Fafnir (Marvel Comics) first encountered in the guise of an old man by the warrior Volstagg, who with his companions is currently exploring the ruined realm of Nastrond, an extradimensional realm on the continent of Asgard. Fafnir explains he was the King of Nastrond, and that the King of the Norse Gods Odin destroyed Nastrond due to the evil nature of its people. Fafnir himself was left to die in a ruined wasteland, but survives by drinking from a pool of water with magical properties. The water, however, transforms Fafnir into a massive dragon. Knowing that Volstagg and his allies were sent by
Investigations into Germanic Mythology concluding in part that it was not more widely received because it was not fully available in one of the three international languages of scholarship: English, German or French. A German translation was being prepared in 1889 by literary historian, Phillip B. Schweitzer, who died in a skiing accident shortly thereafter. A French translation planned by a group of scholars in Lund in 1891 was never completely realized. Rydberg himself knew that his mythology would be regarded as "folly" to the German philologists, who, as adherents to the school of nature-mythology, regarded him as a heretic, in regard to his