An episode from 5/20/24: Tonight, after a long hiatus, we return to Norse myth with the story of Sigurd’s killing of the dragon, Fafnir. Couched in a much longer narrative that contains shape-shifting, war, revenge, brief appearances by Odin and Loki, and finally Sigurd’s ability to hear the language of birds and animals, it is a brilliant and vivid example of storytelling in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. I read from the two great sources of the story, the ⁠Volsung Saga⁠ (in the Jesse Byock translation) and Snorri Sturluson’s ⁠Prose Edda⁠ (in the Anthony Faulkes translation). I also discuss the history of the story, and its reworking in the Nibelungenlied, and Wagnerian opera. ⁠Listen to the other Great Myths here⁠. You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. Email me at [email protected].

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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