Fafnir blood. The earth quaked and the ground nearby shook as Fafnir appeared, blowing poison into his path as he made his way to the stream. Sigurd, undaunted, stabbed Fafnir in the left shoulder as he crawled over the ditch he was lying in and succeeded in mortally wounding the dragon. As the creature lay there dying, he spoke to Sigurd and asked for his name, his parentage and who sent him on such a dangerous mission. Fafnir figured out that his own brother, Regin, plotted this, and predicted that Regin would also cause Sigurd's death. Sigurd told Fafnir that he
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