Sigurd the Völsung: Dragon-Slayer of Norse Legend
Explore Sigurd Fáfnisbani, the dragon-slayer of the Völsung saga — his youth, his killing of Fafnir, the cursed ring, Brynhild, and his tragic death.
Sigurd Fáfnisbani (“the slayer of Fafnir”) is the central hero of the Norse heroic tradition, the figure around whom the great cycle of the Völsungs, the Gjükungs, and the Niflungs is built. Across the Eddic poems, the Völsunga saga, the Skáldskaparmál of Snorri Sturluson, the German Nibelungenlied, and the Þiðreks saga of Norway, Sigurd appears as the slayer of the dragon Fafnir, the master of the cursed gold of Andvari, the lover of the valkyrie Brynhild, and the doomed husband of the Gjüking princess Guðrún. The story of the Saga of the Völsungs is told on its own page, but the man at the centre of that story deserves a closer look.
The Lineage of Sigurd
Sigurd is the last and greatest of the Völsungs. His father is Sigmund, the son of Völsungr (whence the family name), and his mother is Hjördís, sister of the Danish king Siggeirr and daughter of the Völsung champion Völsungr. The Völsungs themselves trace their lineage back to Odin: the Völsung patriarch Sigi is, in the Völsunga saga, the son of Odin, and the whole dynasty is the object of a particular divine interest. The Völsungs are kings of the lands south of the Rhine, with their principal seat at Hunaland in the Gothic regions of central Europe, and the saga places their story in the Migration Period, somewhere between the death of Attila the Hun (453) and the collapse of the Gothic kingdom of Toulouse (507).
As a young man, Sigmund drew from the sacred apple-tree of the Völsung hall a sword that had been placed there by Odin: this is the famous sword Gram (Gramr), a weapon of unsurpassed sharpness that had been broken in the long war with King Siggeirr and reforged by the smith Volundr in the underworld. With Gram, Sigmund won the battles of the Völsung wars and the love of his sister Signy, who bore him a son Sinfjötli. When Sigmund was finally defeated in his last great battle, Odin’s own spear broke Gram in his hand, and Sigmund died on the battlefield, commending his unborn son Sigurd to the care of the smith Regin and his brother Fafnir. The figure of Sigmund, the doomed warrior, is one of the great tragic characters of the Old Norse tradition, and the figure of his son Sigurd is, in many ways, the completion of his story.
Sigurd and the Smith Regin
The relationship between Sigurd and Regin is one of the great fictional pairings of the heroic tradition. Regin is a dwarf, a being of the older mythology, who has been displaced from his place in the dark earth by the gold of the dragon Fafnir, his brother. The dwarves of the Norse mythology, as told in the Skáldskaparmál, are smiths of great cunning, makers of the great treasures of the gods: the ship Skíðblaðnir, the spear Gungnir, the ring Draupnir, the hammer Mjöllnir. Regin is the smith who forges the great treasures of the heroic age. He is also, however, the trickster who goads the hero into the murder of his own brother Fafnir, in order to recover the gold for himself.
The traditional relationship between hero and smith in the heroic saga is one of mutual dependence. The hero needs the weapons of the smith; the smith needs the strong arm of the hero. The older pattern of the hero-smith relationship is preserved in the figure of Wayland the Smith of the Eddic poem Völundarkviða. Regin is the dark mirror of Wayland: where Wayland is a craftsman of great generosity, Regin is a craftsman of great cunning. The hero must defeat the smith before he can win his own destiny.
The Völsunga saga preserves the tradition that Regin tried three times to forge a sword for Sigurd, and three times the blade broke. The third blade, forged from the broken pieces of Gram, was the one that would serve Sigurd in his great test. Sigurd does not take up a new weapon, but reforges the broken sword of his father Sigmund, the very sword that Odin had put into the apple-tree of the Völsung hall and that had been broken in the last battle. The sword’s reforging is a sign that the old battle is about to be refought.
The Slaying of the Dragon Fafnir
The central episode of the Sigurd story is the slaying of the dragon Fafnir, and the Eddic poem Fáfnismál preserves the older oral form of the story. Fafnir was once a man, a brother of Regin, who had killed his father Hreiðmarr for the cursed gold of the dwarf Andvari. After the murder, Fafnir took the form of a dragon and withdrew to a place called Gnitaheiðr (“the Glittering Heath”), where he lay on the gold and brooded over it. The gold itself had been won by the gods Odin, Hœnir, and Loki from the dwarf Andvari, who had tried to withhold it; Loki had taken the gold by force and the ring Andvaranautr by cutting off the dwarf’s hand. Andvari, in his rage, had cursed the gold, declaring that it would bring death to every man who possessed it.
