Editing Ouroboros (section)

=== World serpent in mythology ===
In [[Norse mythology]], the ouroboros appears as the serpent [[Jörmungandr]], one of the three children of [[Loki]] and [[Angrboda]], which grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth. In the legends of [[Ragnar Lodbrok]], such as ''[[Ragnarssona þáttr]]'', the Geatish king [[Herraud]] gives a small [[lindworm]] as a gift to his daughter [[Þóra Town-Hart]] after which it grows into a large serpent which encircles the girl's [[Bedroom|bower]] and bites itself in the tail. The serpent is slain by Ragnar Lodbrok who marries Þóra. Ragnar later has a son with another woman named [[Kráka]] and this son is born with the image of a white snake in one eye. This snake encircled the iris and bit itself in the tail, and the son was named [[Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jurich |first=Marilyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iEPNBUkkqzsC&pg=PA160 |title=Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature |date=1998 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-313-29724-3 |language=en}}</ref>

It is a common belief among [[indigenous peoples|indigenous people]] of the tropical lowlands of South America that waters at the edge of the world-disc are encircled by a snake, often an anaconda, biting its own tail.<ref>{{Citation |last=Roe |first=Peter |title=The Cosmic Zygote |year=1986 |publisher=Rutgers University Press}}</ref>

The ouroboros has certain features in common with the Biblical [[Leviathan]]. According to the [[Zohar]], the Leviathan is a singular creature with no mate, "its tail is placed in its mouth", while [[Rashi]] on [[Baba Batra]] 74b describes it as "twisting around and encompassing the entire world". The identification appears to go back as far as the poems of [[Kalir]] in the 6th–7th centuries.{{citation needed|date=March 2022}}