Ouroboros Box

This box's dimensions are roughly 11x8x3 and it bears the ouroboros symbol engraved on the scalloped lid. A maple finish, distressed with a shou sugi ban treatment, gives it the war-torn look that's associated with many of our products.

The ouroboros or uroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The ouroboros entered Western tradition via ancient Egyptian iconography and the Greek magical tradition. It was adopted as a symbol in alchemy.

The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth; the snake's skin-sloughing symbolises the transmigration of souls.

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, 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 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.