Andvaranaut
Andvaranaut (lit .: "Gift of Andvari ") is a gold ring in Norse mythology , the most famous piece from Andvari's treasure. The ring has the ability to increase gold, but there is a curse on it to bring death to anyone who acquires it.
In the Edda of Songs and in the Edda of Snorra, the story of the ring is almost identical, as follows: The three dreisir (gods) Odin , Loki and Hönir walk across the world. When they get hungry, Loki kills an otter; they go to a farmer, Hreidmar , for night quarters and to prepare the otter. Hreidmar recognizes in the slain his son Otr (meaning "otter"), who not only bore this name, but also possessed the magical ability to transform himself into an otter , and in this form he caught fish in a waterfall. Hreidmar and his two other sons, Fafnir and Reginn , demand manslaughter from the gods for Otr. The gods have no gold; Loki has to get them by catching a dwarf named Andvari , who has a great treasure and lives as a fish in the water. Loki demands the treasure from Andvari as a ransom and, as the last piece, the ring that Andvari wanted to keep in order to be able to multiply the treasure again. Andvari then curses his ring: it should bring death to two brothers and eight princes feuds (that is also: death) and be of no use to anyone. Loki gives the treasure together with the ring to Odin, who then to Hreidmar as wergeld for his slain son Otr. Hreidmar is killed by his son Fafnir because he does not want to share the wergeld. Fafnir turns into a dragon and lies down on the gold in order to be able to better guard the treasure and also the ring. Reginn, Fafnir's brother, who also cheated out of his share of the gold, sees the young Sigurd , his foster son, as a chance to take the treasure from Fafnir. Sigurd actually manages to kill the dragon Fafnir and thus comes into possession of the ring, the treasure and the oegis helmet . But Reginn wants to kill Sigurd and have everything to himself. Warned by birds (by enjoying the dragon's blood, Sigurd understands the language of birds), Sigurd gets ahead of him and kills Reginn. The Snorra Edda adds that Sigurd finally passes the ring on to Brynhild as a pledge of love ; he takes it back from her when he woos Brynhild in the form of Gunnar , and gives it to his wife Gudrun . In the dispute with Brynhild, the ring serves as evidence.
The motif of the ring still runs through several German sagas. In the Nibelungenlied and in the Thidrek saga he only plays a role in the background; Richard Wagner, on the other hand, made it a central motif in his opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen .