The Norse story of a cursed ring of gold, of Sigurd who kills the dragon Fafnir and wakes a shield-maiden on a fire-ringed hill, and of the queen who cannot forgive him for forgetting her. William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon made this translation in 1870 and called the tale the Iliad of the North; Wagner and Tolkien both worked from the same matter. The prose keeps the saga's flatness, which is why the killings land as they do.
