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
Germanic Heroic Age by several centuries, such as "The Battle of Maldon", composed three centuries after the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons,or the "Hildebrandslied", written at Fulda 300 years after the Christianization of the Franks. The Prose Edda itself originated as a handbook for skaldic poets, compiled by Snorri Sturluson more than 200 years after the Christianisation of Iceland, because poetic tradition at that time was threatened by extinction. Germanic mythology combines purely mythological material with historical events of this period. Identifiable historical characters appearing in Germanic heroic poetry, notably in the Völsung and Tyrfing cycles, include: A number of tribal kings of the