Dragons and Devil Whales — Inside Anglo-Saxon England’s Strange Animal World

Animals in Anglo-Saxon England belonged to more than the physical landscape. They appeared in poetry, burial customs, royal gifts and religious warnings, carrying meanings that ranged from loyalty and wealth to violence, temptation and death.

Much of the surviving written evidence was recorded after Christianity spread through England, so it cannot perfectly reconstruct earlier beliefs. Archaeology and Old English literature nevertheless reveal a world in which real creatures and imagined monsters occupied the same mental territory.