Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/389

 Sigurd followed the track of the dragon to his nest and found it open. Its doors and door-frames, and all the beams and posts of the place, were of iron, but the treasure was buried in the ground. There Sigurd found a large heap of gold, with which he filled two chests. Then he took the helmet of terror (Æger's helmet), a gold cuirass, the sword Hrotte, and many treasures, which he put on the back of the horse Grane, but the horse would not proceed before Sigurd mounted it also.

This is but the beginning of this terrible tragedy, but our space does not allow us here to enter upon all the fatal results of the curse of Andvare. In the fate, first of Sigurd and Brynhild, and afterwards of Sigurd and Gudrun, is depicted passion, tenderness and sorrow with a vivid power which nowhere has a superior. The men are princely warriors and the women are not only fair, but godlike, in their beauty and vigor. The noblest sentiments and most heroic actions are crossed by the foulest crimes and the most terrific tragedies. In this train of events, produced by the curse of Andvare alone, there is material for a score of dramas of the most absorbing character. In the story of Sigurd and Brynhild, as we find it in the latter part of the Elder Edda, there are themes for tragic and heroic composition that would become as immortal as Dante's Inferno or Shakespeare's Macbeth, for they are based on our profoundest sympathies, and appeal most forcibly to our ideas of the beautiful and the true.

The ring Andvarenant (Andvare's gift), as it is called, here as elsewhere, symbolizes wealth, which increases in the hands of the wary, careful Andvare (and-vari, wary). But for avarice, that never gets enough, it becomes a destructive curse. It is perfectly in harmony with Loke's