Fafnir- Germanic DragonDragon"Wyrm of Gnita-heath"

The Origins of the Curse

Fafnir's story begins not with him but with the gold he would die guarding. Gold that carried a curse from the moment it was taken. In the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda, Odin, Loki, and Hœnir were traveling and came upon an otter eating a salmon by a waterfall. Loki killed the otter with a stone. That night, the gods sought lodging at the hall of Hreiðmar, a wealthy farmer with magical powers, and proudly displayed the otter skin.

But the otter was Ótr, Hreiðmar's son, who had taken animal form to fish. Hreiðmar and his remaining sons, Fafnir and Regin, seized the gods and demanded compensation: enough gold to fill the otter skin and cover it completely. Loki was sent to obtain the ransom.

Loki traveled to a waterfall where the dwarf Andvari lived in the form of a pike, guarding a great hoard of gold including a magical ring, Andvaranaut, that multiplied wealth. Loki captured Andvari with a net borrowed from the sea goddess Rán and forced him to surrender his entire treasure. Andvari begged to keep just the ring, but Loki took everything. In his fury, Andvari cursed the gold: it would destroy everyone who possessed it. Loki brought the treasure to Hreiðmar, and when one whisker of the otter skin remained uncovered, he placed the ring over it to complete the ransom.

The curse began its work immediately. Fafnir and Regin demanded shares of the gold, but Hreiðmar refused to part with any of it. That night, Fafnir murdered his father to claim the treasure for himself. When Regin demanded his portion, Fafnir drove him away at sword-point.

The Dragon on the Heath

Taking the gold to a desolate heath called Gnita-heath, Fafnir lay upon it and, consumed by greed, transformed into a dragon to better guard his hoard. The transformation was total: the man became the monster, and the monster became indistinguishable from its treasure. For years Fafnir lay upon his gold, a creature of terror who blighted the land around him. His very breath was poisonous. His scales were impenetrable. He wore a helm called Ægishjálmr, the Helm of Terror, that struck fear into all who looked upon it. The Fáfnismál describes the dragon speaking of this helm with pride, saying it made him unconquerable so long as he found none braver than himself.

The Slaying

Regin, meanwhile, became a smith in the court of King Hjálprek and bided his time. He could not slay his brother alone, but he fostered a hero who could: Sigurd, son of the slain Sigmund of the Völsung line. Regin forged for Sigurd a sword called Gram, remaking it from the shards of Sigmund's broken blade, the sword Odin himself had once thrust into the tree Barnstokk. He told Sigurd of the dragon and the gold, stoking the young hero's desire for glory and treasure.

Regin advised Sigurd to dig a pit in the path Fafnir took to drink from a stream, to hide in it, and to stab upward into the dragon's soft belly as the creature passed over. But Odin appeared to Sigurd in the guise of an old man and advised him to dig several trenches so the dragon's blood would drain away rather than drown him. Sigurd did as Odin counseled. When Fafnir crawled over the pit, Sigurd thrust Gram upward with all his strength, piercing the dragon's heart.

The Dying Dragon's Wisdom

The dying Fafnir spoke. The Fáfnismál preserves a wisdom dialogue between the mortally wounded dragon and his killer. Fafnir first demanded to know who had slain him and who had sent him, for the dying curse of a powerful creature was feared. Sigurd at first concealed his identity, giving a false name, but eventually revealed himself as a Völsung.

Fafnir warned Sigurd that the gold was cursed and would destroy him as it had destroyed Fafnir himself. He prophesied that Regin would betray Sigurd, for Regin had orchestrated his brother's death and would not hesitate to kill his foster-son for the treasure. Fafnir spoke of the Norns who sit by Urðarbrunnr, severing the threads of men's lives at birth, and declared that fate rules all. No wisdom and no foreknowledge can avert what the Norns have decreed.

Sigurd dismissed the warnings. Every man must die, he said, and he would enjoy the gold while he lived.

The Blood and the Birds

Regin emerged from hiding and asked Sigurd to roast Fafnir's heart for him to eat, claiming it would make him the wisest of men. As Sigurd cooked the heart over a fire, he touched it to see if it was done and burned his finger. When he put the finger to his mouth to cool it, he tasted the dragon's blood and suddenly could understand the speech of birds.

The nuthatches in the trees above spoke among themselves. They said that Sigurd was foolish to roast the heart for Regin; if he ate it himself, he would gain its wisdom. They said Regin meant to kill Sigurd and take the gold. They said the fair Brynhild lay sleeping on Hindarfjall, surrounded by flames, waiting for a hero to wake her.

Sigurd looked at Regin, saw the truth of the birds' words in his foster-father's eyes, and struck off his head with Gram. He ate the dragon's heart himself, loaded Fafnir's gold onto his horse Grani, and rode toward Hindarfjall and his fate.

The Linden Leaf

The Nibelungenlied, composed around 1200, tells the story differently. Here the hero is Siegfried rather than Sigurd, and the backstory of cursed gold and patricide is compressed into brief allusion. After slaying the dragon, Siegfried bathed in its blood, which made his skin as hard as horn. But as he bathed, a linden leaf fell between his shoulder blades, and that small patch of skin remained soft. Kriemhild, not knowing what she revealed, sewed a mark on Siegfried's garment to show Hagen where her husband needed protection in battle. Hagen drove his spear through that spot at a forest spring.