Sigurd (Siegfried) was the greatest hero of Norse legend — the dragon-slayer who killed Fafnir, won the cursed treasure of the Nibelungs, learned the language of birds, awakened the valkyrie Brynhild from her ring of fire, and was at last betrayed and murdered, his tragic tale forming the heart of the great Volsung saga. He is the supreme champion of the north, the model of the heroic dragon-slayer.
The Volsung Hero
Sigurd (Old Norse Sigurðr; in the German tradition, Siegfried) was a hero of the Volsung line, a descendant of Odin himself. His father Sigmund was killed before his birth, and the shards of Sigmund's broken sword were kept for the son who would come. Sigurd was fostered by the cunning smith Regin, who reforged the broken sword into the mighty blade Gram — so sharp it could cleave an anvil and cut a tuft of wool drifting on water — and who set the young hero on the path to his destiny.
The Slaying of Fafnir
Regin had a secret motive: he wanted Sigurd to slay the dragon Fafnir — Regin's own brother, who had murdered their father for the cursed gold of Andvari and become a venomous dragon to guard the hoard — so that Regin might claim the treasure. Sigurd agreed, and on Regin's counsel (and the advice of a disguised Odin) he dug a pit in the dragon's path and, when Fafnir crawled over it to drink, thrust Gram up into the beast's soft underbelly, slaying the great dragon. Then Sigurd roasted Fafnir's heart; and when he touched his thumb to the hot blood and put it to his mouth, he suddenly understood the language of birds — and heard the birds warn him that Regin meant to betray and kill him for the gold. So Sigurd slew the treacherous Regin and took the cursed hoard, along with the ring Andvaranaut, for himself.
Brynhild and the Ring of Fire
Riding on, Sigurd came upon a hall ringed with flames, within which slept a beautiful warrior-woman — the valkyrie Brynhild, whom Odin had punished with an enchanted sleep behind a wall of fire, to be awakened only by a man who knew no fear. Sigurd rode through the flames on his great horse Grani, woke Brynhild, and the two pledged their love. But the curse of the gold was at work. Through the schemes of the Nibelung queen Grimhild, Sigurd was given a potion of forgetfulness, forgot Brynhild, and married Gudrun instead; worse, disguised by magic as another man (Gunnar), he rode through the flames a second time to win Brynhild as a bride for Gunnar. When the deception was uncovered, the betrayed and humiliated Brynhild's love turned to a terrible desire for vengeance.
The Betrayal and the Legacy
Brynhild, consumed by grief and rage at the betrayal, drove the Nibelungs to murder Sigurd — and the greatest hero of the north was treacherously slain (stabbed in his bed or in the forest, in the differing tellings), the curse of Andvari's gold claiming him as it claimed all who held it. Brynhild, unable to live without him, took her own life and was burned on his pyre. Sigurd endures as the supreme hero of Norse and Germanic legend — the dragon-slayer, the winner of the cursed hoard, the lover of the valkyrie, the tragic champion betrayed and murdered. His saga, retold across the centuries (in the Völsunga saga, the Nibelungenlied, and modern opera and fantasy), is one of the great heroic tragedies of the world, the very model of the dragon-slaying hero and his doom.
He slew the dragon, tasted its blood and understood the birds, rode through fire to wake a valkyrie, and won a cursed hoard — and for that gold, the greatest hero of the north was murdered in his bed.