon." More often than not, dragons serve less as "friendly rivals" to their villainous partners, and more like their most loyal henchman (or even a yes-man) to their lord. Some examples of dragons to their overlords are:
Again, I cannot recommend the above-mentioned OSP video enough for more information on these character tropes. To get back to our topic, however, "the dragon" is the key. While the hero of a story is often represented by the noble, golden lion (or a golden dragon in eastern cultures), the lancer tends to be represented by the silver wolf, a symbol of them being an "underdog" when compared to the hero. Likewise, while the villain is often portrayed as some great demon on amorphous dark entity, the dragon is, well, the titular winged serpent. So, here again (though it may be a bit of a stretch) we have the wolf-serpent dynamic serving as counterparts to one another.
The relationship between the wolf and the serpent is rather tenuous, but I've yet to encounter any solid research on such a topic despite noticing its recurrence in media throughout my life. Hopefully, this article draws enough attention to this relationship to warrant additional exploration on the topic. Being a fan of lancers, wolves, dragons, and deuteragonists of all kinds, I'll be keeping an eye out for more robust portrayals of these discussed tropes and relationships as the vast library of humanity continues to grow.
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