Fafnir is shown to return to his original giant form while delivering his death-speech to Siegfried. It is clear that much of Tolkien's work was inspired by Northern Myth. Many parallels can be drawn between Fafnir and Smaug, from "The Hobbit", as well as between Fafnir and Glaurung, the first dragon in Middle Earth. Who is slain by Turin. The exchange between Bilbo and Smaug nearly mirrors Fafnir's and Sigurd's. The main difference being that Sigurd's conversation occurs after the death blow has been struck. This is most likely due to dramatic effect, as Bilbo has much more at stake when
Sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology groves are widely attested among the records of the ancient Germanic peoples. Some scholars hypothesize that they even predated the development of temples (according to Rudolf Simek, "there were sacred woods long before there were temples and altars"). In his "Germania", Tacitus says that the Germanic peoples "consecrate woods and groves and they apply the name of gods to that mysterious presence which they see only with the eye of devotion", Tacitus describes the grove of the Semnones and refers to a "castum nemus" (chaste grove) in which the image of the goddess Nerthus was hallowed, and other reports from