Fafnir

The heath at Gnitaheid stank of poison long before anything moved across it. A wide track had been worn through the grass down to bare earth, scorched and slick, the same path dragged open year after year by the same heavy body going to water and coming back. Nothing grew where the venom pooled. At the far end of the track, half sunk into the hillside, lay the gold, and on the gold lay the dragon, and the dragon had once been a man.

He was not a winged beast of later picture-books. Fafnir was a wyrm, a serpent so long and so thick that the ground recorded his weight in a permanent groove. His back was plated in scales the colour of old iron, hard enough to turn a blade, and when he moved the whole length of him rippled forward in slow muscular folds. Cold came off him. On his head he wore the Ægishjálmr, the Helm of Awe, and it was less a crown than a weapon, a thing that pressed dread into anyone who came near, so that brave men found their courage leaking out of them before a single tooth was shown.

It began, as these stories tend to, with a death by accident. Fafnir was the son of Hreidmar, a wealthy man skilled in old magic, and he had two brothers, Regin and Otr. Otr liked to take the shape of an otter and fish the falls. One day Loki, travelling with Odin and Hœnir, killed the otter with a stone for its pelt, not knowing it was a man. Hreidmar seized the three gods and named the ransom: they would fill the otter skin with gold and then cover its outside completely, until not a hair showed.

Loki went to get the gold the quickest way he knew. He caught the dwarf Andvari, who hoarded treasure beneath a waterfall, and stripped him of everything, down to a last gold ring the dwarf tried to keep hidden in his fist. Loki took that too. Andvari, ruined, laid a curse on the ring and on all the gold with it: that it would be the death of whoever owned it. The gods filled the skin and heaped gold over it, and when one whisker still showed, Odin laid the cursed ring over it to finish the job. Then they left, and the curse stayed behind.

It did not take long. Hreidmar would not share the treasure, so Fafnir killed his own father in his sleep and took all of it, and when Regin asked for his portion Fafnir drove him off with threats. Then he carried the hoard out to Gnitaheid, put on the Helm of Awe, and became a serpent to guard it. He killed his own father for it. From then on he did the only thing the gold left him able to do, which was lie on top of it and crawl to the stream and back, day after day, a long armoured length of appetite with nowhere left to go.

Regin did not forget. He was a smith, and a clever one, and he took in a young foster-son named Sigurd, last of the Völsungs. From the broken shards of Sigurd’s father’s sword Regin forged a new blade, Gram, so keen it split the anvil it was tested on and sheared a tuft of wool drifting downriver. Then he told Sigurd about his brother on the heath and the wealth beneath him, and let the young man’s nerve do the rest.

Sigurd did not meet the dragon head on. He dug a pit in the worn track where Fafnir crawled to drink, and an old one-eyed traveller, Odin in disguise, stopped him long enough to give one piece of advice: dig more trenches beside it, or the dragon’s blood will drown you when it comes. So Sigurd lay hidden in the pit, and when the great body slid over him, blotting out the sky and dragging its cold weight across the trench, he drove Gram up to the hilt into the soft underside where no scale grew. The serpent thrashed, lashing the ground, and the poison ran off into the channels Sigurd had cut.

What followed is the strangest part of the tale, because the dying dragon talked. Pinned and bleeding, Fafnir asked the boy his name and his father’s name, then warned him plainly that the ringing gold and the Helm of Awe would bring him to the same end they had brought everyone before. The curse, he said, would take him too. He was not wrong, though Sigurd was too young to believe it.

Regin came to claim his share and asked Sigurd to roast the dragon’s heart for him. Sigurd, testing whether it was cooked, touched it and burned his thumb, and put the thumb in his mouth, and the moment the blood touched his tongue he could understand the speech of birds. The nuthatches in the branches above were saying that Regin meant to kill him. So Sigurd struck first, took off Regin’s head, ate part of the heart and grew wiser for it, and loaded the whole cursed hoard onto his horse Grani, the helm and the mail and the sword among it. He had killed the dragon. He had not escaped the gold.

Fafnir’s strength was real while it lasted. His scaled hide turned weapons, his breath and blood were venom enough to kill, and the Helm of Awe made fear do half his fighting for him. But every one of those gifts grew from the same root, which was the treasure he would not let go, and that was also where his ruin lay. The Helm could not frighten a man already crouched out of sight. The armour meant nothing once a sword found the bare belly underneath. And the gold he had murdered for never made him anything but a beast pacing a circle on a poisoned heath, waiting, without knowing it, for the boy in the trench.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Fafnir in Norse mythology?

Fafnir was originally a dwarf, the son of Hreidmar and brother of Regin and Otr, who transformed into a dragon out of greed. He is the treasure-guarding serpent at the centre of the Völsung legend, best known for being killed by the hero Sigurd. His story appears in the Völsunga saga, the Poetic Edda poem Fáfnismál, and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda.

How did Fafnir become a dragon?

Fafnir became a dragon after murdering his father, Hreidmar, to seize a cursed hoard of gold paid to the family as ransom by the gods. Driven by greed, he carried the treasure to the heath of Gnitaheid, put on the Helm of Awe, and took serpent form to guard it. His transformation is treated as the outward shape of his avarice rather than a natural power.

Who killed Fafnir and how?

Fafnir was killed by the young Völsung hero Sigurd, who had been raised and goaded into the deed by Regin, Fafnir’s smith brother. Sigurd dug a pit in the track where the dragon crawled to drink and, on Odin’s advice, thrust the sword Gram up into Fafnir’s soft underbelly as the serpent passed over him. The dragon’s armoured back was nearly invulnerable, so striking from beneath was the only way through.

What is the Helm of Awe that Fafnir wore?

The Helm of Awe, or Ægishjálmr, is the golden helm Fafnir wears in the legend, which radiates terror and makes those who face him lose their nerve. Fafnir credits it as a source of his power, and it passes to Sigurd among the hoard after the dragon’s death. In the myth it functions as much as a weapon of fear as a piece of armour.

Why was Fafnir’s gold cursed?

Fafnir’s hoard carried a curse laid by the dwarf Andvari, from whom the gold and the ring Andvaranaut were taken to pay the gods’ ransom. Andvari cursed the treasure to destroy everyone who owned it, and the dying Fafnir warns Sigurd that the gold will be his death too. The curse drives much of the tragedy that follows in the Völsung cycle.

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Sigurd, Sigmund, Níðhöggr, Lindworm, Jörmungandr, Fenrir, Jötunn, Sleipnir, Loki, Odin