49 pages • 1 hour read
Cressida CowellHow to Train Your Dragon
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Viking Culture
Both the Hairy Hooligan and Meathead Tribes are described as tough, loud, boisterous groups who love fighting and prize size and strength above all else. The Vikings in the novel come from our historical Vikings, and Cowell describes them fairly accurately on many counts. Historically, Vikings lived in tribes or clans in the areas now known as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, but they also traveled extensively. They had close ties with England and even visited North America. Historians believe that around the year 800 CE or so, their population grew. It became difficult to provide for their people with farming alone, which drove the Vikings to explore and raid nearby lands. Naturally, this was a grueling job, and so they did prize the strongest among them. Just like the tribes depicted in the novel, the Vikings also enjoyed getting together, drinking mead (beer made from honey), and telling stories about other warriors. The famous Viking epic poem Beowulf is one of those oral stories.
Viking society was divided into three classes: jarl, karl, and thrall. The aristocracy, or the noble class, was jarl. The free people who did the hard labor were karl. The enslaved people that anyone may have brought back from a raid were thrall. Viking warriors typically came from the second social class and were free, unmarried men (McCoy, Daniel. “The Viking Social Structure.” Norse-mythology.org, 2019). In How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup must inherit the position of chief from his father, which accurately represents how these jobs were assigned. The son of a nobleman (which did not imply strength of character but was a term synonymous with lord, aristocrat, or ruler) would have to train and take over the position of jarl whether they wanted to or not.
The position of warrior afforded Viking men some privilege. They were allowed to explore and raid other settlements, and the characters in How to Train Your Dragon belong to this group. Stoick and his tribe use their dragons for hunting much in the same way that historical Vikings used animals, mostly dogs. Wolves play a huge part in Norse (meaning “northern people”) mythology, with a monstrous wolf named Fenrir (also Fenris) as a common character. The chief of the gods, Odin (referred to as Woden in England and in How to Train Your Dragon), possessed two wolves, just as Stoick the Vast possesses two dragons, Newtsbreath and Hookfang. The book describes the Monstrous Nightmare as a species of dragon that only a chief may possess; this also resembles true medieval culture, as all across Europe, one’s rank as a nobleman determined what breeds of dog one could own.
In the novel, Cowell alludes to the gods from Norse mythology. Hiccup and the fictional Vikings pray to the same Norse gods as the historical ones. Cowell describes Loki as the god of sneakiness and Thor as the god of storms and thunder. Thor, like Hiccup, was the son of the chief. As the primary god, Odin ruled all others. How to Train Your Dragon discusses Thor much more than his father. Historically, more people prayed to Thor than Odin, depicting Thor as a champion of the common man. The allusion to Thor sets the stage in the novel for Hiccup to become more important than Stoick. Another popular middle grade fantasy series that depicts the Norse gods is Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, which includes with The Sword of Summer (2015), The Hammer of Thor (2016), and The Ship of the Dead (2017).
Finally, the dragons themselves come from Norse culture and are a symbol of power. Many cultures across the world have myths about giant beasts, such as the Chinese long or the serpent-god Quetzalcoatl from South America. When one think of dragons as greedy, treasure-hoarding reptiles that fly and breathe fire, that description comes straight from Northern Europe. There are strong examples of this in ancient literature, such as stories of Fafnir, a dwarf who transformed into a dragon because of his greed, and the unnamed dragon from Beowulf. The beasts in How to Train Your Dragon are mostly the size of large dogs but still retain the physical traits of a winged reptilian monster that breathes fire.
Literary Context: Medieval Versus Modern Literature
While Cowell describes much of Viking society with exaggerated accuracy, her depiction of ancient literature takes a more modern approach. Cowell employs metafiction and anachronism to shape the narrative before it begins. Metafiction is a narrative style that draws attention to the process of fiction writing. The cover of the book lists Cressida Cowell as the translator, and the author is cited as the protagonist, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. Anachronism is the incorporation of objects, events, or customs in a period to which they do not belong. The primary anachronistic element in the novel is the integration of our modern culture of books and literacy in the Viking age (793-1066 CE).
A book written by a Viking would be in Old Norse, Old Icelandic, or Old English, and would need a translator. However, most ancient authors would not list their name on their works, nor would they list personal information or a dedication to a loved one. The fact that Professor Yobbish’s book includes a copyright page is comical because the concept of copyright wasn’t developed until after the printing press (circa 1440 CE). Even though Gobber the Belch says he stole the How to Train Your Dragon from the Meathead Public Library, libraries didn’t become public until the 19th century. During the Middle Ages, books were carefully managed by clergymen and often chained to desks to prevent theft.
Furthermore, it was unlikely that a nobleman like Hiccup would learn to read. When Gobber tells the children, “Get some idiot to read it for you!” (19), he accurately describes the philosophy of many kings and lords of Medieval Europe. Most warriors prioritized training for battle, hunting, and other sports over academic work, and few of them bothered to learn to read.
Something so anachronistic as these modern elements in a book otherwise dedicated to the author’s chosen time period flags this information as important. Since the out-of-place descriptions make the reader see these details more than others, the author wants readers to pay closer attention to the motif of reading and writing. Throughout the book, Hiccup’s literary and academic qualities assist him. He develops an alternative method of dragon training through tedious research. He abandons Professor Yobbish’s book as useless long before the rest of the Vikings come to the same conclusion. Hiccup’s tendency toward reading and writing helps save the village, and the fact that How to Train Your Dragon is his book, not Cowell’s, further cements the idea that literacy is a prime focus.
