Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [150]
Thursday was named after Thor.
Who is the most important hero in Norse myth?
The quintessential Norse warrior Sigurd was a King Arthur of the Northern world, a figure with a possible historical origin who became the magnet for many stories, as Norse-myth authority Kevin Crossley-Holland describes him. Son of a warrior and grandson of a great king favored by Odin, Sigurd was a handsome, stately dragon-slayer and rescuer of women—a mortal with possible divine ancestors. He ranks as the most important human hero in Norse mythology—more than half of the Poetic Edda are about him—and the stories of his exploits had an impact well beyond the Viking myths. Tolkien clearly borrows much from these heroic tales of a gold ring made by dwarves, which increases the wealth of its owner but comes with a dreadful curse. The stories of Sigurd also became the model for the mythical German hero Siegfried, who appears in the Nibelungenlied (“Song of the Nibelungs”), a famous German epic composed around 1200, which, in turn, served as the basis for Wagner’s opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung (1869–1876).*
The stories about Sigurd probably originated in Germany around the Rhine in the 400s CE and reached Scandinavia, where they were given poetic treatment in the Elder Edda, the collection of poems composed in Iceland between 1000 and 1100. The prose Saga of the Volsungs, written in Iceland during the 1100s or 1200s, tells the stories more fully.
According to these myths, Sigurd is born after his father, Sigmund, is murdered. As he is dying, Sigmund predicts that his unborn son will accomplish great deeds and his name will never be forgotten. Raised by a king, Sigurd is tutored by the dwarf Regin, who gives him a magical horse and forges a wondrous sword, Gram, from the shards of his dead father’s sword—a gift from Odin—which he then uses to avenge his father’s death.
The central story in Sigurd’s adventures is his killing of the dragon Fafnir. At first a powerful, greedy, and violent man with magical powers, Fafnir is the son of a farmer who also had magical skills. Fafnir and his brother Otr are both shape-shifters. One day, while out with the other gods, Loki kills an otter, which is actually Otr (source of the word “otter”) in the animal’s shape. When Otr’s father realizes what has happened, he demands compensation from the gods, and Loki agrees to fill the otter skin with gold. Conveniently, the trickster finds a nearby dwarf with a large treasure, including a gold ring, which Loki commandeers. Stripped of his treasure, the dwarf curses the ring, dooming whoever possesses it. Once given the treasure, the farmer is first to die when Fafnir kills his father, steals the gold, and then turns himself into a dragon, spending the rest of his life hoarding the treasure. (Readers of Tolkien will surely recognize these themes as similar to the tale of the Ring of Power, jealously guarded by whoever possesses it.)
Eager to take the treasure for himself, Fafnir’s brother Regin, the dwarf who tutors Sigurd, instructs the young warrior in how to kill Fafnir, planning all the time to kill Sigurd after Fafnir is dead. As a dragon, Fafnir only leaves his lair and the treasure hoard occasionally to drink from a nearby river. Sigurd digs a hole in the path that leads to the river and hides inside. When Fafnir passes over the hole, Sigurd stabs Fafnir in the heart. Having killed Fafnir, Sigurd roasts the dragon’s heart, as Regin had instructed, but he accidentally burns his fingers and puts them in his mouth. After tasting the dragon’s magical juice, Sigurd is able to understand the language of some nearby birds, who warn him that Regin plans to kill him. Sigurd lops off Regin’s head, drinks some of his blood, eats more of the dragon’s heart, and then discovers Fafnir’s lair and the ring of gold.
Possessed of the ring, Sigurd also falls under its curse. He is loved by a Valkyrie, Brynhild (Brunhilde in the Wagnerian version), whom he promises to marry, but who is imprisoned