They may have been said before but Dragons Reach was built for catching a dragon, and they did. So why are there no official records? It seems a bit of a contradiction of itself.

This depends on your definition of legend.

A legend (Latin, legenda, "things to be read") is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude.

Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend

Under this definition, calling dragons legends is not incorrect. Just like we are told of the legend of Robin Hood, this does not mean the actual person does not exist. Just that we don't expect a time traveling wizard to appear and resurrect him.

To further WTFlag's point
I.e. It is entirely possible that dragons did exist (in fact it is proven). But they do not exist NOW.
History is interchangable with legend, in this context.

That was still the First Age. Something that at least goes back as far as our own early civilizations. Secondly, that was a stray dragon, a survivor of the dragon wars. Farengar says some were still around. Yet, even then, those stories had a sense of legend about them. Just as old stories in our historical periods do. Like what they knew about that event is summed up in the story of "Olaf and the Dragon". It has a kind of folklore vibe to it. Something you'd read to kids. The same as some of our legends. For example, there might have been a King Arthur, but what do we really know about him? What if Merlin and Morgana were real too, and that Arthur and his knights sat around a round table, and he kicked everyone's ass with a sword named Excalibur?

I guess no one thought to go dig a random mound of dirt up.

They'd probably just get killed by draugr anyways. They were all servants of dragons. They guard those areas. I think the awakening of dragons is why so many draugr are waking up at once now, in fact.

Of course the real size of Skyrim is supposed to be a lot larger than the scale in the game. It isn't actually the size of a small park that you can cross in 15 minutes, the distances and size of the areas are simulations. Consequently the burial sites and word walls and all that are very remote places, not really something that is just around the corner from somebody's farm. They have not really been seen or visited for a very long time and people generally don't know about them. The people of Riverwood don't live within 5 minutes of a Witch's covenant, Haunted Burial Mound, Bandit Haven and Giant's camp, the distance as it appears to us is greatly reduced to keep the size of the world within reasonable limits for a first-person game.

Don't mean to derail, but some games have pulled off that sense of scale. Rockstar games are huge. Probably not fair to compare GTA (since they're modern metro areas), but Red Dead's world is like 28 square miles.

I was under the impression they knew the dragons were gone, and so a creature from an ancient mythical time: a Legend.

Nord A: What's that giant tomb for?
Nord B: Giants
Nord A: Where does that bone the giant is using as a club come from?
Nord B: Another giant
Nord A: What's this lizard-like skull?
Nord B: Giant troll

I take that to mean they thought the dragons were all dead, and hence just a part of old stories. Not that they never existed. And that was true, apart from the few Farengar thought might have been around. They were all dead until Alduin resurrected them.

Can't believe people are so quick to think it's a case of "dumb Nords" rather than you might be misinterpreting what they said. Sheesh.

Primitives cultures are extremely superstitious, especially around sites where the dead are buried or where death has occurred, these sites often have great religious significance or status. Ancestral tombs and ancient cemeteries are considered holy or sacred, even sites not directly related to a particular culture are given this status and respected as such. I think this offers a good enough reason as to why the Dragon Tombs have not been excavated by the locals.

Just to inject something..... in real life.... ever culture on our planet has dragon mythology in its past, from every part of the globe, more than half talk of fire breathing, some say they have ability to communicate with humans. Some occur as late in history as the 1200-1300's.

There is no fossil record of such creatures (apart from dinosaurs which pedated man by millions of years) and thousands upon thousands of burial mounds exist on the face of the earth that we have never dug up. Whose to say if some do not have dragons remains in them.

We think they are just myths and stories so why couldn't the Nords.

I agree with the OP. And it's no good saying that the Nord's didn't want to touch them out of respect or stupidy because:

1. Skyrim isn't populated entirely by Nords.
2. It only takes one Nord who doesn't care to dig these things up.

I mean seriously, in the 1000's of years since they were buried in all of Tamriel there hasn't been an amoral archeologist or just someone that was interested enough to excavate one of these huge burial mounds, especially the ones right next to the huge dragon walls with the then presumably unknown language - if nobody believed the Dragons of Skyrim story. It's not like people don't know dragons are real, there was a live dragon in Morrowind correct?

Im pretty sure in cyrodill they already knew dragons existed. I mean, with the amulet of dragonflies and the emperor becoming a dargon in oblivion. Maybe its just that quality education doesnt reach skyrim. Or maybe the nord culture consireded taboo to speak about dragons.

And how does the amulet prove the existance of dragons? It's a name connected with Akatosh, a god who happens to be depicted as a dragon. The same applies to Martin's transformation - it wasn't a dragon, it was a divine avatar who happened to take the form of one.

On topic - why would the nords want to dig up the burial mounds? For all they knew, those could be the resting place for warriors who died while purging the land from the "elven menace" and so disturbing them would be extremely dishonourable. And all other things fell into the realm of legends - just like many thing from the ancient times in our world.

WHat about the LITERAL Dragon skull in Dragonsreach? I'm gonna go ahead and say that the loading-screen line might not be too accurate.

yeah it's kinda weird.

sometimes they say, that they thought the reappearing of the dragons is a legend. the loading screen just likes to lie with a lot of things

Ask yourself, if you found some large bones in your garden, would you believe it to be a dinosaur?

The Nords have no education, no schools, no museums and no TV. The only people who could get close to an answer would be the wizards, but they would have to spend a live long in studies to make heads&tails of it.

Then try digging up frozen soil while wearing fur and rags. At the end of the day, when you are tired from the field work, the lumber mills and the hunt will you sit at a fire and believe in what ever you want to be true just to have a nice evening. The last thing you will believe in is in a magic, flying and man-eating beast. It is only good to scare the kids.

I know that people in and around where Sparta used to be, are of the opinion that there were 3000 people who held off the invasion. I don't really think they have a breakdown of ethnicities, though.

As for the OP: study history. It's not improbable or even far-fetched for a people to forget its history.

I agree they probably thought the idea of dragons around NOW was just a legend, it might even refer to Mirmulnir being alive and inactive prior to the events of Skyrim - He and a few others were not killed by the blades, so they might inspire local legends of living dragons, but since they were reclusive no one believed it until suddenly all the dragons started coming back.

my grandparents still deny that such a thing as dinosaurs could have possibly existed based solely on (and I quote) "I have never seen one".

Cool grandparents.

Any Nord deaths are deserved for their lack of interest in learning about the world. Seriously.

Sigh... I don`t know why I bother. It`s obvious some of you know little about how people work in reality. I`ll try one more time...

Do you know when archaeology began?
Do you realise just how much work it takes to even recognise that something in the ground is of any significance?
Would you even care when you`re too busy working from dawn till dusk just providing for yourself and family?

Do you think that the ancient Greeks or ancient Britons or Gauls or Africans didn`t see the strange bones of fossilised creatures sometimes sticking in the ground? Of course they did. Were they going to dig it up and pontificate about it? Is anyone going to listen to the one odd medieval or ancient guy who just by an offchance bother to talk about why those weird bones are there?

NO!

Archaeology and the interest in the earth and what`s long ago buried is a very modern thing. Much like a lot of things we take for granted today never took off until around the past couple of hundred years ago because, basically, people had far more important daily things to worry about and didn`t like their world being turned upside down by `silly` ideas.

It just wasn`t important at that time. just like Dragons (and digging up evidence of them) wasn`t important to worry about until they actually appeared.