Sigurd, on Regin’s advice, dug a pit on the path that Fafnir took to drink, and he hid in the pit with the reforged sword Gram, point upward. When the dragon came to drink, Sigurd drove the sword up into its belly, and the dragon died. The blood of the dragon welled up and burned Sigurd’s heel, and the hero sucked the wound to cool it. As he did so, the blood touched his lips, and Sigurd gained the power to understand the speech of birds.
The conversation of Sigurd with the birds — the orðlokur of the hero — is one of the most powerful set-pieces in the Old Norse tradition. The birds warn him of Regin’s treachery, telling him that Regin will kill him to take the gold. Sigurd beheads Regin, takes the gold, and (in some versions) eats the heart of Fafnir, roasted on a spit by Regin before Sigurd kills him. The heart gives him power to understand the language of the birds and to learn the magic of the runes. The motif of the dragon’s heart or blood conferring wisdom is widespread in the Indo-European tradition, with parallels in the Irish Mesca Ulad and in the Welsh traditions of the Mabinogi.
The landscape of the dragon-slaying is preserved in the saga. Gnitaheiðr has been variously identified with a hill near Gothenburg in Sweden, with a place in the Norwegian fells, and with a location in the Rhine valley. The Tune stone of Gotland may depict the slaying of Fafnir in stone, and the Rök runestone of Sweden (c. 850) preserves skaldic verses in which the Sigurd story is alluded to.
The Curse of Andvari
The curse of Andvari is the central moral structure of the Sigurd story. The dwarf Andvari, robbed by Loki of his gold and his ring, pronounces a curse on the treasure: “The gold that I possessed shall be the death of two brothers, and eight princes besides, and all shall lose their lives who possess it.” The curse works with remorseless precision. Fafnir kills Hreiðmarr for the gold, and is himself killed by Sigurd. Sigurd takes the gold, and is killed by Guttorm at the instigation of Brynhild. Brynhild kills herself. Gunnar and Högni take the gold, and are killed by Atli. Atli takes the gold, and is killed by Guðrún. The whole cycle of death is a working-out of the curse, and the gold of Andvari is the dark mirror of the divine gold of the gods.
The ring Andvaranautr is the principal object of the curse, and it is the ring that Sigurd gives to Brynhild before he leaves her, and that he later sees in the possession of Guðrún, and that becomes the token of his supposed treachery. The ring is a piece of jewellery of great antiquity, and it has its place in the wider tradition: the Brogger ring of Gotland, the Hon amulet of Norway, and the Jellinge cup of Denmark are all decorated with ring-motifs drawn from the same pool of tradition. The Völuspá of the Codex Regius lists the theft of the gold of Andvari among the evil deeds that lead to the death of Baldr.
Sigurd and the Valkyrie
After the slaying of Fafnir, Sigurd rides to the mountain of Hindarfjall (“the Hind’s Fell”) in the south of Norway, and there he finds a sleeping warrior, fully armed, in a great hall. Sigurd cuts the armour from the warrior with Gram, and the sleeper wakes: she is the valkyrie Sigrdrífa (also called Brynhild), a warrior of the divine order, whom Odin has pricked with the sleep-thorn for her disobedience in granting a victory contrary to the divine will. Sigurd and Sigrdrífa exchange vows of love, and Sigrdrífa teaches him the runes of victory, the runes of the ale, the runes of the sea, the runes of the limb, the runes of the speech, the runes of the mind, the runes of the welcome, the runes of the clouds, the runes of the journey, and the runes of the arm. The runes are, in this sense, the gifts of the valkyrie to the hero, and the hero’s mastery of the runes is part of his qualification for the great deeds that are to come.
The relationship between Sigurd and Sigrdrífa/Brynhild is one of the great love-stories of the Old Norse tradition, and the Eddic poem Sigrdrífumál preserves the older form of the meeting, in which the valkyrie is the teacher of the hero and the love is exchanged freely. The Völsunga saga preserves the more elaborate form of the story, in which the hero wakes the valkyrie, they fall in love, and they are later separated by the magic potion of forgetfulness. Our cluster on Brynhild, Shieldmaiden and Queen follows the woman at the heart of the story. The figure of the valkyrie as the lover of the hero is one of the great motifs of the heroic tradition, and the tradition of the mortal lover of the valkyrie recurs in the Hrólfs saga kraka, the Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar, and the Hervarar saga.
The Gjükungs and the Potion of Forgetfulness
After the meeting with Sigrdrífa, Sigurd rides to the hall of the Gjükungs, the sons of Gjúki: Gunnar, Högni, and Guttorm. Their mother Grímhild is a queen of great magical power, and she administers to Sigurd a potion of forgetfulness that causes him to forget his love for Sigrdrífa and to fall in love with her daughter Guðrún. Sigurd marries Guðrún, and he swears brotherhood with Gunnar and Högni. The swearing of blood-brotherhood is one of the great institutions of the heroic tradition, and the figures of Gunnar and Högni are bound to Sigurd by the same oath that binds Hrothgar and Hrothulf in the Beowulf poem.
