Fafnir his foster-son Sigurd to kill the dragon. Regin instructed Sigurd to dig a pit in which he could lie in wait under the trail Fáfnir used to get to a stream and there plunge his sword, Gram, into Fafnir's heart as he crawls over the pit to the water. Regin then ran away in fear, leaving Sigurd to the task. As Sigurd dug, Odin appeared in the form of an old man with a long beard, advising the warrior to dig more trenches for the blood of Fafnir to run into, presumably so that Sigurd does not drown in the
Sacred trees and groves in Germanic paganism and mythology groves and individual trees. After Christianization, trees continue to play a significant role in the folk beliefs of the Germanic peoples. The pagan Germanic peoples referred to holy places by a variety of terms and many of these terms variously referred to stones, groves, and temple structures. From Proto-Germanic or , a masculine noun, developed Old Norse meaning 'temple, idol', Old English 'temple, idol', and Old High German meaning 'holy grove, holy stone'. According to philologist Vladimir Orel, the term was borrowed from the continental Celtic * or, alternately, the same non-Indo-European source as the Celtic source. A more general