thehungrytroglobite
Well-known member
Ahh, I see this old thread has been dragged up from the dead...
funny, I feel like a different person to the person that started it! In November 2020 I was still doing my undergraduate degree at Newcastle, going through my first break up, and overall pretty miserable and alone due to Covid lockdown. Now I'm living my dream life in the Dales, significantly healthier mentally & physically, supported by a wonderful partner + wonderful friends, doing the things I love and caving every weekend... what a difference a few years can make!
What I didn't know at the time I started this thread is that two years later I'd actually be researching cave wyrms as an postgraduate at Cambridge University! So I suppose I know a lot more about them now... well, about one very particular type of cave wyrm (the early medieval dragon) in any case.
Interestingly, a year after that I was in Slovenia with some caving friends I met during my Master's. We met a Slovenian caver who told us all about the myths relating to olms (AKA proteus), as local people had traditionally thought that olms were baby dragons / the offspring of cave dragons. This did make me wonder how old these myths were, and how well travelled they were - and whether they perhaps contributed to the traditional belief of dragons dwelling in caves.
funny, I feel like a different person to the person that started it! In November 2020 I was still doing my undergraduate degree at Newcastle, going through my first break up, and overall pretty miserable and alone due to Covid lockdown. Now I'm living my dream life in the Dales, significantly healthier mentally & physically, supported by a wonderful partner + wonderful friends, doing the things I love and caving every weekend... what a difference a few years can make!
What I didn't know at the time I started this thread is that two years later I'd actually be researching cave wyrms as an postgraduate at Cambridge University! So I suppose I know a lot more about them now... well, about one very particular type of cave wyrm (the early medieval dragon) in any case.
Interestingly, a year after that I was in Slovenia with some caving friends I met during my Master's. We met a Slovenian caver who told us all about the myths relating to olms (AKA proteus), as local people had traditionally thought that olms were baby dragons / the offspring of cave dragons. This did make me wonder how old these myths were, and how well travelled they were - and whether they perhaps contributed to the traditional belief of dragons dwelling in caves.