Most people in Skyrim dont go to college and there are no newspapers so they would have no contact with the works of said archeologist. All they would have to know is rumors that "some egghead says there used to be dragons".

I'm not 100% on this, but doesn't baalgruff say he thought the dragons were legend, despite having a dragon skull(numinex?) above his head on the wall.

no. he was talking about the dragonborn "of legend" iirc. and as others have said legend does not equal "totally fake".

I don't think the nords knew what the Dragon Buiral mounds were, Im assuming they thought them Ancient Nordic ruins, and stayed away because they though Dragur would pop out of them.

Legend probably means they were thought to be extinct and belongs only to the hero tales that are told by bards.

Bit of a derailment, but I'm a bit of a history buff so I enjoy these types of discussions. The fabled 300 Spartans was correct, Leonidas and a chosen 300 were sent to hold back the Persian force (these were only allowed due to the fact that they all had living sons), but the attacking force ended up at around 7,000. The rest were made up of loyalist Greeks, but even they held back. The available force should have been well over 20,000 fighting men of Greece, but each held back their forces considerably. The reason was thought to be religious for many of the Greeks.The Spartans needed to celebrate Carneia in honor of Apollo and the other Greeks to celebrate the Olympic games in honor of Zues. Though it is mostly agreed that this was also done out of fear and the idea that a war against the Persian force would end in an inevitable defeat.

Now to add some relevancy to the current discussion. I agree with most posters that the Dragons were believed to exist, but thought long long extinct. It would be the equivalent of a living dinosaur returning to the world and rampaging through a few small towns.

I'm almost positive someone in that town below High Hrothgar refers to one of the dragon burial mounds as being a burial mound for some of the ancient nords.

Seeing as almost everyone nordic holds a high degree of respect for the dead, of course nobody's gonna go dig up a burial mound that you think has your ancient family and kin buried there. The actual nordic burial ruins/catacombs were probably for the high-honor and wealthy.

Most nords are happy to stay at home and feed the chickens. There are probably those who do take an interest in dragons and know they existed, but the ordinary nord doesn't care much for that sort of thing.

I assumed they were magically sealed.


No it was actually 300 Spartans. For example, from the wiki:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

I think the distinction that this forum is drawing between history and myth is looking at Skyrim with a very modern conception of those two concepts. For a long time in history I think it is fair to say that except for some authors peculiarly dedicated to fact (Thucydides) these two pursuits did not exist as two distinct bodies entities. Rather, history is simply the retelling of ones cultural origins and among historical societies, spoken legend is equally an element of cultural origin as historical events.

Strangely enough though, Skyrim appears to be a startlingly literate society, which would allow for distinct history from legend. Also, when you go to Kynesgrove, the woman says "A DRAGON JUST LANDED ON THE OLD DRAGON BURIAL MOUND!"

So I think that what's really going on is that Bethesda needs to invest some of their profits in some real writers. And when they're done writing have them do the loading screen blurbs too.


Also, this 300 debate going on, I believe the Spartans were there alone, they arrived late because they were delayed from meeting the remaining Greek forces for religious reasons, and the other forces retreated for religious reasons. I do know that the number is recorded as 300 Spartans because there were 300 Homoioi Spartan Citizens there, the famed Spartan hoplite warriors, but they would have marched with armed Helots, Sparta's land slaves. So the number would have been closer to several thousand. Still vastly outnumbered by the Medes.

I always assumed they were sealed with maguc. In anycase they don’t have TV or radio, some might have investigated those mounds (tho I don't think many would, most have other things to worry) and found dragon bones but I doubt the majority of the population would hear about it. Also the could have just meant "legend" because they are meant to have died out many years ago.

I guess there aren't many archeologists in Skyrim.

There are a dozen archaeology-themed quests and dungeons throughout the series.

The loading screen is wrong. It is disproved by lore and dialog in the game itself, and by what we knew of Skyrim beforehand.

All religious Nords anticipate the end of the word by Alduin. If they believe in one supremely-powerful god-dragon, they aren't going to balk at the idea of more ordinary dragons, which were once integral to their culture (whose ruins are everywhere) and well-documented by historians.

And FYI, a myth in Tamriel isn't the same thing as a myth in our world. In Tamriel, myths are true.

I think people here have a wrong definition for the word “legend”.
A legend can often have an abundance of truth in it, they are often very historical but hard to verify
Even when sources are found to prove numerous aspects of the legend, it remains a legend.

We have forum rules. One of our rules is that we do not allow discussion of real-world religion or politics. Why? Because time and time again, it has been proven that people cannot talk reasonably to each other about these things. I will cull the various posts out of this thread. If you all cannot discuss the game without bringing up religion in our real-world, then the thread will get closed.