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
Germanic Heroic Age 5th to 6th centuries reflected in heroic poetry are likely historical, but only rarely can this be established from independent historiographic tradition, as in the case of Hygelac, king of the Geats who appears both in the heroic poem "Beowulf" and in historiographic sources such as the "Liber Historiae Francorum". Germanic Heroic Age The Germanic (or "German") Heroic Age, so called in analogy to the Heroic Age of Greek mythology, is the period of early historic or quasi-historic events reflected in Germanic heroic poetry. The period corresponds to the Germanic Wars in terms of historiography, and to the Germanic Iron