The slaying of the dragon Fafnir by the young hero Sigurd is the most famous dragon fight in Norse legend, and one of the most influential in the world. It has everything: a cursed treasure, a treacherous foster-father, a reforged sword, a dying dragon who speaks words of wisdom, and a magical transformation when the hero tastes the dragon’s heart. Its imagery was carved on church doors and rune-stones, and its motifs — the hoard, the ring, the talking dragon, the one weak spot — passed into Wagner and Tolkien and from them into the whole of modern fantasy.
The story is told in the Eddic poems Reginsmál and Fáfnismál and in prose in the Völsunga saga. For the background of Sigurd and his family, see Sigurd: The Dragon-Slayer of Norse Legend.
Fafnir: From Brother to Dragon
Fafnir was not born a dragon. He was a son of the dwarf-king or sorcerer Hreiðmarr, and brother to Regin the smith and Otr, who spent his days as an otter. When the gods Odin, Loki, and Hœnir killed Otr, they paid his father a ransom of gold — the hoard of the dwarf Andvari, including the ring Andvaranaut, on which Andvari had laid a curse: the gold would bring death to whoever possessed it.
The curse worked at once. Fafnir murdered his father for the gold and refused to share it with Regin. He took it to the heath of Gnitaheiðr, and there, lying on his treasure, he became a dragon (in Old Norse, a ormr, “serpent” or “worm”). He wore the Helm of Terror (Ægishjálmr), which made all living things afraid of him, and he breathed venom over the land.
The transformation expresses the moral of the story: greed turns a man into a monster.
Regin’s Plan
Regin, the cheated brother, became foster-father to the young Sigurd. He told Sigurd the story of the gold — his own version of it — and urged him to kill the dragon. Regin claimed that he wanted Sigurd to win glory. What he really wanted was the treasure.
He forged the sword Gram from the pieces of Sigurd’s father’s broken blade. It was so sharp that Sigurd split Regin’s anvil in two with it, and when he held it in the Rhine and let a tuft of wool drift against it, the wool was cut in half.
The Advice of the Old Man
Sigurd and Regin rode to Gnitaheiðr. They found the track Fafnir used when he crawled down to drink at the water. Regin advised Sigurd to dig a pit in the track and hide in it, and stab the dragon from beneath as it passed over. Then Regin, frightened, rode away.
As Sigurd dug, an old man with a long beard appeared — Odin in disguise, who often helped the Völsungs. He asked what Sigurd was doing, and warned him that the dragon’s blood would flow into the pit and drown him. He advised digging several pits so that the blood could drain away. Then the old man vanished.
The Slaying
Sigurd dug the pits and lay in one of them. The earth shook as the dragon approached, blowing poison ahead of him. Sigurd was not afraid. When Fafnir crawled over the pit, Sigurd thrust Gram up into the dragon’s body, under the left shoulder, up to the hilt. He leapt out of the pit, his arms bloody to the shoulders.
Fafnir, mortally wounded, thrashed his head and tail, smashing everything around him.
The Dragon’s Dialogue
Then comes one of the most remarkable scenes in Norse literature. The dying dragon speaks to his killer. The Eddic poem Fáfnismál is almost entirely a dialogue between them.
Fafnir asks who Sigurd is and whose son. At first Sigurd conceals his name, calling himself “the noble beast” with no father or mother — perhaps because the Norse believed a dying man’s curse had more power if he knew his killer’s name. But Fafnir taunts him, and Sigurd reveals himself.
The dragon questions him about his courage, and Sigurd asks the dragon questions of cosmic lore: who are the Norns who help women in childbirth? What is the name of the island where the gods will fight Surtr at Ragnarök? Fafnir answers.
Then Fafnir warns him: “The ringing gold, the glowing treasure, the rings will be your death.” And he warns that Regin, who betrayed Fafnir, will betray Sigurd too.
Sigurd replies that everyone must die someday, and he will take the gold anyway. Fafnir dies.
