Introduction

Fáfnir is undoubtedly the most famous dragon in Norse literature, and certainly one of the most famous in the literatures written in Germanic languages during the Middle Ages, arguably on par with the nameless beast in Beowulf. Dragons are not as abundant as popularly imagined in these literatures, although they are not as rare as Tolkien suggested, as Paul Acker has shown.Moreover, Fáfnir is arguably less stereotypically dragonesque than his Old English fire-breathing cousin, for a simple reason: he lives for a good portion of his life in bipedal, humanoid form together with his relatives, quite a different life from the seemingly lonely existence experienced by Beowulf’s last antagonist. In simple terms, Fáfnir is not a dragon, but (initially) a man.

However, his family displays a noticeable tendency towards ontological ambiguity. His relatives are described in much more detail in the Norse sources than in the English or German: we know of his brothers Reginn and Otr, his father Hreiðmarr and of two elusive sisters, Lyngheiðr and Lofnheiðr. Both the eddic poetry of the Sigurðr cycle in Snorra Edda, and Vǫlsunga saga convey a good picture of his immediate kin. For example, Reginn describes his brothers in these terms: