Snake pits are places of horror, torture and even 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.
Nothing however supports the assumption that snake pits were ever actually maintained or used for torture or execution. The necessary effort and the risks would have been far too big for something the effect of which could hardly been foreseen or controlled with sufficient precision.
In common metaphorical usage, a snake pit can mean any institution (such as a school, prison, hospital, or nursing home) or organization led in an inept or inhumane way, or an institution containing many people who may be hostile, untrustworthy, or otherwise treacherous ("snakes"). For example, the film The Snake Pit (1948) tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and cannot remember how she got there.
Famous quotes containing the words snake and/or pit:
“The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes. Likewise those spirits who are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be spirits.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)