Fafnir, << FAHV nihr >>, in Scandinavian mythology, was a man who turned himself into a dragon. Poems and stories from medieval Iceland describe Fafnir as a powerful, greedy, and violent man with magical powers. Fafnir killed his father, Hreidmar, and stole his family’s gold. He then turned himself into a dragon and spent the rest of his life guarding the gold. Fafnir’s brother Regin tried to get the gold back and asked the hero Sigurd to kill Fafnir. Regin planned to betray and kill Sigurd after Fafnir’s death.
Fafnir left his lair occasionally to drink water from a nearby river. Sigurd dug a hole in the path that led to the river. He hid in the hole until Fafnir crawled over it. Sigurd then used his sword to stab Fafnir in the heart. Sigurd roasted the dragon’s heart, and by tasting its magic juice, he was able to understand the language of birds. The birds warned Sigurd that Regin was planning to kill him, so Sigurd killed Regin.
German composer Richard Wagner told a version of this story in his opera Siegfried. In the opera, Fafnir is slain by the Germanic hero Siegfried.