The wooing of Brynhild by Gunnar is the great test of the blood-brotherhood. Gunnar, who cannot ride the fire-wall that surrounds Brynhild’s hall, exchanges forms with Sigurd (in some versions, with the help of the magic helmet of the dwarf Grímnir), and Sigurd wins Brynhild for Gunnar. The exchange of forms is a motif of the older Indo-European mythology: in the Indian Mahabharata, the hero Arjuna exchanges forms with his brother Yudhishthira; in the Welsh traditions, Pwyll and Pryderi exchange forms.
The truth comes out. Brynhild, who had been deceived into thinking she had married Gunnar, learns that the true bridegroom was Sigurd, and she is consumed with rage. She confronts Sigurd and Guðrún, and she is publicly shamed by Guðrún. In her rage, she procures the murder of Sigurd by her brother Guttorm (who is not bound by the blood-oath). The murder is one of the great tragic events of the Old Norse tradition, and the description in the Völsunga saga and the Skáldskaparmál is one of the most powerful narratives in medieval literature. The dying Sigurd gives Guðrún fragments of advice about the future, and he predicts the deaths of all the principals of the saga.
The Death of Sigurd
The death of Sigurd is one of the great set-pieces of the Old Norse tradition. The hero is killed in his bed, by the hand of Guttorm, who is the only one of the Gjükungs not bound by the blood-oath. Sigurd’s last speech, preserved in the Völsunga saga and the Skáldskaparmál, predicts the future deaths of the Gjükungs, the Niflungs, and the Huns, and he is buried with great honour. The birds that had warned him of Regin’s treachery are silent, and Sigurd’s death is the working-out of the curse of Andvari.
The Völsunga saga preserves the tradition that Sigurd was killed by a thrust of the sword to the breast, and that he was buried in a great mound with his horse Grani and his treasure. The description of the funeral mound is a motif of the heroic tradition: the Scyld Scefing of the opening of Beowulf is buried in a ship-borne mound, and the Sigurd mound is the Norse counterpart of the Beowulfian ideal of the funeral. The archaeological evidence for such princely mounds is rich: the great Tune ship-burial of Gotland, the Oseberg and Gokstad ship-burials of Norway, the Vendel and Valsgärde boat-burials of Sweden, and the Sutton Hoo ship-burial of Suffolk are all examples of the same general type of princely burial.
The Skáldskaparmál of Snorri Sturluson preserves the tradition that Brynhild killed herself with the sword of Sigurd and was burned with him on the same pyre. The figure of the valkyrie who chooses death with her hero is one of the great tragic images of the medieval world. The image of Sigurd burning on the pyre with Brynhild and the treasure has been preserved in the Norse mythology in Tolkien and fantasy literature tradition, in which it is the source of the great scene of the destruction of the One Ring at the end of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Sigurd in the German Tradition
The continental German tradition preserves a parallel cycle of stories under the names Siegfried, Kriemhild, and Brünhild. The Nibelungenlied of c. 1200 is the longest and most famous of the German redactions, and it tells the story of Siegfried of Xanten, his murder by Hagen of Troy, the marriage of his widow Kriemhild to Etzel (Attila the Hun), and her terrible revenge. The Nibelungenlied is a chivalric reworking of the older heroic material, and the figure of Siegfried is recast in the chivalric idiom of the High Middle Ages. The Þiðreks saga of Norway, written in the thirteenth century, is a Norse redaction of much of the German material, drawing on Low German sources and preserving a number of lost German lays in Norse translation. The Völsunga saga of c. 1400 is a more compact Norse redaction that draws on both the Nibelungenlied and the older Eddic poems, and it is the source of most modern knowledge of the Sigurd story.
Sigurd in Modern Reception
The figure of Sigurd has been the subject of some of the most remarkable works of art in the Western tradition. The German composer Richard Wagner used the Sigurd story as the basis of his Ring cycle (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung), and the figure of Siegfried in the Ring cycle is one of the most influential single characters in the operatic tradition. The English writer William Morris used the Völsunga saga as the basis of his long narrative poem The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niflungs (1876), and Morris’s version is one of the great works of the English-language reception of the Norse heroic tradition. The Icelandic writer Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845) drew on the rímur in his great lyric “Gunnar”, and the Danish and Norwegian national-romantic writers used the Sigurd story as the basis of paintings, sculptures, and dramatic works throughout the nineteenth century.
The twentieth-century reception of Sigurd includes the films of Richard Fleischer (the Vikings of 1958), the Wagner productions of the great opera houses of Europe, the fantasy literature of J. R. R. Tolkien (whose Legendarium draws heavily on the Norse heroic tradition), the video-game God of War of Santa Monica Studio (in which the figure of the hero Kratos is modelled on the Sigurd archetype), and the television series Vikings of History Channel. The hero is alive in the modern world, and his story continues to be told and retold in new forms.