{{Short description|Places of horror and torture with snakes}} {{Other uses}} {{more citations needed|date=December 2009}} [[Image:Bildstein-Fornsalen 01.jpg|thumb|right|200px|An image stone on Gotland, Sweden, with imagery from the tradition of the ''Völsunga saga'' and ''Nibelungenlied''. Note the slain Sigurd with Andvarinaut on the top of the stone, and a lady who puts snakes into a snake pit. This particular execution is described in ''Atlakviða'' and ''Oddrúnargrátr'', and the murdered man is Gunnarr, the King of Burgundy.]] A '''snake pit''' is, in a literal sense, a hole filled with snakes. In idiomatic speech, "snake pits" are places of horror, torture and death in European legends and fairy tales. The Viking warlord Ragnar Lodbrok is said to have been thrown into a snake pit and died there, after his army had been defeated in battle by King Aelle II of Northumbria. An older legend recorded in ''Atlakviða'' and ''Oddrúnargrátr'' tells that Attila the Hun murdered Gunnarr, the King of Burgundy, in a snake pit. In a medieval German poem, Dietrich von Bern is thrown into a snake pit by the giant Sigenot – he is protected by a magical jewel that had been given to him earlier by a dwarf.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=hYdLS6qyTwUC&dq=he+origin+of+the+term+%E2%80%9Csnake+pit%E2%80%9D+for+insane+asylum&pg=PA66 "Coerrcion as Cure: A critical history of psychiatry". Author Thomas Szasz. 2007.]</ref>{{Failed verification|date=September 2025|reason=This citation does not appear to verify any of the information preceding it. On pages 66 and 67, the book briefly mentions that snake pits were used as a method of execution in Medieval Europe and that the term was later used to refer to psychiatric hospitals. It doesn't mention anything about specific historical or mythical figures.}}
==See also== * Narcisse Snake Pits
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snake Pit}} Category:Snakes Category:Torture Category:Execution equipment Category:Criminal homicide {{Europe-hist-stub}}