  We present a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the stress relaxation in a
multiply but weakly buckled incompressible rod in a viscous solvent. In the
bulk two interesting regimes of generic self--similar intermediate asymptotics
are distinguished, which give rise to two classes of approximate and exact
power--law solutions, respectively. For the case of open boundary conditions
the corresponding non--trivial boundary--layer scenarios are derived by a
multiple--scale perturbation (``adiabatic'') method. Our results compare well
with -- and provide the theoretical explanation for -- previous results from
numerical simulations, and they suggest new directions for further fruitful
numerical and experimental investigations.
