I Promised Kobolds
In an earlier post, I promised kobolds. I mentioned them in my book, and now I need to explain them. So, here we go:
Konrad Von Wurzburg (possibly of Wurzburg, definitely from Strasbourg) was a poet in Germany in the 1200’s who liked to cover Christian virtues and dogma and wrote a few epics just for flavor. What he is particularly valuable for in this post is that he described kobolds and how people carved representations of them to attract or repel them in his time.
Now kobolds were hard to depict, as they could be invisible or turn themselves into animals, fire, or objects. Generally, their normal appearance was thought to be like a little person, about 4 feet tall, though they were considered spirits, akin to fairies.
They were sometimes given names, most famously King Goldemar, and they were thought to come in two forms.
There were household sprites, often depicted as red-heads in peasant garb. They weren’t necessarily helpful to have around, but once they liked a home, they were attached for a long while. One famous kobold was Hinzelmann, who was supposed to have latched onto Castle Hudemühlen when he got booted from the woods in the 1500’s.
As you might have guessed, kobolds also liked the woods and could be wood sprites, or to live in water. Sailors wound up with them on ships too.
Most famously, and as I use them, they are mine spirits. They are then depicted as bent, 2-feet tall old men living in groups and working veins in the earth. They were often trouble in the mines: they were blamed for cave-ins, accidents, and rock slides, and they were particularly blamed for polluting copper veins with poisonous, arsenic-laden, cobalt (which is where the name for the mineral comes from.) Coppers that turned pink and blue were a real problem for miners. (And the arsenic leaching into their water would also be a problem.) In some places they were said to knock to warn miners away from dangerous shafts or to indicate where a rich vein was.
Occasionally, they are depicted as being exorcised by priests, and you may in fact want to get rid of them. Some of them, like Hinzelmann, were judgy hens patrolling people’s morals. On the other hand, they were sometimes helpful in doing chores, provided you appreciated them and gave them presents. Clothes, in particular, were good things to give them.
The general feeling is that belief in kobolds predates Christianity. There is a lot of talk of them being descended from Greek and Roman house sprites. The first Coltky or kobolds seem to have been household spirits or spirits in charge of rooms. The Anglo-Saxons had the cofgodas that were supposed to live in hidden corners of a home and to steal grain for you if you fed them lavishly.
These days, you encounter kobolds in D&D countertop games, on fanwikis, and in music. They are still popular in their homelands and wherever one needs a spirit to wreck shop.
Sources:
Kobold — A Sprite from German Folklore | Mythology.net
Konrad von Würzburg — Wikipedia
‘European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from Antiquity to the Middle Ages’ Ken Dowden, 2000