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 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