How to Train Your Dragon

“In half an hour’s time you will be a Viking warrior. With your faithful serpent at your side or breakfasting with Woden in Valhalla with dragons’ teeth in your bottom!”

Viking warriors slain in battle went to Valhalla (“hall of the slain”), where they would train every day with the chief Norse god Odin (Woden in Old English), waiting for the battle that would end the world. Through this allusion to Norse mythology, Gobber the Belch establishes that the stakes are remarkably high for this group of 10-year-old boys because failure means death. In presenting the boys’ outcomes as binary, Gobber also affirms that Viking society has no room for compromise, which of course Hiccup disrupts by the end of the novel.

“For a start, he didn’t LOOK like a Hero. Somebody like Snotlout, for instance, was tall, muscley, covered in skeleton, tattoos, and already had the beginnings of a small moustache. […] Hiccup was on the small side and had the kind of face that was almost entirely unmemorable.”

The Vikings of Berk equate size with valor. Far from the norm of his society, Hiccup can only be explained by what he is not. Snotlout, Hiccup’s peer and rival, is a foil to Hiccup in both temperament and physical stature. In describing Hiccup as physically smaller, the novel establishes how the Hairy Hooligan Tribe regards Hiccup, even though he is the tribe’s heir. Cowell thematically introduces The Underdog’s Triumph: “Size Is all Relative” through the significance of Hiccup’s size.