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Case file s646 · Medieval Europe · 1250
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1250
Hylestad I, right (cropped): The right portal plank from Hylestad stave church, the so called "Hylestad I".
Hylestad I, right (cropped). Jeblad. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
c. 1250 (no traditional date; placed when the saga was written in Iceland, 13th century)
Place
Iceland (where the saga was written)
Field
a gold hoard and Andvari's ring · Royalty and nobility on the timeline
Legal tradition
blood-price (wergild) paid to a father for a son's death
Historical event
The Norse Völsung and Nibelung legends
Medieval EuropeMurder and sudden deathMedievalEuropeIceland

Legend: this account comes from tradition, an epic or an old chronicle. Records do not prove it happened as told.

The Völsunga saga says Fafnir killed his father for a cursed gold hoard and refused his brother any share

The Völsunga saga is a 13th-century Icelandic prose saga based largely on the poems of the Elder Edda. In chapter 14 the smith Regin tells the hero Sigurd how his family's fortune was made and lost. The god Loki killed Regin's brother Otter with a stone. Their father Hreidmar demanded a blood-price: the gods must "fill the otter skin with gold, and cover it over without with red gold." Loki took the gold from the dwarf Andvari, including a ring. Andvari cursed it: the ring and all the gold would be "the bane of every man who should own it thereafter." The gods paid Hreidmar. Regin says: "Fafnir slew his father and murdered him, nor got I aught of the treasure." Fafnir would not share the hoard with Regin, took it to the heath, and became a dragon lying on the gold. Regin raised Sigurd and forged him a sword to kill Fafnir. In chapter 18 Sigurd digs a pit in the dragon's path and stabs him from below. The curse then follows the gold through the rest of the saga. The German Nibelungenlied is related in content, and Their origins are still studied.

What the law took from it

A blood-price paid to a father alone, with no rule for sharing it, left two sons with a claim and no way to settle it.

Sources
  1. morrisarchive.lib.uiowa.eduGovernment record
  2. Project GutenbergScholarship
  3. voluspa.orgPress
  4. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “The Völsunga saga says Fafnir killed his father for a cursed gold hoard and refused his brother any share,” story s646, https://www.celebrity.estate/volsunga-saga-1250, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Medieval EuropeMurder and sudden deathMedievalEuropeIceland