Description:
A dragon slayer is a figure who, either once at a particular junction in a story or multiple times across a narrative (or more than one narrative, such as in a series with more than one entry), kills a dragon (LINK). The dragon slayer is a figure with roots in ancient cultures all over the world, appearing in successive periods, cultures, and forms throughout history up to the present. As this database centers on medieval Nordic literature, the following description pertains to Germanic literary dragon-slaying tales and their importance to modern media portrayals of dragons and dragon slayers.
Dragons appear in many different forms throughout the corpus of Old Norse literature, from the myths of gods and giants to the sagas of semi-historical people and events. As the literature developed and many forms of foreign literatures were imported and translated in Scandinavia and Iceland, the nature of dragons and their slaying changed. The combination of different literary traditions and their differing versions of the dragon slayer tale results in a colorful variety of types which serve different functions in their narratives.
The two most well known dragon slayers of Germanic heroic traditions, by far, are Beowulf and Sigurðr (LINK), respectively from the Old English poem Beowulf and the Icelandic legendary saga of the Völsungs. Beowulf is possibly better known due to the poem's continuing presence in English class curricula, as well as the the popularity of Tolkien's The Hobbit, whose dragon Smaug is a direct recycling of the nameless dragon at the end of Beowulf. Like Smaug, the Beowulf dragon is enraged at a single treasure being stolen from his hoard, and he reigns fire upon Beowulf's kingdom, forcing the aged hero to take up his sword against a monstrous threat yet again (his fame and prowess are established earlier in the poem when he kills Grendel and Grendel's mother). Only one of Beowulf's thanes (LINK) is brave enough to help him, and together they kill the dragon, but Beowulf dies to his wounds.
In contrast, Sigurðr wins eternal fame by killing the dragon Fáfnir (LINK) in his youth. The scribe of Völsunga saga even tells us how "his name will never be forgotten in the German tongue and in the northern lands while the world stands." As opposed to Beowulf's dragon, who flies and breaths fire (Beowulf has himself an iron shield made, knowing a wooden one would be burnt to ashes immediately), Fáfnir, who was once a human (or a dwarf, this is contended by scholars due to the ambiguity of these categories in Old Norse literature), transforms into an ormr, a wingless, likely limbless snake (we get the modern English word "worm" and its archaic predecessor "wyrm" from this word), after he kills his father and steals all of his treasure. He dons a magical helmet, the ægishjálmr (LINK) "helmet of terror" and lays upon the hoarded gold out in the wilderness, spewing poison instead of fire to keep all living creatures away. Sigurðr digs multiple pits in Fáfnir's path, hiding in one until the huge serpent slithers over, and plunges into his heart from below, while the other pits catch all of Fáfnir's poisonous blood. This deed wins Sigurðr undying fame and transforms him from a promising youth into a hero for the ages, such that it is also referenced across the literary corpus of the Germanic-speaking world, including in Beowulf.