Chinese mythology merely fantastic types of the bestiary sort. Sometimes the dragon is considered part of this category, related to it, or the ruler of all the swimming and crawling folk. This may include the giant marine turtle or tortoise Ao, the Bashe snake reputed to swallow elephants, a nine-headed snake monster reminiscent of the hydra known as Xiangliu, and the White Serpent from the novel "Legend of the White Snake". Various birds are found in Chinese mythology, some of them obviously based on real birds, other ones obviously not, and some in-between. The Crane is an example of a real type
Germanic Heroic Age by several centuries, such as "The Battle of Maldon", composed three centuries after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons,or the "Hildebrandslied", written at Fulda 300 years after the Christianization of the Franks. The Prose Edda itself originated as a handbook for skaldic poets, compiled by Snorri Sturluson more than 200 years after the Christianisation of Iceland, because poetic tradition at that time was threatened by extinction. Germanic mythology combines purely mythological material with historical events of this period. Identifiable historical characters appearing in Germanic heroic poetry, notably in the Völsung and Tyrfing cycles, include: A number of tribal kings of the