The Heart and the Birds
Regin returned when the dragon was dead. He was full of praise for Sigurd, but also claimed that since the dragon was his brother, Sigurd owed him compensation. He cut out Fafnir’s heart, drank the dragon’s blood, and asked Sigurd to roast the heart for him. Then Regin lay down to sleep.
Sigurd roasted the heart on a spit. When he thought it was done, he touched it with his finger to see, burned himself, and put his finger in his mouth. As soon as the dragon’s heart-blood touched his tongue, he understood the speech of birds.
He heard nuthatches (or titmice) chattering in the brush nearby:
- One said: “There sits Sigurd, roasting Fafnir’s heart. He should eat it himself; then he would be the wisest of men.”
- Another said: “There lies Regin, planning to betray the man who trusts him.”
- A third: “He should cut off his head, and then he alone would own the gold.”
- Another: “He would be wiser still if he rode up to Hindarfjall, where Sigrdrífa sleeps.”
The Death of Regin
Sigurd needed no more persuading. He cut off Regin’s head with Gram. Then he ate part of the dragon’s heart and kept the rest.
He found Fafnir’s lair, with doors and frames of iron, and inside it an enormous hoard of gold, the Helm of Terror, a golden mailcoat, and the sword Hrotti. He loaded it all onto his horse Grani, who would carry it for no one else, and rode away. The birds had told him where to go next: to the mountain where a valkyrie slept inside a ring of fire. That story is told in Brynhild: The Valkyrie Who Loved Sigurd.
The Name Fáfnisbani
After this deed Sigurd was known as Fáfnisbani, “Fafnir’s bane.” In the sagas, the title is used as proudly as a royal name. Later Scandinavian kings claimed descent from him, and the Norwegian royal house traced its lineage back to Sigurd through his daughter Áslaug, who married the Viking hero Ragnar Loðbrók.
The Ramsund Carving and Hylestad
The dragon-slaying was one of the most popular subjects in Viking and medieval Scandinavian art.
- The Ramsund carving in Södermanland, Sweden (c. 1030), cut into a flat rock face, shows the whole story in a single composition: the dragon’s body forming the band that carries the runic inscription, Sigurd stabbing up from below, Regin headless beside his tools, Sigurd roasting the heart with his thumb in his mouth, the birds in the tree, and Grani the horse.
- The Hylestad stave church portal in Norway (late twelfth century) shows the reforging of the sword, the slaying of the dragon, the roasting of the heart, the killing of Regin, and — in a later scene — Gunnar in the snake pit.
- Stone crosses on the Isle of Man and in northern England also carry scenes from the story.
That these images appear on churches shows that the legend was treated as heroic history rather than pagan religion and remained popular long after the conversion.
Siegfried’s Invulnerability
In the German tradition, the dragon-slaying has a different outcome. Siegfried bathes in the dragon’s blood and his skin becomes hard as horn — except for one spot between his shoulder blades where a linden leaf had fallen. This is how he is later killed by Hagen, in a clear parallel to the heel of Achilles (see The Achilles Heel). The Norse sources do not mention the bath or invulnerability.
The Dragon-Slayer Motif
Sigurd’s fight belongs to a family of dragon-slaying myths found across the Indo-European world: Thor and the World Serpent, Indra and the serpent Vritra, Apollo and the Python, Heracles and the Hydra, Saint George and the dragon, and Beowulf’s final battle. But Sigurd’s is distinctive: the dragon is a transformed man, the fight is won by cunning, and the victory brings a curse rather than safety. The dragon’s real danger is not his venom but his gold.
From Fafnir to Smaug
J. R. R. Tolkien, a scholar of Old Norse, acknowledged his debt to Fafnir. Smaug in The Hobbit — the dragon who lies on stolen gold, who speaks with cunning intelligence, who has a single weak spot on his underside, and whose treasure brings war and death — is Fafnir’s direct descendant. Bilbo’s riddling conversation with Smaug, in which he refuses to give his name, echoes Sigurd’s concealment of his name from the dying dragon.
Last reviewed: September 2026.