An episode from 5/20/24: Tonight, after a long hiatus, we return to Norse myth with the story of Sigurd’s killing of the dragon, Fafnir. Couched in a much longer narrative that contains shape-shifting, war, revenge, brief appearances by Odin and Loki, and finally Sigurd’s ability to hear the language of birds and animals, it is a brilliant and vivid example of storytelling in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

I read from the two great sources of the story, the ⁠Volsung Saga⁠ (in the Jesse Byock translation) and Snorri Sturluson’s ⁠Prose Edda⁠ (in the Anthony Faulkes translation). I also discuss the history of the story, and its reworking in the Nibelungenlied, and Wagnerian opera.

⁠Listen to the other Great Myths here⁠.

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