Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Fafnir the Dragon

Fafnir the Dragon
In Norse mythology, Fáfnir (Old Norse and Icelandic) or Frænir was a son of the dwarf king Hreidmar and brother of Regin and Ótr. In the Volsunga saga, Fáfnir was a dwarf gifted with a powerful arm and fearless soul. He guarded his father's house of glittering gold and flashing gems. He was the strongest and most aggressive of the three brothers. After Ótr was killed by Loki, Hreidmar received the cursed gold of Andvari's as repayment for the loss of his son. Fáfnir and Regin then killed their father to get the gold, but Fáfnir decided he wanted it all, turning into a dragon (symbol of greed). Regin then sent his foster-son, Sigurd, to kill the dragon. Sigurd succeeded by digging a pit under the trail Fáfnir used to walk to a stream and plunging his sword Gram into his heart as he walked past. Regin, however, corrupted by the curse on Andvari's gold, planned to kill Sigurd to take the treasure for himself, but Sigurd, having eaten part of Fáfnir's cooked heart, was warned by birds of Regin's attack and ended up killing him.

The dragon from the Nibelungenhalle, designed by artist Hermann Hendrich.

4 comments:

Aeron said...

Great illustration, Sean. I need to spend more time digging through imagery from Norse mythology. Fascinating stuff.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sean!

i m sorry but this comment is unrelated to the entry - i was browsing the internet trying to find .pdf version of jenna jameson's autobiography and i stumbled upon ur blog

I know it is reeeaaaly a lot to ask, but do u maybe have a scanned version, coz i cant find one anywhere..

thanks anyways

SEAN said...

Thanks Aeron. Yeah, the Norse stuff is great. I'm fairly obsessed with it, as you might imagine. My son's middle name is Thorbjorn.

As to anonymous, man, you came to the right place, if you click on the 33rd scale on Fafnir, you can get a free download of Jenna Jameson's autobiography. It's in Welsh, but that never stopped us did it?

Human Mollusk said...

Heh, it's like a really bad tempered ouroboros with a punk attitude.

Sean, I must have clicked on that damn scale hundreds of times now.... it's not working!